INTRODUCTION

   It seems that ever since Kailh (Kaihua) started making their very own mechanical switches (and for others just like OMRON does) more and more companies have entered the PC gaming peripherals market by launching their very own gaming peripherals and although i don't know if what held all of them back in the first place was the apparent inability by Cherry to supply the entire market with switches still competition is always a good thing for consumers. Now Kailh many not enjoy the same amount of popularity among consumers like Cherry but that's really not unexpected since the 2nd has been around for over six decades (since 1953 to be exact) compared to the 1st which counts less than three decades in this market (established in 1990). Still many manufacturers have chosen to support Kailh directly while some like Razer have even cooperated with them to build their very own mechanical switches. Patriot is yet another manufacturer who chose Kailh mechanical switches for their very first mechanical gaming keyboard named the Viper V760 and is the subject of today’s review.

   Patriot designs, manufactures and markets high performance, enthusiast memory modules, flash memory, and mobile accessory products. Patriot products have become world renown for their extreme performance, reliability and innovation. Patriot sells its products through original equipment manufacturers, retailers, e-tailers and distributors throughout the world with operations in North America, Asia and Europe. Patriot Memory LLC was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Fremont, California, USA. All company and/or product names may be trade names, trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice. All company and/or product names may be trade names, trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.

   The Viper V760 is a full sized keyboard (104 fully programmable keys) housed inside a highly durable enclosure made out of aircraft grade aluminum so right from the get go we know that Patriot didn't cut any corners in terms of build quality. It also features Kailh brown mechanical switches with full individual RGB (16.8m) color illumination, N-Key rollover and anti-ghosting so although i know for a fact that many of you were hoping to see Cherry MX switches these seem promising. The V760 also has 5 onboard profiles, single USB pass-through port (powered) and a removable wrist/palm rest (a magnetic one at that). For good or bad Patriot didn't follow in the footsteps of Logitech, Razer and SteelSeries so the Viper V760 doesn't have dedicated macro keys and extra bells and whistles but i for once never believed a keyboard needed to have many things on it in the first place so with that out of the way let's see just how good it is.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The Viper V760 is shipped inside a black and red box that has a large product picture at the front right next to the main product features and a small clear plastic opening from where you can touch the buttons.

The main product features are also printed at the base of the box.

Two product pictures located at the rear of the box are used to showcase its features.

Inside the box instead of just a piece of cardboard and a plastic bag Patriot has also placed the keyboard inside several pieces of black foam.

Along with the Viper V760 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard and its palm rest you will also get a keycap puller, two case stickers and a quick start guide.

THE VIPER V760

Just like most full sized keyboards the 1230g heavy Viper V760 is also not small so it measures 466mm in length, 152mm in width and 40mm in height.

The enclosure is not 100% made out of aircraft grade aluminum but even so build quality is excellent.

1 through 6 also double as media keys (Play/Pause, Previous, Next, Mute, Volume Down/Up), F1 through F5 can also be used to switch between the available profiles and finally F6 through F12 can be used to rotate between available illumination effects (the -/+ keys are also the brightness level keys).

You can enable/disable game mode (windows lock) from the print screen button (you can reset the keyboard from the pause break button).

The speed of the effects can be adjusted by the page up and down keys.

I was surprised to see that you can also change the direction of the effects with the arrow keys (always by also using the FN key).

The USB pass-through port is placed on the right front of the keyboard.

At the base of the keyboard we see 5 rubber feet and two rubber coated height adjusters.

These raise the keyboard roughly 13mm from the desktop.

Right now i don't recall ever testing a keyboard that came with a magnetic palm wrest but this makes things extremely easy.

With the palm rest attached the keyboard measures 203mm in width.

Here we see the Kailh brown mechanical switches.

Patriot has equipped the Viper V760 with a 1.55mm braided cable and two gold plated USB plugs (color coded according to their job - data/power).

CONTROL SOFTWARE

Since Patriot doesn't ship the Viper V760 with a software CD you will need to download the latest driver/software version from their website.

Once you do that and install the software it will detect whether or not your keyboard needs a firmware update.

The software is very easy to use so from here you can assign macros to any of the 104 keys, choose any of the 10 available illumination effects, control the brightness levels and speed of the effects, adjust the response time, enable/disable game and windows lock modes, choose the illumination color and set the report/polling rate (of course you can save all settings to the 5 onboard profiles).

Here you can see several of the available effects and colors at maximum brightness level.

AUDIBLE FEEDBACK

Many people ask my opinion on what keyboard they should get for their needs. Some want a “silent” model for use in their living room or even in their bedroom while others ask for a model with good audible feedback for use in the office or for gaming. Because of this I decided to test keyboards by placing our ExTech HD600 vertically over each keyboard (5cm distance) and typing NikKTech a total of 6 times with each (after that the max recorded number - max hold - is placed in the graph). I have to admit that this may not be 100% accurate but it does give a good idea on what you can expect from each model since aside the type of switches used keycaps and keyboard material also matter.

CONCLUSION

   Over the past few months I’ve been comparing Cherry MX switches with their equivalent opponents by Kailh with surprising results. Now I’m not about to say that Cherry MX and Kailh are identical but Kailh is actually much close to actually copying the feeling of Cherry MX switches than what most of you reading these lines think. True I was also hoping that Patriot would use Cherry MX Reds since I consider them to be the best for a gaming keyboard but Kailh brown are actually quite good as well (they offer good tactile feedback). Of course even though many people have asked we can’t really compare the lifespan of Cherry MX and Kailh switches since 50-60 million keystrokes is something all of us combined wouldn’t be able to achieve in 2-3 years. Still even if Kailh switches are good for half that (25m) I think most of you will never have to change the keyboard. Patriot also gave many illumination effects to the Viper V760 and although I’m not much into such things I have to admit that I spend quite a bit of time playing with all of them. For me the Viper V760 has but a single serious drawback, it's somewhat "short" braided cable (approximately 1.5 meters). You see with most keyboards i can easily route the cable behind my desktop speakers and then plug it into the rear USB ports of my test rig but with the Viper V760 i couldn't go anywhere near those USB ports. I have no idea as to the why Patriot would give their keyboard a much shorter braided cable compared to most keyboards in the market (recently all keyboards we've tested had 1.8 meter long cables) but at least to me it doesn't make any sense at all. On the other hand I really liked the magnetic palm rest and I do hope more manufacturers follow the example set by Patriot.

   Price sometimes is enough to “ruin” the score of any product but luckily Patriot is very down to earth in that area and so for the Viper V760 they only ask USD99.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 100Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk). For good or bad there isn’t much competition at around the same price range as the Viper V760 (for a mechanical RGB keyboard by one of the popular players that is) so it shouldn’t be hard for Patriot to score good numbers in sales. With that out of the way we all liked the Viper V760 and although the short cable did ruin things for us a bit it still wins our Golden Award.

PROS

- Excellent Build Quality
- Kailh Mechanical Switches (60 Million Actuations)
- Full RGB Key Illumination (10 Effects)
- 5 Available Profiles
- Magnetic Palm Rest
- Braided Cable With Gold Plated USB Plugs
- Up To 520 Macro Keys (104 Per Profile)
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- No Dedicated Macro Keys
- Short Braided Cable