Azio Levetron Mech4 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,203 words · ~11 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of the AO levitron Mech 4 gaming keyboard This
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actually has some pretty unique features at a pretty unique price point and let's
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start with uh a warm welcome for our guest camera operator who is also
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interviewing for the tech tips assistant job so hopefully he does pretty well
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operating the camera here he's giving me a kind of a weird look from behind the camera so that's a good sign okay why
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don't we start with the main features which are the cherry black mechanical
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switch keys so that is okay according to
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AO why don't we go with what they think widely believed to provide the best
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gaming experience fascinating okay modular design adds functionality by
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attaching modular accessories numeric keypad and macro keypad modules are
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included interesting and it has anti- ghosting so there is actually an anti-
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ghosting zone I'm going to go ahead and flip it over and so you can see your WD
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Z x c q e key zone is all anti- ghosted
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so while this keyboard does not feature n key rollover by any stretch of the
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imagination it does have an anti- ghosting Zone which is where you're
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going to be pressing most of your keys in gaming so unless you type with your
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face you're probably not going to run into any issues as far as ghosting is
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concerned now the features are all listed here but what I'd really like to
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do is get the Box open before we just start listing
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features so I can show you where they are on the keyboard itself now one thing
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AIO did ask that I mention on this unboxing is the use of cardboard
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packaging which is recyclable versus styrofoam packaging
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which is not recyclable so there you go I have mentioned it so you can clearly
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see the cardboard packaging present here the highly recyclable cardboard
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packaging okay quick start guide is in color look at that so they show you how
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to install the software manual as well as installing theof software to manage
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your profiles as well as your macro settings and key customization all right
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what else we got here okay so oh look at that it's a like a it's an actual color
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manual and it's a start it's a quick start guide that says more than plug the
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thing into the thing and then turn it on awesome okay so there is your manual as
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well as your software although you're going to want to download the latest software from the AO website here are
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some modular pieces including a number
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pad very nice it's got a good feel to it
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already calculator so there's a button to just open up the calculator program
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which is this is a good place for it I'm un liking that okay there's the USB
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interface and there's the USB interface on the other side so I'll show you why
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it has two in just a moment here's a way to oh cool so you can attach it by an
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extension cord too so it basically comes
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with this is like the smartest thing ever actually I'm really impressed right
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about now so look at this you can either clip
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it directly to the keyboard or you can go ahead and plug it in by USB somewhere
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else and then you just have like a little number pad these are like 15
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bucks 20 bucks if you want to buy one so comes with your keyboard now cool all
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right here's a little macro key piece so this one is going to clip onto the
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keyboard and it's going to add some additional macro keys so I'll show you where those go I don't think those are
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mechanical but I'll let it go this time all right honestly I think it's a little
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bit overdone the whole partial mechanical versus full mechanical and
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how it's you know sinful to do it one way versus the other way
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thing but that's just my opinion nobody
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watches this channel to hear my opinion so I'll keep it to
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myself okay actually I lied people do
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watch this channel to hear my opinion so there you go that's my opinion this is
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the levron mech 4 the first thing I notice about it is is is it is built
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like a mechanical keyboard it's got some heft to it it has some weight let's do
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the over all appearance first so we've got uh oh look at that two different
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stands so you can either put it up a little bit like that or you can put it
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up a lot like that or you can put it up
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not at all like well like that um we've
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also got rubber feet on the bottom so there's rubber bits along the bottom of
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both of these this is actually like really nice little touches like this
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rubber feet here and then uh rubber feet
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here so if you have it running flat it is completely rubber gri ified so it's
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not going to move on your table regardless of what configuration you are
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using uh overall layout let's uh let's
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have a look at some of the custom Keys we've got so we can turn the Windows key on and off here uh we can switch between
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macro profile A and B here and look at
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that the macro keys are actually on different heights I want you to get down
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at a at that yeah at that level there so you can see how these are actually kind
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of staggered so you can actually feel if
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you run your if you were to run your fingers down them or if you were to reach for them which key is which
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because they're all at slightly different heights so that's something
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that may not seem like a big deal to the Casual Observer but personally I think
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it's a very big deal because the last thing you want is macro keys that you
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cannot feel in the midst of a firefight
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okay cable we've got a standard sort of sleeved looking USB cable we've got two
