GAMDIAS HERMES Gaming Keyboard Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,208 words · ~11 min read
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want a portable power bank Wireless AP SD card and USB reader for your mobile
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devices check the link in the video description to learn more about the ada8
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DH Drive air ae400 welcome to my unboxing an overview of whoa what the
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gandas who's even heard of that before
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the answer is probably not you because they are a brand new gaming peripheral
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company and usually when you know some
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random gaming peripheral company reaches out to me and says hey we'd like you to
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check out our products I kind of look at their website and I'm just like H really
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I don't know what you bring to the table but in this case they've actually
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innovated which is pretty cool so there
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are like I said brand new company that has brought some interesting things to
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the table with the Hermes mechanical gaming keyboard so first and foremost
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it's a mechanical gaming keyboard which of course you seen that before next up
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it is Led backlight but if you check out their packaging they hardly even make
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mention of the LED back lighting because
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the sort of sad simple truth is nobody cares anymore because every gaming
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mechanical keyboard is Led backlit so this particular one uses a red LED backl
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okay so that's all fine and interesting so let's go ahead and get this baby
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opened up so this is where they really got my
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attention because ergonomically there's
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not much that you can change about the layout of a keyboard for gaming without
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messing it up for typing which is why companies like Razer have introduced
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products like the orb weaver which is like a a keyboard replacement for gaming
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so Gus's addition of gaming optimized Keys hasn't managed to bung up the
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typing experience so we've still got long shifts long enter and long backspace and then we've got a bank of
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macro Keys over here on the left hand side it should be noted that while I'm
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pointing at particular macro keys the button the buttons are fully
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reprogrammable on this keyboard you just have to use the included software so
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they've added five here and instead of banks upon Banks of them they've actually added the other keys in places
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that make a lot of sense to me so under the space bar is somewhere where you
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could actually conceivably reach and then under the arrow keys if you use
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your right hand on the arrow keys and your left hand with your mouse you can
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actually use that as jump and then you've got a couple more functions right
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here and then they've added a couple more keys above the right and left arrow keys which I think is really smart very
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very cool so the included cord is using a braided design that
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might feel a little bit thin and that might give it a bit of a sort of cheap
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feel compared to some of the I think uh thermal takes branding is military grade
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cable and it's like this thick around but I would I like the fact that you can
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actually route it around things and it's
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kind of difficult to do when you have not only the keyboard uh plug as well as
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a USB pass through but also two audio
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passrs for your headphone and microphone as well so so let's go ahead and have a
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look at where those go so there's your uh pass through USB port you'll usually
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plug your mouse into there as well as your pass through microphone and
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headphone ports the overall build quality of the keyboard feels extremely
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solid especially considering these guys are a newcomer so there's really not
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much Flex to it at all I'm like wrenching on it in order to make it Flex
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that much you've got two little feet down here that ah yes I haven't seen
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this in a while I like this so you can see the entire tops of these are rubber
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that means that it is still nonslip even
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when they are raised so that you have a a higher inclination to the keyboard
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love to see that that's one of my personal little like things that I like
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so uh so anyway uh you've got a ton of
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function key implementation things on here so for example your media keys are
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accessible using function so right there is your back and forward as well as play
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pause mute volume down and volume up you
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can also enable game mode which will disable your Windows key and then
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there's a whole bunch of other stuff over here including brightness up and brightness down so there are six
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different brightness settings to this keyboard so we're going to go ahead and plug it in we'll be back in a moment a
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few other things to talk about for the Hermes are the integration with your
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system as well as with other Gams peripherals so for example when you have
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multiple peripherals you can actually have them interact with each other and
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as it detects supported peripherals it kind of like gears up your little guy
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within the software which is kind of cool but not as cool I think as the
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onscreen timer that you can enable and that should be noted that for any kind
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of serious Esports competition having an onscreen timer would not really be
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approved but when you're sitting at home playing or when you're practicing for
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example you would certainly be able to use that functionality and you can also
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set up voice alerts which is kind of neat as well so you could actually bind
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any key you wanted to set up any timer you wanted or any voice alert you wanted
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and you could switch between them with your profiles for example on the Fly
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which I think is incredibly cool so they've managed to deviate from an all
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black and red color scheme without it looking body so the gambas logo which is
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actually Zeus if you look closely at it which happens to be their gaming mouse
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as well we'll be checking that out soon is yellow but it contrasts nicely with
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the rest of the keyboard and the whole thing actually looks very very good so
