Yeah, we know those two were around for quite a lot of time yet they still sit like lone riders in a desert if you are after budget gaming keyboards as we did. Seems that most companies either don’t think there is room for more gaming illuminated keyboards, or the world is just too full of people who can afford something like Logitech G19 or its rivals, if any. What we have here are two differently shaped, differently spectacular keyboards meant to give you some edge in games where you need speed, programming capabilities and to press lots of keys at once. There are other differences too, though…
Logitech G15 vs. Lycosa – let the battle… oh, come on, they are not quite like each other!
The Razer is really good looking, slim, but very sturdy and heavy keyboard meant for hardcore gamers. It just doesn’t have much “beauty” involved in the concept; instead it is made practical and the eye catching is left for its Mirror version which came out few months later. Still – Lycosa looks nice, although you will never guess why it costs as much as the still shiny logitech G15 at first glance. Well, it’s all about gaming, isn’t it?
Logitech G15 on the other hand is as attractive as it can be, sitting with a shiny badge and LCD screen, plus that big glowing moden number on the right side. It’s completely different and it shows why it costs so much more than a regular cheap keyboard at first glance.
Looking at them…
It doesn’t make sense to have expensive keyboard if it has some huge problems. One of these are the matte keys of Lycosa, which MUST be lit so you can see their engraved letters, else you will hardly tell which button does what. Especially in the dark if you press the sensor button that controls the illumination and leave only the WASD lit – it will look like big black block that no light could penetrate! G15′s buttons have much more pronounced engravings and you will see them even in low light conditions w/o illumination involved.
Other than that is the color of illumination – Logitech use orange, Razer use their usual blue LEDs. No one can say which is better, but statistically the orange is more subtle and not as agressive as blue. And the Lycosa also has those naked LEDs in the right corner, and they …well… let’s say you will hate them in a dark room.
You will find the matte rubbered keys of Lycosa drawing just too much dirt to please your eyes. Same goes for the polished surface around the buttons, it gets scratched easily and holds any fingerprints it can. Hard to clear that.
The LCD of G15 is a joy – many games use it to show stats, and not only the ones Logitech included in their software tool, but also some fan-made plugins you will usually find in game forums. Even voice chat programs can use it to show information. By default it shows thing like clock, messages count, CPU/Mem load, RSS, profile chooser, etc. It can be very usefull if you want to, or you can just ignore it and use it instead of wrist watch.
Touching them…
Makes you wonder why the need of low-profile keyboards – sure they are faster, but when you have bigger button wich needs to be pressed as much as the low-profile one to work there is something wrong with the later. Your fingers cannot slip the Lycosa’s buttons, period. But they will find comfortable the G15′s too.
The Lycosa also has those touch-sensitive buttons in the top right corner, but they don’t hold much value compared to what G15 is capable of – tons of useful buttons, a screens and those programmable G-buttons on the left which hold as much as 18 positions plus a Quick macro button (which means you won’t have to exit the game to make macros). Oh, and you can locj the Win button to prevent it from accidentally escaping your game.
Razer Lycosa also has programming involved, but a different one – you can program any key, although there aren’t any extra keys, which makes this a bit awkward if you want to keep you normal key configuration.
Anti-ghosting
That crypting thing called anti-hosting makes pressing more than couple of keys actually do something. In the Lycosa’s case that means you are able to press as much as 7 buttons from the WASD block (which is widely used by gamers, you know) before it starts to behave weird. If you include other buttons as well, you will end up as low as 5 keys, as they aren’t all anti-ghosted or whatever that thing is called.
The G15 is just a step behind – although Logitech never bothered to talk about it, it can run well as much as 6 buttons if there are no symbols involved, or as low as 5 if there are. It is a bit more useful compared to Lycosa’s AG, as it works on most of the keys, but that largely depends on what games you play and of your personal play style.
