MK850

Used the keyboard for a year now, so I think it's time for a review: I used to have a Gigabyte Aivia Osmium keyboard and used it for many years, unfortunately my D key stopped working and I had to go look for another keyboard. Looking through the vast amount of different keyboards all I could find was keyboards that lit up with rainbow, crap products promoted by streamers, and "clicky" keyboards. Somehow, through the vast amount of rainbow, I stumbled across the Cooler Master MK850 (I didn't even know Cooler Master made keyboards...) After looking at the features, I decided it beats the competition and bought it, and I was not disappointed. Pros: x2 USB Passthrough Detachable/Routable Power Cord Magnetic Wrist Rest Media Controls Macro Keys Neutral: Aimpad - I think Aimpad is a neat feature (and it really doesn't affect anything if you leave it off) but the games I tried it with didn't really support it at the time (they might now). Cons: I've been using the keyboard for a year now and I haven't had any complaints. It could be priced cheaper, but it seems competitively priced for the most part as it ranges anywhere from $160 - $120. If you're looking to have a nice, comfortable keyboard that has some bells and whistles, I'd definitely recommend the Cooler Master MK850.

Why the heck did Cooler Master make such a quality keyboard? Honestly, I'm very impressed by the build quality of this thing. I think I'm going to be buying this for other people. The keys are great, good lighting, nice wrist rest, and nice rollers. Would definitely recommend this product.

I go through a keyboard 3-4 times a year - it's an addiction. This keyboard might stay on my desk longer than any before it. The keys feel so great to type on. The RGB lighting is great and consistent. The software is powerful and not confusing - it's not bloated. This materials feel very premium, ESPECIALLY for a keyboard market strictly to gamers. The analogue funtionality to me is just a bonus. It works well in most AAA games. For the games that it fully works in, it's amazing and a true innovation - a technology I hope takes off. The volume roller feels amazing and super premium. The media keys are placed in recessed position and are a little hard to reach, but not bad enough to prevent this bad boy from getting 5 stars.

I usually play esdf because I type with standard hand position(left asdf right jkl;). but this keyboard m2-m4 overwrites my in-game key bindings which is really weird. But overall quality keyboard.

great feel and quality. a bit pricey but its Cool Masters flagship keyboard with some great features. The Aimpad takes a bit to get used to but works good. the wrist rest is very good quality and comfortable.

As of right now, the only posts on the CoolerMaster forum for the AimPad portion of this device - are that it doesn't work with any of their games. I've tried multiple games myself (all on the list of supported games) and they don't work at all. Additionally, I have the mouse plugged into the USB of the keyboard - and it keeps cycling through as if it had been disconnected and needs to reconnect. I was led to believe that this device would be plug-and-play but at this point it seems it is plug-and-pray. I'll update this review if I ever get this working. Oh, and a final note - when this was shipped to me the didn't package it in anything more than the retail box - so the box itself was totally beat up. Not cool. EDIT: So the good folks at AimPad actually reached out to me and helped me fix the problem with the AimPad portion of this keyboard - it actually requires some funky keyboard combination to setup the first time. That being said - I've had this keyboard for just 2 years now and for the first time ever - I've had keys on a keyboard actually break on me. Not just 1 or 2, but all of the WASD keys and the Tab key have all broken (see pic for details). This is garbage quality on a keyboard like this - I have a physical keyboard from the 90's that still has all of its keys in full working order (I'm not a heavy typer).

Pros: Sleek, good-looking keyboard Lots of lighting options Analog keys Wrist rest Lots of functional keys Typing feels great Cons: No dedicated macro keys No profile swapping based on game Analog keys This keyboard sounded spectacular when I read the specs on it and watched a video review. It looks great and feels great as well. One of my issues is that you have to manually switch profiles for different lighting and such, there's no way to have it switch profiles when you launch a particular game. Also, the "M" keys on the left are ONLY for analog profile switching, not macros. The main issue is the analog keys. Only a few games actually support analog keys and even then I don't find myself using them that often. What happens most of the time is that the analog keys confuse the game you're trying to play and the game thinks you have a controller connected, thus disabling keyboard input. When trying to play Fallout 76, Skyrim, Neptunia Series, or other games that natively support controllers, the game assumes your keyboard is a controller and makes your keyboard the primary controller. This makes Fallout 76 literally unplayable until you edit a .ini file in the game directory. At the same time, if you have a real controller connected, it will ignore the controller and use your keyboard unless you unplug the keyboard when launching the game. These issues occur even when the analog keys are "turned off" and operating as regular keys. Overall it's a good keyboard, but the analog keys cause more issues than they're worth in my opinion. UPDATE: Firmware updates for the keyboard over the months I've owned it have been fairly frequent. Most of the issues in this review have been resolved. The usefulness of analog keys is still minuscule, but that's not the fault of the keyboard, more games need to add support. UPDATE AGAIN: Back down a couple stars because I've had "phantom-macro" issues more than once. I created a macro and bound it to a key, used it for a while, turned it off and then turned my computer off. After booting my computer back up, there is no key bound to the macro in the software, but the macro still applies whenever I press the previously assigned key. This renders one of my keys useless and even after deleting the macro out of the Portal software, the macro still persists.

I've wanted analog switches for a long time and they were worth the wait. The Aimpad keys are AWESOME! The keyboard is solid, well built and loaded with features. I only hope that future updates/functionality to the software are made. Very nice board, Cooler Master.