Logitech G19s Gaming Keyboard Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,895 words · ~9 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the
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g119s this is the first refresh we've seen for for a flagship keyboard from
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Logitech since the original g19 which added a full color LCD to the already
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awesome features of the g15 um unless you count the g710 plus
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which is a mechanical gaming keyboard so the g19 is not mechanical but it does
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have their game panel LCD technology as well as their new Advanced surface
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materials so with their new G Series logitech's sort of tagline is science
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wins and the idea is that by strategically applying better quality
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materials and Advanced Materials to the products they can make them look better
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over time and feel better to use so inside you find not a whole lot there's
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a little uh quick start guide setup guide there's a wrist rest and an AC
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adapter because it has a built-in monitor basically it has a built-in
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screen on it you actually do need to power this keyboard from the wall in
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addition to the USB power but the advantage to this is that the built-in
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USB ports on the keyboard itself are not
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passive so they don't rely on the power provided from your computer which means
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they are powered ports and you can run more uh Power hungry devices off of them
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such as things like uh I don't know USB speakers or whatever else where a lot of
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the time with regular hubs built into keyboards you do not have that
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functionality so on the bottom of the keyboard you've got what logitech's
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calling their Cable Management so you can see here you're able to route your
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you I don't know whether it's your probably your headphone cable or whatever else you want to run through
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here either through this side through this Edge through this edge up here down
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here wherever you want it to go in fact you can have things come out wherever
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you want down here which is kind of nice because how many times have you guys
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been sitting playing a game and you got your headset cable over top of your hand
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and it's just I don't know it's just annoying right so there you go there's
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my little rant about that you can adjust the angle of the keyboard just by
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pulling up these feet here I wouldn't have minded seeing these uh with rubber
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Tops on the ends of them however they feel pretty sturdy so I don't think even
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in a fit of nerd rage they'd be at risk of breaking which is the only complaint
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I had about the g15 Gen 1 was the uh the
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breakable wrist rest but if logitech's whole thing is Advanced Materials I
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don't think we're too worried about that anymore uh we've got rubber feet here so
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you don't generally have to worry about the keyboard going anywhere so there you
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go uh speaking of Advanced Materials this does feel different from what I'm
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used to on a wrist rest so rather than being a plastic piece with a coating it
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feels more like it's a more rugged piece of plastic so the idea is that it's
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supposed to be hydrophobic which makes it sort of cool to the touch and so that
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it's not going to get all greasy and disgusting looking and then the same
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thing on the keyboard itself on the back or on the face plate is what they're
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calling it that's supposed to be a fingerprint resistant coating so even
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though it's glossy oh check that out I
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don't know how close in you can get but even if I like try to leave a
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fingerprint on it it actually works so
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that would be my one complaint about the g710 plus is that the the glossy face
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plate is not that fingerprint resistant whereas on this one I I really don't see
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that being an issue that's very cool all right so moving on to the
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features we've got here is our full color LCD display which being can be
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controlled either through the software or through the menu and navigation
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buttons here we've also got a game button which will disable your context
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menu as well as your Windows key so that you don't have to worry about
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accidentally pressing them all of these macro buttons can be recorded on the fly
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so there's 12 of them with three different layers so that's up to 36
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different macro functions and then again you can record them on the fly so that's
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pretty fly sorry um the keyboard layout is very
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standard long shifts long backspace long enter so nothing that I consider to be a
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cardinal sin that would bother me the WD
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keys are colorcoded in a different color and the backlighting of the keyboard
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overall is customizable which is very cool so you can change the color to
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whatever you want that's again done through the Logitech software over here on the right side we find the layout is
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again very standard so you've got more gaming color coding for the arrow keys
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themselves although I've very rarely seen folks game with these Keys speaking
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of gaming Keys the keyboard has five key rollover meaning that no matter what
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five Keys you press so if you take your
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entire hand and kind of go like this they will all be registered correctly
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without any glitchy behavior um number
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pad is pretty normal it's a number pad you can like do accounting with it and
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then over here we've got a volume wheel this is one of my favorite
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implementations of volume control uh many less expensive keyboards will
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implement it as sort of like a function key with like uh you know press press
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press press press for volume control I love the wheel implementation cuz it's
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very natural to use you've also got a mute button as well as play stop back
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and forward and then your LED brightness can be controlled here now I think any
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kind of video of the g19s is going to be
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incomplete without actually taking the thing and plugging it into a computer so
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I'd like to do that but beforehand I'm just going to let our camera operator
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who goes by the thuggish name of b-roll um go look at it while I figure
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out if there's anything that I actually missed already advance surface materials
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game desktop mode 5 GE rollover dedicated media controls intelligent
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cable management and a three-year warranty there I haven't covered that
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yet we'll be back in a moment so here we are with the g119s set
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up in its uh sort of natural environment which is of course right next to a g710
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plus now I want you to get in nice and close to the g710 plus and check out
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these greasy marks around the arrow keys here there's pretty much nothing you can
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do about that on the g710 plus whereas can you see that at all y okay
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whereas with the g119s no matter what I
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do to it other than this spot right here this will this will still get dirty but
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these spots right here due to the coating on it you can see that it
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doesn't end up looking gross because of what they've done here so that I thought
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that was really cool um and that was sort of their point with this keyboard
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but there you go so okay so this button it turns out actually controls the LCD
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here and then uh let's go ahead and okay
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so the back lighting is it's a white backl on here right now but I've got the
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Logitech gaming software going right here so I mean Logitech really does have
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the most refined software to go with their peripherals so you can see with
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the three Logitech things that I have built in um I can go okay well I want to
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select which things I want so I can have a YouTube video player for the LCD here
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I can have an LCD webcam Bureau that's kind of cool so you could like webcam
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with your mom while you're actually gaming and you could just have her here
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sort of tucked away uh application
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button will either list the running Outlet so here let's try the application
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button which is this guy right here oh okay so that controls the app
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applets that are running on the LCD screen here itself so we can go ahead
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and I don't know we'll go to the uh the video player so we'll go to top rated
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how to be beautiful from PewDiePie oh no
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that can only be a bad thing oh okay no flash player not installed cancel cancel
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ah go back go back oh okay so this is just to browse the YouTube video
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well either way we don't want to watch PewDiePie's uh video about how to be
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beautiful uh so let's go ahead and check out the software so there's also
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lighting controls that you can change so let's go ahead and kill the house lights
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and I'll show you guys that we can change the LEDs to pretty much whatever
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color we want um Diesel's hitting the
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lights for me just using the software control panel here so we can go ahead
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and go like that so all of a sudden we've got a blue/ green backlight we can
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go like this and we end up with a very deep blue very customizable and you can
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control the brightness as well so here's what it looks like full red here's the
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brightness control so it has uh looks like wow a lot of different brightness
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steps I've seen keyboards brag about 10 different steps of brightness but this
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is pretty much uh linear control you can also quickly select you can have oh you
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can have different backlight colors per profile so your profiles are up here so
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you can see that it's already set up that way so switching between those is
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changing the colors and then of course you can set up all the usual stuff that
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you can do in Logitech software like uh setting up profiles per game and it
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really is a very complete list that they have compared to what other guys are
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doing as well as programming all the different keys and all the different
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layers per key right here uh onboard
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memory is controlled here so that's that's where you can save profiles
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directly to the keyboard itself and I think that pretty much wraps it up thank
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you for checking out this unboxing in first look don't forget to subscribe to
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