Noise and typing
Even if it is low-profile keyboard and, compared to G15, a very thin one, Lycosa is much more noisy, with buttons making full range of noise to draw you attention. Forget about someone sleeping while you type on the Lycosa. Actually forget about typing at all, because its buttons sometimes react with contra-pressure (the same way some laptop keyboards do if you press the button side-wise). The G15 is much more reliable for typing text, but those G-keys interfere with people’s habits and are widely used instead of Tab/CAPS/Shift/Control, at least until you adapt to it.
What else?
Two important matters – the first is the USB hub each keyboard has. The Lycosa uses two USB connectors and leaves one of them as Hi-Speed connector available at the keyboard, which is great if you want a dedicated mouse/keyboard pair of cables. Logitech G15 uses single USB port, but has two Full-speed USB connectors, which are pretty much useless for anything but using them to recharge very low power devices (again not recommended to do it, use a computer port instead).
Logitech G15 doesn’t have that extra USB pooling (1000Hz Ultrapolling) most new razer products have and it uses regular 125 Hz connection, which can eventually lead to delays if you are some uber gamer. We just couldn’t make it delay our in-game decisions anyway.
As for the Twisted Rating…
Logitech G15 gets nice 2/10 – it could get better if it had usefull USB hub and those G-buttons were elsewhere.
Higher Twisted Rating is worse!
Razer Lycosa is an epic fail if you ask us, but it has the best button surface you can get. Now it only it was useful for typing text too, it would get something better than 9/10
Higher Twisted Rating is worse!
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I’ve just got the Razer Lycosa keyboard, and am plagued by the problems of the WASD keys either suddenly stopping working, or behaving as if one of them is stuck down. This happens about once an hour, and it’s an absolute killer for gaming. Razer claim on their website that this problem is limited to a couple of old batches; it isn’t. And they don’t respond to technical support issues at all. For the money, you’d expect a lot better.
SHUT THE FUCK UP FUCKEN CUNTS RAZER FTW!
razer lycosa is the SHIT!!!
This has to be the worst review I have ever read on the product. Horrible grammar errors and some reasoning behind bashing the Razer Lycosa is just rediculous:
“you can program any key, although there aren’t any extra keys, which makes this a bit awkward if you want to keep you normal key configuration.”
What? How is it awkward if you want to keep your normal key configuration? Just don’t bind the key to something else. This makes no sense.
The G series keyboards have pointless LCD screens. The only thing they are good for is Ventrilo and performance monitoring, considering 1 out of every 4209430 games support the damn thing.
I own both the G19, G15 and Lycosa and I can tell you I bought the Lycosa after buy both G series keyboards. The build quality alone leaves the Razer ontop. G series has incredibly clunky keys that click and clack like a keyboard from the 90s. They have nothing to offer such as Razer’s anti-slip, the wrist rest a cheap piece of plastic that raddles — it is almost as if they spent all the money making the LCD and G15 screens. And how do you not even mention the anti-ghosting on the Razer Lycosa? And WTF is a twisted rating?
Computer hardware features mean nothing if the build quality sucks. Razer is known for EXCELENT build quality. Trust me, I own Logitech 5.1 surround sound, the headset and I have owned all their gaming peripherals. I am in no way a Razer fanboy, such as this reviewer is Logitech fanboy — I just know enough and have tried enough. I keep my opinion unbiased. The Lycosa is for GAMING. I use my Logitech DiNovo for typing and browsing, for it is hands down the best keyboard for doing so. No where does the Lycosa advertise that it is good for typing and should not be judged as such. It is made for ONE thing — GAMING. If you do not have a favorite keyboard for typing, if you are in fact into writting reviews and/or just typing in general for everyday use, this keyboard is clearly NOT for you. If you game AND type, you should clearly get something for each since you are spending most of your time doing one or the other.
I give this review a twisted rating of a 100/10.
And the Lycosa is more noisy than the G15!?
WTF lmao!! I bet you this guy hasn’t even tried either one.