Redragon K552 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Rainbow LED Backlit Wired with Anti-Dust Proof Switches for Windows PC (Black, 87 Keys Blue Switches)

I really like this keyboard overall, for the price, and for a first mechanical keyboard. Its got good key feedback and supposedly is a cheap alternative to Cherry MX Blue keyboards, which are pretty pricey. It should work very well for gamers who want clicky feedback for gaming, and for home users who want clicky feedback for typing. I suggest trying this keyboard out for a while before you swing for hundreds of dollars on an expensive mechanical keyboard. You might decide this one is sufficient, or you might decide that mechanical keyboards are not for you. Pros - Clicky feedback is great for typing - just the right resistance for me - I havent measured my WPM but I definitely type faster with this keyboard than membrane keyboards - Cheap and easy entrance to mechanical keyboards - Very solid and sturdy build with good weight and non-slip pads so it doesnt slide around - Removable keys for easy cleaning Cons - Clicky-ness is loud and might disturb others if there are others around you - FN-key functions arent backlit (such as volume control, etc) - No numpad at this price point, though they do have a model with a numpad for more money (the K551) - Seems to be wearing out after a couple years of heavy use (see comments below) - Key press clicks arent always 100% representative of key presses (on some keys, the key press registers before the click) - Not the greatest for gaming where finger speed is critical After several years of use, a couple keys (notably space and dash) have developed some kind of double press. Sometimes (and this is rare, maybe 1 in 20 times), Ill press the dash key and two dashes will appear. It usually only appears if Im typing really fast. Maybe I press two keys at the same time and that throws something off inside. Most often it occurs when I press word-space-dash-space-word, I might end up with word-space-dash-space-dash-word instead. Im 100% sure I only pressed the dash once, but it registers twice. Ive seen this occasionally with the space bar and a couple other random keys. It hasnt bothered me too much because I make enough errors in typing that its no big deal to add these errors to the corrections I already have to make. But beware, there may be long-term issues related to the switches. Keep in mind I use this keyboard for programming and probably put 10,000+ key presses a day through it, so it does get pretty heavy use. Maybe I just need to fork over more money for a keyboard with real brand-name switches.

and coming from someone who loves Razer keyboards, I have to say, I am impressed with this little keyboard. So, my Razer finally gave out. I need my keyboard to work, not game, and it is, so to speak, my third arm. I had a stack of backup keyboards here from various other computers and I hate them all. All are membrane, non-mechanical keyboards. Those are a problem for me. I worked on a couple of them for about one hour and gave up. The only reason I ordered this one was because the replacement Razer will not arrive until Saturday (this was Thursday) and this one could be delivered same day as I had urgent work that needed to be completed on the double. It arrived same day - thank you Amazon. Plugged it in and away I went. This keyboard is tiny. The layout is about an inch in width shorter so the keys are closer together. That took some getting used to but, all-in-all, I have to say, Im impressed. The backlighting is nice. The blue is difficult to see. I work in a mostly dark environment so the blue of the # keys is harder to see than the rest but for a two day use, its fine. I normally work on a keyboard with the tenkey pad so that too takes some getting used to but, for a backup keyboard, it will do just fine. I almost never write reviews for anything but I just wanted to say, at least for me, this little keyboard fit the bill for a backup and Im going to order another one for a backup to the backup. I cant speak, of course, to the longevity as Ive only worked on it for about 24 hours but, as I said, compared to my $150+ Razer, this one will do quite nicely in a pinch!

Such a amazing keyboard for its price switches in it take some time to get used to but other then that it’s alright

I cant believe that since I started PC gaming more than a decade ago Ive been buying cheap $20-$30 rubber dome keyboards because I assumed that I couldnt afford a mechanical. When I saw this keyboard I assumed that it had to have some kind of catch to it, that theres no way that a real mechanical keyboard could be this cheap. Well, Ive got good news, this keyboard is the real deal. And its an amazing upgrade from those cheap keyboards Ive been gaming on for my whole life. I will preface this review by saying that I havent spent any extended periods of time with a mechanical keyboard in the past, only here and there at friends houses, so Im not exactly an authority on mechanical keyboards. That said, the keys on this keyboard feel like the perfect balance in terms of responsiveness and clickiness. They give just enough resistance to feel satisfying to press, but they wont wear your fingers out. Theyre loud, sure, but theyre not so loud that I worry that theyll keep my wife awake when shes trying to sleep in the next room over. I also love the build and form factor of this keyboard. It feels weighty and well-built, and its small form-factor has freed up tons of space on my desk. I do have a few irks, though. Im not a huge fan of the font; it just seems too large and gamer-y, but that can be changed with new caps I suppose. Also, I find it really weird how the arrow keys have WASD printed on them for some reason (I guess so that you could theoretically swap them with the default WASD keys maybe) and it just looks really weird. Small details, sure, but they kind of take away from the elegant beauty that this keyboard could have with better keycaps. I dont think that anyone would take a look at this keyboard and mistake it for a $150 peripheral, but hey, looks arent everything. I also wish there was a way to change the LEDs to blue to match the rest of my setup but there doesnt seem to be one; theres no software included with the keyboard and I cant find anything online. Overall, though, Im extremely happy with this keyboard and it just further goes to show that Redragon makes great, underrated peripherals. Highly recommended if youre looking for a mechanical on a budget.

