Features/Pictures

Starting with the USB cord for the G710+ Logitech already had my attention. The orange trim is something you rarely see and being my favorite color it caught my eye right away. Of course it’s still just a color, what was more important was the cable itself and its quality. Unlike most keyboards and mice recently, they didn’t go with a sleeving on the cable for the G710+, the cord is thick and heavy duty and made of rubber. You have one main cord that splits into two cords near the end and each connection is USB 2.0. One thing that is nice about them going with a color you don’t see as much, this should be easier to spot when you are back behind your pc trying to find your keyboard cord.

I love the look of the G710+ when it’s flipped over. There is a little structure with the beams that crisscross back and forth and they took advantage of the middle of those to place the product sticker as well. The bottom of the keyboard has four fairly large rubber feet to keep things in place while gaming. There are also two flip up feet to angle the keyboard but I should point out that they do not have rubber on them; this means you are down to two rubber feat when you have the keyboard angled up. For wire management you have two channels for running cables under the G710+, specifically for plugging in your mouse on the back USB port and running the cord under the keyboard. Personally I would have liked to of seen a third channel that goes out the side of the keyboard as well.

Back up on the top side; let’s take a look at the G710+ as a whole. It’s not nearly as large as the original G15 for example; a good size comparison would be to the second generation G15 with the orange backlighting and only one row of G keys. The keyboard itself is a combination of a couple different finishes and colors. The area around the regular keys is black and glossy. The G macro keys on the left are highlighted by a glossy orange around them. The rest of the keyboard is also black but a satin or flat black that is resistant to finger prints and shows less dust. I’m a little surprised they went with the glossy finish at all really, it looks great at first but I am very concerned that when I start testing its going to be a mess.

I mentioned it before, but the Macro keys on the G710+ are highlighted by orange, it’s almost like they were trying to get me to love the keyboard. More importantly, they went with just a single column with a total of six keys. This is a nice compromise for people who don’t need the macro keys, they don’t make the keyboard to wide but still give fans a few keys to put to use.  

FPS fans will be excited to see that WASD was highlighted with silver keycaps against the normal black keycaps. I personally think that Logitech should consider including Q,E, and R in the future and black A,S, and D keys. With the rise of LoL, DOTA 2, and HoN MOBA games are just as popular if not more popular than first person shooters these days. Keyboards that recognize that without singling one or the other out might be able to make a few more fans and a little more money.

For those who need more than the 6 macro keys on the left side, you do have three different profiles that you can flip through, not only that but you also have the MR button for you to record macro’s on the fly while you are gaming. This is the only way I ever end up making mine when I need them, although admittedly this is very rare.  There is also a push button that puts the keyboard in game mode; this means that the windows key is disabled.

Over on the right side there is a little more going on. Up top we have two buttons that control the lighting in two different sections, one controls WASD and the other controls the rest of the keyboard. Next to them you have play/pause, stop, and forward and backwards buttons for controlling your media. Next you have a mute button and a wide scroll wheel for volume control; I have LOVED this wheel on previous keyboards.

I spoke about the macro keys and the media keys but what about the keyboards layout? If it’s not obvious, the G710+ uses a standard keyboard layout meaning it has a full number pad, direction pad, ect. The space bar is of standard length and starts under the X and ends under comma. Also the enter key is a single height key meaning there aren’t any weird quirks to the key layout.

As someone who never unwinds all of their mouse cord to keep it short and out of the way, I was very happy to see that Logitech made sure to include a USB connection on the G710+. I would have preferred to see a second plug, but one is enough to hook your mouse up if nothing else. They did kind of hide the plug up under a ledge though. You will have to peak around to get your mouse plugged it.

When you pull off the G710+’s key caps you are going to find a couple things. First, the inside is completely white, the black coloring is die on the outside of the keycap to make sure the letters light up well with the backlighting. Second you will also notice that Logitech has put rubber O-rings on each key cap, or what some would call silencers. This eliminates the sound that the key makes when you bottom it out. This is a great addition and something that you really don’t see anyone else do.

Up under the keys we have brown key switches and you can also see the LED’s for the white backlighting.