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