Edit: After using the K552 for a while I decided to update this review. I stand buy what I said below but I want to emphasize how much the board can be improved with a few simple mods. I purchased some budget switches, a sheet of PE foam and some little o-rings and after some a little work (the fun kind of work) my keyboard sounds and feels FANTASTIC. I still wouldnt recommend it as an out of the box keyboard but for this price youd have a hard time finding a comparable TKL modding platform. While its true that my board came with a defect that made the function key less useful Im sure they would have replaced the board if I hadnt already made so many modifications. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you just need a regular keyboard and youre not interested in the cool stuff you can do with a mechanical keyboard then youre probably better off with whatever you can find for $10. If you want an off the shelf mechanical keyboard this probably isnt for you, it sounds awful, its hollow, plasticy, loud and theres a lot of ping sound coming from the metal plate. The keycaps are ugly. WHERE THIS KEYBOARD REALLY SHINES is as a platform for modding. You can swap out the switches and keycaps with something that feels good, its easy to open up and install sound dampening, any of the popular mods that work on plate mounted mechanical keyboards are available here. After all the modding and customization Ive done I LOVE this keyboard. The only real problem I have encountered that I couldnt fix is that using the function key use WASD in place of the arrow keys doesnt work well, every time I try it either fails or gets stuck so that I cant type anymore. That wont be the biggest deal in the world for most people.

Ive gone through a couple of Blue switch keyboards (Cooler Master QuickFire Rapid [Kailh switches I believe] and the Corsair K70 [Cherry MX]), but this one was by far the least expensive. Im also the most impressed with it, primarily due to what you get for the price. As others have stated, this is an actual mechanical keyboard (not mechanical-like). My use-case was that I wanted something more tactile for use at work without spending a ton of money, and this keyboard fits the bill nicely. The switches definitely require a bit more force than both my QuickFire Rapid and K70, but its not like doing finger push-ups on your keyboard or anything like that. One reviewer stated that these have a 55g actuation force and from what Ive found authentic Cherry MX Blues have a 50g actuation force; without doing any measurements of my own, this feels about right. They do feel a bit cheaper than my other two keyboards and there is an audible spring sound on occasion when the key returns that O-rings have done little to mitigate, however this is by no means a dealbreaker for me. I cannot overstate, however, that this is a LOUD keyboard and will probably not be acceptable in most shared quiet settings. I use mine in a fairly noisy office and get the occasional good-natured ribbing from coworkers who hear my keyboard, but no one has put in a legitimate complaint. Cherry MX Blues are notoriously noisy, but these Outemu switches easily out-clack the competition in terms of volume. Some dont seem to like the design, however I think its pretty minimalist with the small exception of the Redragon logo above the arrow keys (which doesnt bother me much and seems like it *might* be removable somehow) and the cheesy gamer-esque font. The font can be forgiven since Ive seen these very keycaps on other inexpensive keyboards, and Im guessing economy of scale is what helps keep the price as low as it is. The backlighting is fine; basic but good and easily turned off, although it will not remember your settings and will default to on. If you dont like backlighting, save yourself a few dollars and get the non-backlit version. There is no wrist-rest, but Ive purchased a

