We've had the 2 Merc Stealths in place for a while now so I figured it's time to post an update on how they are doing.
We purchased two of them and put them into primary use on our Gaming PCs at home. Here's what we notice a month later:
Keyboard 1
This is the one that gets more use. Probably roughly twice the hands on time as the other one. Normal position is left hand on the extended left-hand portion of the keyboard on the butterfly keys, right hand on the mouse.
What we noticed is rather odd. The A and S keys have begun to flake off their black coating, letting more light through and obscuring the glowing letters. This is pretty odd to me as I'd have assumed that the keys were not translucent and that only the letters are. As it turns out apparently the entire key-top (or perhaps the entire key) is translucent and is coated with black paint on the outside of the key. And while the white portion that paints in the letters is not flaking off, the black pain is.
Keyboard 2
This keyboard has it's own, but different issue. One of the buttons, the "up and right" button on the butterfly control tends to stick down quite often. And by quite often I do not mean a few times a night. I mean every 2nd or third press. To unstick it you must pound on the key a few times to shake it loose. This totally unacceptable for a primary movement key on a custom gamer's keyboard.
Conclusion
Other than these two problems, one strictly cosmetic and one game effecting, the keyboards continue to work well. Unfortunately these are premium keyboards costing over $80 each and a goodly portion of that is for appearance. No one buys a backlit keyboard and isn't in it partly for the cool appearance.
I'd have to demote our previous buy recommendation on this keyboard to a "get it if you like the Mercs but be aware they are not flawless". I'll be putting in a support call when time permits to find out what they have to say about both keyboards.
We purchased two of them and put them into primary use on our Gaming PCs at home. Here's what we notice a month later:
Keyboard 1
This is the one that gets more use. Probably roughly twice the hands on time as the other one. Normal position is left hand on the extended left-hand portion of the keyboard on the butterfly keys, right hand on the mouse.
What we noticed is rather odd. The A and S keys have begun to flake off their black coating, letting more light through and obscuring the glowing letters. This is pretty odd to me as I'd have assumed that the keys were not translucent and that only the letters are. As it turns out apparently the entire key-top (or perhaps the entire key) is translucent and is coated with black paint on the outside of the key. And while the white portion that paints in the letters is not flaking off, the black pain is.
Keyboard 2
This keyboard has it's own, but different issue. One of the buttons, the "up and right" button on the butterfly control tends to stick down quite often. And by quite often I do not mean a few times a night. I mean every 2nd or third press. To unstick it you must pound on the key a few times to shake it loose. This totally unacceptable for a primary movement key on a custom gamer's keyboard.
Conclusion
Other than these two problems, one strictly cosmetic and one game effecting, the keyboards continue to work well. Unfortunately these are premium keyboards costing over $80 each and a goodly portion of that is for appearance. No one buys a backlit keyboard and isn't in it partly for the cool appearance.
I'd have to demote our previous buy recommendation on this keyboard to a "get it if you like the Mercs but be aware they are not flawless". I'll be putting in a support call when time permits to find out what they have to say about both keyboards.
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