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the other function uh functionality ha
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that you have is you can switch between 1 to 10 gaming profiles up here there's
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actually 512 kilobytes of onboard memory that allows the keyboard to uh save your
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onboard profiles although you're going to want to set that up probably using
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their Hara software anyway you can also
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disable the functionality of the keyboard like you would on a laptop for
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example using this one and then you've also got oh I'm sure yes ah here on the
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Fly macro recording that is enabled using the function and control key so
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again that relies on the Hera software in order to function correctly next up
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you've got the cover oh yeah you get a couple gambus stickers included not that
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that's a page taken out of razer's Playbook or steel series I think think
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they also include them as well so the wrist rest I think is a really high
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point for this keyboard because if you're anything like my wife you refuse
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to use anything other than a steel series 7g not because you particularly
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like Cherry MX black switches or because you particularly like the keyboard at
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all in fact the layout has sort of a short back space which is terrible but
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you like a nice big wrist rest the gandas has a huge wrist rest on their
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Hermes keyboard and it doubles as a keyboard cover so you can go ahead and I
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think it goes like that maybe it's like that there we go goes like something that's for sure there we go so you can
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cover up your keyboard just like that which I think is very very cool it's
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magnetic so getting it in place is not a problem just kind of put it close and
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then it just snaps into place which means there's nothing to break no little
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like plastic things here or anything like that I think this is one of the
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smarter things that they've implemented about this particular keyboard you can
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switch between six key rollover and N key rollover using the function key as
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well so the advantage of nend key rollover is of course nend key rollover
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you can press as many keys as you want without any ghosting or uh
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non-registered key strokes but it can make compatibility with your motherboard
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a little bit more difficult so you could switch to six key rollover for the best
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possible compatibility and N key rollover for the best possible
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functionality which leads us to the final thing this right here is a blue
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cherrymx switch I'm just going to go ahead and turn off the uh the backl here
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so oh yeah I can show you the six different backlight levels so it goes
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all the way to brightness brightest then off oh that's pulsating rather sorry
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let's go ahead and turn that off that's kind of nice all right that is a Cherry
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MX Blue switch with what they're calling the gamus element around it in effect
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this is sort of it's it's like it's a damper down there that what it does is
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it makes the key bottom out a little bit earlier than it otherwise would so
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gamdias is claiming this improves responsiveness by around 20% and can
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improve the um well basically yeah
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improves responsiveness and shortens the keystroke travel I personally don't like
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it um just going to be completely upfront about that I find that
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particularly with a Cherry MX Blue I'm
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expecting it to bottom out and it feels a little bit weird to me however this is
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my initial reaction I can't say for sure that I wouldn't get used to it over a
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more extended period of time it's definitely a much shorter travel and if
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you hear the sound
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because you're not bottoming out because you're hitting that damper it has a
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similar effect to something like an O-ring mod but it even feels a little
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bit different than that because you're really going up against something that's under the entire key rather than
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something that's just on the uh the top of the key or the bottom of the key cap
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itself so this is the one thing that I'd say is kind of uh different about this
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keyboard and I'll leave it to the
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individual to decide whether you want your Cherry MX Blues messed with so to
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speak or whether you prefer the more um
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sort of vanilla Cherry MX Blue experience it definitely makes the key
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travel shorter so if that's what you're looking for as Cherry MX Blue with a
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shorter travel then this might be the one for you thank you for checking out
9:12
my unboxing and overview of the Hermes from gandas don't forget to subscribe to
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to like this video if you liked it or dislike it if you disliked it one way or
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the other is just fine and leave a comment letting me know what you think
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does gambas have a chance as a new gaming peripheral company would you
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consider it based on what you've seen so slick actually pointed out a couple
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things to me about this keyboard I know the video was sort of done but we're back um number one is this is actually
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kind of cool I didn't think of this but these uh spots right here are aligned
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perfectly with the slots behind them meaning that you should be able to plug
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them in blind fairly easily whether you're in the dark or whether you just
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don't feel like looking over your keyboard like this I personally consider
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that very very handy and definitely thumbs up for that next up is that it
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looks like we could remove the gamus element quite easily if we preferred a
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more um a more sort of traditional cherrymx blue experience see they come
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right out so um there you go once that's
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done we can definitely hear the
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contrast between the two keys so it's much louder and we can also see in the
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key travel
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distance how much less the gam DS element one is so that's uh that's very
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interesting this may actually be like a
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pretty pretty ultimate grade keyboard especially if you have the option of
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removing
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this