There was a time when i was beloved by my coworkers and friends alike. They greeted me in the mornings and evenings and invited me to Christmas parties and Easter egg hunts. I came to know the names of their kids, their anniversaries, and their favorite foods. it was the best of times. Then the clicking began. Click, Clack, Click. You can imagine the surprise when i opened the Amazon package expecting a regular office keyboard and this otherworldly device was in its place. Even though it was an error in the purchasing process, I was up against a hard deadline to finish a project and so there was no time to return the keyboard - I decided to use it after asking myself It cant be that much different, can it?....Oh....Oh yes it can. Click. Click. Click Clack Little did I know how wrong I was and it became evident the moment I plugged it in and gave it life. Not power, but life - Instantaneously the keyboard hummed to life, and similar to Gandalf the White casting light from his staff while charging down the hill to Helms Deep on the first light of the fifth day, the keyboard blinded me as it cast its red light from its perch on my standing desk. Quickly I regained my posture, but it was too late, my curiosity was piqued. I pulled out the owners manual and to find answers but it read more like a lost scroll from Morrowind. Deep in the manual I was able to find a single recognizable word - 红龙. Ah yes, finally I had a name- the Red dragon. Mistakenly I mumbled its name and, looking back, this must have been some incantation and like the Book of Amun-Ra I was possessed. Clickety Clickity Clack It seemed as if I was in slow motion the first time I began to type. The keyboard, sharing the power of its Redragon, was like a mythical dragon awakening in the lair entrapping the poor fool that disturbed it from its thousand year hibernation. Powerless, I could not stop. I will not stop Clack. Click Click, Clack Since that day, my coworkers opinions of me soured. They blamed me for disturbing the peace in the mornings. Instead of songbirds to lift your mood in the morning all they heard was my overwhelming CLICKY CLICKY CLICK. But it was music to my hears. They began to avoid my work space even after i would greet them with GoCLICKod MorniCLICKg CLACK guys CLICK CLICK. I dont know why. Your brain begins to filter it all out after the first ten thousand or so clicks. Though I admit, there are times when the clicking doesnt stop. Like an addiction it is always there; waiting for your moment of weakness to once again enthrall you in its darkness. Clack. clack. clickety clack clack - Cool keyboard. - Def go with the one that includes the num pad though. Didnt realize how much i used it until i didnt have one. - The clicks are loud. For real. - My coworkers also now hate me. For real. Guess who didnt get the invite to Easter this year? yup.

The keyboard is nice. The build quality is good too. I wish I could change the RGB and I wish it had a number pad. This was my first keyboard without the number pad and I just cant adapt.

Works perfectly, looks great, and isnt very expensive. What more could you ask for?

My daughter uses this keyboard, we both love it, but its indeed loud. Weve tested other keyboards including Razer, Logitech, Cosair, as well as some varieties of Chery Brown and Red, but in the end still love this Cherry-Blue clone. Tried some dampening O-rings, didnt help much, so I decided to open it up and experiment (need to remove the keycaps to access the screws holding the top plate down). Heres what I found. The noises come from: - the click of the switch itself. It is what we like over the other switches, but the keycap amplifies this click quite a lot. - the bottom-out noise when the keycap hits the switchs box. The O-ring can dampen this sound a bit, but the boxy plastic base amplifies it multiple times. Coupling with an IKEA tabletop, it sounds like hitting a drum. - the sound of the switch hitting the switchs box on the way up. You can hear this sound when you hold a key down and lift your finger up quickly (like when typing fast). Again, this sound is also amplified by the keycap. The good news is, if you take the circuit board out of its boxy plastic base, all the noises are reduced to around 25-35% (my rough estimation), the only noticeable sound is the faint click of the switch itself. If you like a really quiet keyboard, you can just make a custom base/footing (a block of foam for example). You just need to cover the exposed circuit board on the underside, the top metal plate is pretty solid and wont bend. Im pretty sure its even quieter than the typical Dell keyboards at my office. However, my daughter prefers the keyboard with its base, so I tried to stuff the inside with foams, hoping to muffle it, and it seemed to work. But upon tightening the screws back in, its noisy again. So, the noise is transmitted through the screw poles to the plastic base, then the base amplifies it. Stuffing might have helped a bit, but not noticeable. To decouple the keyboard from the screw poles, I cut pieces of foam to the same height as the screw poles and double-sided taped them to the base. The poles are of different heights, shorter near the space bar, and taller near the Function keys. When putting the keyboard back, the circuit board and top plate sit on the foams, I tightened the screws very lightly, basically the screws keep the top from jumping out rather than holding it down. This significantly reduces the noise. I also filled the base with thinner foam rods, to reduce the void space in case it does act like a speaker enclosure. The keycaps were still problematic, with the switchs click, the bottoming-out, and coming-back noise. Instead of using O-rings, I stuffed cotton ball in the keycaps, just little enough to muffle the sound, and acts as a thin layer of O-ring. The more cotton, the muffler the sound, but also shorten the travel distance. I didnt want it to interfere with the great feeling of the switch so I didnt use much. I was lazy and didnt stuff the function keys as theyre rarely used, also to serve as a comparison. Youll have to experiment a bit to find the right amount to your liking. The cotton does block the backlight a bit, but not much (and dont look straight into the backlights after removing the keycaps, theyre blinding). One last thing, whatever the small amount of noise left, transmitted to the tabletop and got amplified. So I rolled a thin foam bag into little feet and taped them to the keyboard, no noise from the tabletop at all. Overall, Id definitely call it a success. She was ready to compromise for a quieter keyboard, but now more than happy to keep it. I used to be able to hear her smashing the keyboard in her room from the living room, now I can barely hear the light click if I really pay attention. She wanted the RGB version, so Ill buy one to trade with her, and probably will experiment with a custom base instead. See a need, fill a need!