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bundled together in one here so I'm guessing one of these is for the Hub yep
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and one of them is for the keyboard itself it doesn't tell you which is which but my guess is that you'll plug
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both of them in anyway so I'm not too worried about that on the back we do
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find the USB hub that I did refer to before and let's see what else we got
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going on here so you know what I'm going to I'm just going to pull my cheat sheet
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out and uh kind of run through with you guys so we've got a volume knob which is
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right about here all right our anti- ghosting allows
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for six keys to be simultaneously pressed for USB expansion we have two
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USB expansion ports which I showed you before uh the Windows key we saw each
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key has its own mechanical switch the advantages registers without pushing the
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key all the way down and the keys snaps back to the original position faster
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they are rated for 50 million keystrokes so I could sit here and I could do this
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all day and probably never wear it out the numeric key bad keypad yes okay so
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let's show you guys this so I showed you this way which is like this already so
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then I can put it over here if I want but there's also another way to hook
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this up I can go like this and I'm just going to make sure that I have it in the
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same uh configuration as the keyboard itself and okay I don't know how this
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works I've never tried this before so bear with me here you guys I'm just
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going to go ahead I'm going to try and figure out how that go ah there we go so
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there you go you can clip the keypad and that's mechanical too you can
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click the key bad onto that side or you can take the whole thing off which comes
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off somehow okay now it's on there pretty good does it lock in place oh yes
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it does there we go and it locks up here too there we go
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or you can put it on the other side so depending on the configuration of your
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desk you can actually change the overall width of
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your keyboard or which side of your gaming Keys it is wider on very very
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cool all right modular design uh modular
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rail aha enables the macro d-pad to be
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adjustable in positioning and allows future modules to be hooked on the same
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rail so this rail up here which looks kind of like uh for mounting sights on a
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gun and this kind of looks like sights doesn't it yeah kind of ignore the
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keyboard keys on it so you just slide these along
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here and they click into place wherever you happen to want to put them so you
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want to put them here let's say you never use the F1 to F4 keys while you're
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gaming and let's face it who does I mean I'm sure there's some sort of weird game
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out there that requires the use of f4 key you know I don't know maybe F10 you
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can C up F10 um but then you know you
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couldn't do whatever functionality you're trying to figure out how to do in Counter Strike when people tell you how
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to do it right so okay so this allows you to actually reach it if you needed
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to so maybe you have like an alternate WD that you want to put in for I don't
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know what I I don't question what they're actually for the point is just
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you have six macro Keys here six macro Keys here with A and B so that's a total
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of 12 functions and it's all within reach of your actual gaming Keys unlike
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keyboards that have Banks of macro Keys over here or on the other side whatever
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the case may be now you can reach them all very neat all right 11 dedicated
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macro Keys we just went through that water resistant seals and drainage holes
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built in this I didn't know spilling your drink on your keyboard is no longer
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an excuse for losing drainage holes there they are one
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two three four four drainage holes ah ah
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ah and uh simply keep playing as the
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liquid will come out from the bottom via the drainage holes now if you spill
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something sticky I still wouldn't expect it to work 100% what you might have to
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do at that point is take like some rubbing alcohol and then pour that down
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after it mind you that might you know wreck any you know rubber or whatever
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happens to be in there okay the whole thing is not good still try not to spill on your keyboard please or drink water
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around your keyboard at the very least uh braided and gold connectors we talked
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about that already fully programmable
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all keys can be reprogrammed not just the dedicated macro Keys very cool so
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the first thing some people are going to say is Windows key we don't need no
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stinking Windows key but you could actually just change that to do what
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whatever you want including the Tab Key the caps lock key in fact one of my big
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gripes about keyboards tends to be short backspace keys well I'll probably just
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reprogram this to be a backspace key and then my problem is
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solved uh actually let's look at the overall layout while we're at it then uh
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we've got nice long enter shift shift uh
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normal size control and ALT so the one thing that I don't like about the layout
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is the short backspace key but the fully programmable functionality really does
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help to make me me forgive it for that
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okay and I think that's pretty much all there is that I have to say about the
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levron Mec 4 with the aggressive pricing the very full feature set the one thing
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it doesn't have is uh back lit Keys although it's arguable whether that is
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necessary or not especially with all of the other things that it does include so
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thank you for checking out my unboxing and don't forget to subscribe to Linus
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