MissMurd3r84's Ducky YOTD Review

[MissMurd3r84]

Keyboard: Ducky Year Of The Dragon
Switches: Cherry MX Brown
Specs: Black keyboard, black keys, yellow LEDs and black ABS keys that allow the light to shine through the letters. Detachable USB lead, some extra keys, key puller.

I bought this limited edition keyboard earlier on in the year and I am more than happy with it. It has a very solid feel to it and it feels nice and heavy. It doesn’t appear over the top or anything when you initially look at it, it has a black casing on it and it has a neat little Chinese symbol on it in gold writing near the arrow keys. It’s a ten keyless keyboard, which I find is all I need as I do not use the keypad. It has lots of different backlight settings, I found that the brightest of those was too bright for my needs and tend to only use it on the lowest setting. You can have the lights set to light up the entire keyboard or you can have it set to light up each single key as you press it down, it has the ability to store 2 custom light settings in it, so for example if you only wanted WASD to be lit, you can select those keys and save it to only light them up and then you still have the ability to make another custom light theme sort of thing. You can have it so the lights shine from the top row all the way down to the bottom row in a marquee type style or you can use the pulsating effect which is where the keys “pulse” on and off.

The keys are only ABS, so they will obviously wear a lot faster than PBT keys. The keyboard comes with some extra keys to make your keyboard look funkier, they are; red WASD keys and replacement fghj keys which have a special font on them and it reads 2012, which is part of the representation of the Year of the Dragon, which is the 2012 Chinese New Year symbol.

The keyboard came nicely packed. When I initially opened up the wrapping the company I bought it from had it shipped in, I saw a fairly plain looking brown box. I opened the box to come across a nice looking black box which had the basic information about the keyboard on it as well as a Ducky logo.
When I took it out of these boxes it was inside a brown (each switch colour determines the colour of the cardboard) cardboard type shell, you could see through the middle section a black velvet type bag with the Ducky logo on it and the red WASD keys. Once that is removed you can see all the custom keys, a plastic key puller and the black bag. I removed those to find the keyboard is covered with a front cover made of plastic, this is handy for when you wish to leave your keyboard uncovered overnight and it helps stopping the dust getting into it.
The key puller was not very good, but I dislike all plastic ones as I find them to be too fragile. I managed to break it after a couple of months, but it didn’t cost much to get a new wire one instead.

Overall I rate the keyboard a 9.5 out of 10 and the only cons I have are the ABS keys which shine easily, but that is the most common used type of key on backlit keyboards no matter what company and the key puller.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Here's everything the wiki has on Ducky keyboards:

http://deskthority.net/wiki/Category:Ducky_keyboards

Feel free to document your keyboard and post some photos! (It's even your summer at the moment — it's hard to take good photos in dreary English winter ;-)

[MissMurd3r84]

The weather here at the moment is wet and dull I'll eventually get around to taking some more pictures.

[MissMurd3r84]

Ok, here are some pictures, sorry about the quality, currently don't have the keys that came with the board on them, so these pictures will have to do for now.

1. These keys are made of a plastic called Polyoxymethylene (POM). They have a slippery type feel to them.

2. With the LED's on using Jelly POM keys.

3. This is a poor quality picture of the keyboard showing off the special keys that came with it, without the LED's on (or they are on the lowest setting, which is normally brighter without flash).

4. This is the keyboard with all the keys and the LED's on.

5. This is the same keyboard with a set of custom keys called CCnG (Cream Cheese and Green)

[conandy]

I have the same key board (stock key caps) and love it!

For gaming in a darkened room, it's great to be able to program only the keys you want to see in the dark to be lit up.