Performance

For testing I have been using the DeFiant as my main keyboard for a few weeks now and I also spent a little extra time toying with a few of accessories included in the kit as well. The exception to this would be the light bars that I didn’t have to be able to test, but they are simple enough that I’m not worried about it.

First off I wanted to talk about the overall build quality and construction. I was worried when I first got my hands on the DeFiant because it isn’t as heavy as you would expect it to be. The plastic housing on the bottom half isn’t out of the ordinary for a mechanical keyboard but the thin aluminum that they used for the top would normally be thicker and combined with an aluminum bottom. Most mechanical keyboards are plastic with a steel plate so the plastic aluminum combination is lighter weight and flexes more. In fact, the aluminum flexed enough to make me wonder if it was plastic not aluminum. Not being heavy isn’t always a bad thing, but it does make the DeFiant feel a little less solid as your first impression so keep that in mind.

Typing on the DeFiant was better than I expected considering I’m not really a big fan f the traditional clickly keyswitch, I prefer a brown like tactile but quieter. It did perform well, though, keyclicks are light but give a clear indication of when it actuates and the costar like stabilizers felt good as well. There wasn’t any extra noise out of the stabilizers. The EpicGear switches do have a bit of a creak that you feel/hear only when slowly pressing the key and only past the actuation point, I didn’t notice it at all when typing but did when doing slow clicks to feel out the keyswitch action.

I was a little worried that without the weight and with just a few small rubber feel that the DeFiant might slide around but it did a great job of sticking to my desk, even when gaming. Beyond that, the standard key layout was a welcome surprise that made it easy to transition to using the DeFiant. I didn’t really find myself using the media keys in the function layer other than testing them out but it is nice that they are there and that they didn’t go crazy with too many functions. The scroll wheel for a volume control was actually really good and the mute being built in kept things simple and easy to use.

For backlighting, I wasn’t upset at all that there wasn’t RGB lighting. I’m always happy with a simple white backlighting setup. It was a nice bright white, something you don’t get with RGB still and they do have built in brightness settings. Because the kit does come with the light bars, there is still the option to toy around with the backlighting like an RGB keyboard but with a lot more work I would imagine.

 

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