Sarah Tew/CNET

If you’re going to spend nearly $200 to find the best gaming keyboard, this mechanical gaming keyboard is our top pick at the moment for a great gaming experience, and a lot of it has to do with the lighting effects. It’s a solid keyboard in design and performance with Razer’s Purple optomechanical switches delivering fast response time performance and good typing experience if you like clicky, tactile feedback. There are media controls (though it would be nice if the icons on them lit up, not just the outside) and they’re programmable just like all the other keys.

Razer’s Synapse software gives extensive control over the keyboard’s setup, though you can stick to presets if you’re not into tweaking settings. Along with the per-key lighting, there’s also a band of light that goes around the outside of the keyboard and the included padded wrist rest, which magnetically attaches to the keyboard.

The keyboard does eat up a second USB port on your computer, though, and there’s no pass-through on the Huntsman Elite to make up for it. If that’s important to you, go with Razer’s BlackWidow Elite, which is about $50 less with a choice of switches.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Our current top ten-key-less (TKL) backlit gaming keyboard for the money. The G Pro is all about size, quick responsive speed and sturdiness of design. The Romer G Tactile switches give you just a touch of feedback without being clicky. The keyboard’s made for esports, so it’s fairly bare-bones, e.g. it has no media keys or wrist rest. But this backlight featuring budget gaming keyboard does have a removable USB cable for travel and three levels of height adjustment. And its body can stand up to getting knocked around.

Logitech’s G Hub software is straightforward to use so you don’t spend a lot of time hunting for settings or control options. Attaching macros to the function keys is painless as well.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Just a good, solid keyboard design for fast responsive gaming and typing. The linear Kailh Speed Silver switches are quiet and smooth with a low actuation force and short actuation point so quick double and triple taps weren’t a problem. Plus, swapping the stock keycaps for the new white pudding double-shot caps make it look amazing.

The NGenuity software is easy to use with game presets and custom setups. You can store up to three profiles to the keyboard’s memory, too. At just over $100, you don’t get a wrist rest or discrete media controls, but it’s one of the only ones here with a removable braided cable, and there’s a USB pass-through for charging a phone.

Sarah Tew/CNET

One of the best gaming keyboards for shared spaces, the K70 uses quiet, linear Cherry MX Red RGB low-profile switches. That means you get the fast responsive performance of regular Red switches but without the high-profile keycaps, for a thinner, compact keyboard. In other words, it looks and feels more like a modern office keyboard with a more parallel hand position than your average mechanical gaming keyboard.

There’s per-key RGB lighting as well as textured keycaps for gaming, including one for the extra-large spacebar. There are LED backlit media controls along the top, so you can find them in the dark. And there’s a USB pass-through. About the only place it feels like Corsair skimped was the included plastic wrist rest.

Corsair’s iCue software is one of the better packages for controlling lighting and programming keystrokes on the keyboard. Plus, if you have other iCue-enabled peripherals and components in your PC, you can control them all from this one application.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Roccat developed the switch for this mechanical keyboard, called Titan. It’s a quiet, tactile switch with a well-defined bump when actuated with no wobble and is firm and responsive for gaming. The shallow keycap and switch design make it seem like the keys are floating above the metal chassis top, giving it the look and feel of an island-style keyboard. The Vulcan is fine for typing, too, but I liked it more for gaming.

The company’s Swarm software isn’t as straightforward to use as others, but you’ll find all the same sort of design tools for creating custom lighting setups and macros with different profiles. You can even make your key presses sound like laser blasts or a typewriter, among other things, through your speakers or headphones. And if you have other AIMO devices, the lighting can be matched between them.

Other extras on this mechanical gaming keyboard include a knob that adjusts volume and the brightness for the RGB per-key lighting, and a wrist rest, although the latter is hard plastic and attaches loosely, so it can shift around some while gaming.

Sarah Tew/CNET

If you’re big into notifications and just generally doing more with the lights on your keyboard, the Apex M750 is worth a look. The company’s Engine software lets you do all the typical lighting customization you’ll get with other keyboards, but you can also install apps to give you light notifications for game chat platform Discord, display effects for your music or even convert an animated GIF for playback using the lights.

The mechanical keyboard uses the company’s linear QX2 switches, which I found good and fast for gaming and quick typing, thanks to their short actuation point and low force. However, while the switches themselves are quiet, there’s a lot of clack when the keys bottom out, along with some noticeable wobble.

The rest of the keyboard is fairly unremarkable, lacking higher-end touches like a braided cable, USB pass-through, discrete media controls or even adjustable feet.

Sarah Tew/CNET

The Strike 4 has the basic requirements for a higher-end decent gaming keyboard: Cherry MX Red switches, per-key RGB LED lighting and a metal body. The overall performance is solid due to those switches and the keys have just a little clack when they bottom out, so it’s fast overall but quiet. The USB cable isn’t removable, but it can be routed to left, center or right to help keep your desktop a little tidier.

I lean more toward clean and simple designs, so I’m not crazy about the branding on the front. However, what might be a bigger issue is the front edge, which isn’t straight and not an ergonomic design, so not all wrist rests will sit flush across the front.

The software is the weakest link with the Strike 4, though. It looks like an OEM application that’s been skinned for Mad Catz. This mechanical keyboard gets the job done, but it’s pretty basic and takes some hunting that the software from other keyboard makers doesn’t require.