I have the same keyboard and mouse since 10 years or more. They are cheap and basic, but I can play any game (single player and multiplayer alike) with good performance.
Is worth to buy more expensive or "gamer" keyboards and mouse? Is go to make any difference in my gaming experience? Don´t matter more the player skill that the hardware he/she possess?

Opinions? I want to know if it´s time to upgrade my very old keyboard and mouse.

thy're rubbish.

bought 2 - 2 faulty.

keyboard one - keys bounce (design fault) meaning it automatically doubles keys

keyboard 2 (laptop) - probably faulty bios - does the same thing essentially.

they're just gimmicks - mice are ok, i guess. key board lights don't even work in the dark on onew of the keyboards

Keyboard, doesn't matter. My keyboard is a basic no-frills one that's about 20 years old (and beige, because back then, computer equipment was beige, dammit!). It works like a charm and I'm comfortable with it. Until it decides to give up the ghost, I see no reason to replace it.

Mice, on the other hand... Well, I have no interest in the various so-called "gaming" mice on the market. I've tried a few of them, and they all seem to be awkwardly shaped, and/or flimsy as hell. I swear by a good, wireless Logitech work mouse. Currently I have an MX Master. After I first tried a mouse which could switch the mouse wheel between geared and frictionless on the fly, I never even considered getting one without this feature. Generally, I use the wheel geared for games, and frictionless for everything else.

I honestly don't see the point. Certainly if they had a different shape that was better for your hands, although most gamers play with one hand on keyboard and one on mouse, so exact curvature like the natural keyboard don't make sense in those cases.

If there's extra buttons that can be made to do macro/jobs, certainly they have some advantage but... again i don't see the point most of the time.

I probably use $10 keyboards and mice as well, and replace them... well... mice every 3-4 years and keyboards 5+ years.

Unless they were crappy to begin with like a super clicky double-keying keyboard i had once. Yeah that keyboard didn't last a week... wasn't worth it.

"Gamer" keyboards seem to mostly be kitschy, low-quality mechanical keyboards. Now, does a mechanical keyboard make a difference when gaming? Not in the sense of giving you an "edge". It's the same difference you get when not gaming. It's a lot nicer to type on. Just to reiterate, if you were going to buy one, you wouldn't go for the "gamer" models. There's quite a few mechanical keyboards communities around, check them and their guides out if you're interested.

As for mice, while there's a lot of low-quality kitsch there as well, I'm not really sure if you can get a "normal" high DPI mouse with extra buttons (and wouldn't those two features basically make it a "gaming" mouse anyway?), so I'd say it might be worth checking out if you play a lot of games where it makes a difference (basically, FP shooters). I don't think it has to be really expensive, though.

Keyboards don't matter. Mine is around ten years old and still works perfectly fine, despite me using it...a lot.

Mice, it depends. I usually get a new one every 4-5 years but as I said, I'm a heavy PC user (every day for at least a couple of hours). You don't need a gamer "mouse" though, just get a "standard" one and if you are good, you are good. As simple as that. Best mouse I used so far was the MX 510, I wish they still produced those. The successors (not counting the MX 518) are all worse.

I guess even the basic keyboards are good enough (as long as they don't break). Mechanical vs rubber dome is mostly just preference.

Mice... I would say that there is bigger difference between the gaming ones (even not necessarily the most expensive ones) and the cheap "standard" ones. After playing on the latter for the most of my life, I have a Logitech gaming mouse and I'm pretty happy with it.

Yes, I remember. I think I should have a beige keyboard keep in my house yet.

Yeah, I think that keyboards don´t make difference. But, I think that a mouse with side buttons is worth buy.

I wouldn't know about keyboards as am not willing to give up my ergonomic one to find out, possibly they're just for show.

A gaming mouse can make a difference but would probably depend upon what games you play. Any shooters(fps, tps etc) or action games then yes they can. Wired with good(and variable) dps can make a suprising difference. I would also suggest consider one with extra buttons(at least the side 2) and personally would go for one with removable weights. One with extra buttons could help if you're into mmos.

Also not sure you would need to go expensive either. I found a new trust gxt 31 going cheap on ebay a few years ago <£15 (via maplin) and have not looked back. They do some decent looking one from china cheap that could be worth a punt aswell.

No need to upgrade the keyboard & mouse. Instead, keep the money for a good gamepad/joystick/wheel; these will definitely make a difference in your gaming experience.

Not worth it.

Also, cheap keyboards in my experience are often better for games -- I mainly play shmups and fighters, and yes, on a keyboard. I have a $350 Topre, which is amazing for typing, terrible for games. I very much prefer a Logitech K120 with its short-travel 'n mushy keys.

Hell yes. Mine is still working fine but it will be a sad day when it finally dies.


@ topic:
I guess for people with amazing reflexes (or those deluding themselves enough) it could make a difference in competitive situations, personally i've never seen the use for it. Only keyboard i had that didn't recognise enough keys at once to play decently was so cheap that its other problems easily overshadowed that one.

And yes, while mechanical keyboards are more comfy to type on i wouldn't want to buy some butt ugly "gaming design" atrocity for that.

Best keyboard ever btw: Apple Extended Keyboard II... wish i had an usb adaptor for mine.

There are two things I know of that make a gaming keyboard a nice thing. One, programmable macro keys. Makes life easier in some cases, or if you really get into it its downright cheaty. (I only ever used ot for an event in one game that wanted you to mash space repeatedly... pain in the ass, so I put autofire space on one of the keys.)

The second is that the ones I know of guarantee that multiple keys pressed at once will register. (The one I got a while back guaranteed five.)
When I built my old gaming rig I just purchased a back-lit keyboard that was wired. Just grabbed the cheapest one that fit those two things (Yeah yeah, didn't need the back-light, but it was pretty. sue me)

It didn't work so well playing games since you could not press W, Shift, and Space simultaneously. It would only register the first two pressed, and ignore whichever was third.
Made playing first person games rather difficult since many have those keys bound as forward, sprint, and jump.
Gave that keyboard to my uncle, since he doesn't' game at all, and purchased myself the gaming one I mentioned above.

Currently I'm using a laptop, and sometimes I get the same thing in Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. (Old gaming rig is dead, so yeah)
The X key doesn't like to register whenever a few other keys in the WASD area are pressed, so when I use an ability bound to that key I just had to learn to let go of all other buttons and then press the key. That is obviously not a good solution, but its workable.

So depending on the keyboard, and the specific key bindings involved, you may find yourself having unrecognized input. You don't have to worry about that with the "gaming" keyboards I've read up on.



Oh, and I guess the fact that most gaming keyboards are back-lit and you can customize the colors in nice, but there are some non-gaming ones that have the same. Or at least there were last time I looked. Been a few years since I payed any mind.

I'll agree, it's not really worth it. The best thing to do is go to a store that has floor models you can bang on, so you can at least evaluate the feel and resistance/travel of the keys, how much/little noise they make, etc. It really depends on your budget and how much you'll think you'll use common features on gaming keyboards like backlighting or macro keys.

If you believe the marketing guff, a lot of gaming keyboards have various features to mitigate issues like ghosting, but we're at a point where even bargain basement keyboards don't largely suffer from that issue.

As for mice, IMO the same thing applies as it does for keyboards. What matters more is whether or not it has the amount of buttons I need, and if the design its well in my hand (especially since I mouse with my left hand).

A mouse with a good sensor, and a shape, size and weight that are comfortable to you can give great results. As for a keyboard, from what I've heard only a mechanical keyboard makes a noticeable difference, but I haven't had the chance to try one out yet.