logitech keyboard lcd display manufacturer

First.. read a bunch of the reviews here. Other people have said it better and more completely than I plan to. The short of it is that this is a very cool keyboard, but it has some drawbacks that you should consider before buying.

Years ago I got my girlfriend a Saitek keyboard.. the Eclipse I believe. She"s a big gamer and is pretty hard on keyboards. Her keycaps were wearing down, she had spilled some stuff at some point and the keys were feeling a little gummy. Basically it was time for a new keyboard.

The criteria were "gaming keyboard" (so something semi reliable" and "nice backlit keys", she liked the multi-colors that the Saitek provided. It"s a little thing, but when it"s for a gift, sometimes a little "pretty" and "flashy" is fun.

I looked at the Razer Lycosa, but there was concern about it"s rubberized keycaps wearing and since she"s pretty hard on keyboards, that was a definite concern so I looked around and found... nothing. Some people will contest this statement, but there really aren"t that many really cool gaming keyboards out right now that would make good gifts. I thought about getting her another Saitek Eclipse (I don"t like the aesthetic of the new Saiteks) or a different Razer keyboard (didn"t care for those either) and the new super fancy Old Republic keyboard with the OLED keys and touch screen was a bit pricey and not out until shortly before Christmas, so it was out of the question.

So the G19 was really one of the few options left. I dislike the G15"s antiquated display, so I had high hopes for the full color QVGA(?) LCD display of the G19.

* Volume control and mute - It"s been ages since I"ve had this on a keyboard and I severely missed it. (bought myself a G19 with Christmas gift card money after I bought one for my girlfriend as a gift and had a chance to take a peek at it). This is a necessity for gamers. Using the volume on your speakers sucks and using in-game volume settings is best done once and left alone. You really need access to system volume control from within a game so you don"t have to alt-tab out to get to it. It seems like a little thing, but when it"s missing, it"s a burden for any gamer.

* LCD display - Yeah, I"ll put this in the pros column, despite what I"ll say in the cons. It"s flashy, it"s cool, and even though it"s limited (unfortunately) it"s still got a great geek wow factor to it so if you"re getting this keyboard as a gift or just love geeky things, it"s a little cherry on top of it all. It *is* limited, but the driver disk comes with the SDK and there"s a G19 and G15 LCD emulator built right into the control software, so if you have any programming chops and access to Visual C, it looks relatively easy to develop for. I plan on giving it a shot myself sometime soon.

* All the keys are in the right places - Most gaming keyboards have this feature, but this is one of those deals where when stuff isn"t right, you notice. I had a Logitech Wave wireless keyboard/mouse combo and a couple other keyboards while waiting to figure out what I wanted to buy and the INS/DEL/HOME/END/PGUP/PGDOWN cluster was "wrong" on all of them. I do a lot of programming and use those keys a ton and when they"re not in the classic configuration, you have to re-learn them and I"d have to switch between work (where they were correct) and home (where they weren"t) and it was quite annoying. Thankfully the G19 has them in the right place. Just need to get used to the extra space where the G keys are. Keep hitting one of them when I try to find the ESC key by touch.

* Some great games support the LCD display directly, some apps/games need a plugin or update, but there is some support for the G19 specifically and G15 applets will work with it as well (they just don"t look very nice on the G19"s fancy display.. they look all blocky because they"re made for the more limited G15 display). Even some apps like Ventrillo and Mumble have support for the display. Oh! And Media Player Classic will make use of the display, showing up as an app after you run it once after installing the G19. It doesn"t appear in the apps directory, but somehow hooks into the system to show up on the apps list. Apparently iTunes also supports this display, but I don"t use iTunes.

* Biggest disappointment for me, a super geek, out of the box was the limitations of the LCD display. It comes with some applets that do some ok stuff. Not sure I"d ever watch YouTube videos on it. The performance monitor, possibly the RSS feed or image rotator might be handy. If you dig around the internet, you"ll find plugins for apps and some minor attempts at making new applets for this, but a lot of the websites are dead or links are bad. Seems like everyone got really excited when it came out then they all gave up due to lack of support or something. There"s a G15 plugin for Trillian, but it"s for like Trillian 4 and they"re up to 8 now. It doesn"t do much and is G15-ugly and seems to lock up my Trillian when close it (Trillian) so I won"t be using it.

* Addendum to the LCD issues above. This keyboard supports Windows Sideshow, which is a way to have a tiny external screen to display small bits of data. The idea was to allow you to use cell phones or even a tiny external display on a closed laptop lid like what you see on flip phones. The big issue? This was a feature in Windows Vista that was removed/buried in Windows 7 and it doesn"t look like they plan on supporting it. So don"t use this as a selling point unless you have Vista, I guess.. even then.. I don"t know if it"ll actually work or if support was removed from the newer drivers. If you go into Windows Help on Windows 7 and search for "Sideshow", you can find a link that will open the Sideshow configuration in Control Panel (it"s hidden in regular Control Panel views). But the keyboard doesn"t show up as a device. Someone needs to write a display driver similar to a MIMO or Liliput USB display for this thing.

* Some people question the durability. These keyboards aren"t heavy duty military issue and maybe they"ll only last a year as some people say. Then I guess I know what I"ll be buying my girlfriend next year for Christmas. :) Really, keyboards wear out. How hard you are on them has a lot to do with how long they"ll last. And keyboards get nasty even if you clean them and don"t eat around your computer. The idea of replacing a keyboard every couple years is fine with me. It is a very "pretty" keyboard, though, and just like how we both really like the Saitek Eclipse, I think we"re going to like this keyboard and be sad when it"s time to replace it unless there"s something better than what"s currently available or we replace it with another G19 or Eclipse.

I"m disappointed that "Sideshow" is a complete bust. They should remove it from any product literature as it"s highly misleading. The LCD is pretty, but kind of limited usefulness (even outside the Sideshow thing). But all in all, I think $140 for an above average gaming keyboard with a bit of flashy style and still some potential isn"t too bad. I"d rather have paid $100 but it was $140 for the gift I bought and $100 for the one I bought after the Amazon gift card I used, so I"m not complaining.

I give it 4 stars assuming it won"t die in 3 months or something dumb like that. I had high hopes for Sideshow, but ignoring those high hopes, this feels like a pretty solid gaming keyboard that I really love so far and I think it makes a great gift as something that"s a little more expensive than what you"d normally spend on yourself with some bells and whistles that aren"t important but are kind of fun to have. I think those are the ingredients for a great gift.

You can’t save the princess with skill alone. The peripheral manufacturer Logitech would like to aid you in your online quests with the help of its new G19 keyboard for gaming.

The G19’s standout feature is a tilting color GamePanel LCD screen, 320 by 240 pixels, which can be used to display gaming information for more than 60 games, including Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, as well as nongaming details like VoIP data, maps and videos.

The keyboard houses 12 fully programmable G-keys (three macros per key) and has multikey input functionality, which means you can bang on up to five keys simultaneously.

They say that only bad workmen blame their tools, but that’s a sentiment that doesn’t really carry over to the world of PC gaming where having the right peripherals can make all the difference. Not in the “if you own this keyboard you can be a pro gamer” kind of way perhaps, but definitely in the “this keyboard is comfortable and easier to use” way. If you’ve got a keyboard that you’re at ease with then it stands to reason that you can play better with it.

With that in mind, fans of Logitech’s older G-series keyboards such as the G15 and G11 will be pleased to know that the general feel and ergonomics of the newest G-series keyboard is essentially unchanged. The G19 differs from older models in a number of ways, but the sturdy keys and QWERTY spacings haven"t changed at all, so anyone upgrading from a G15 to the G19 won’t have to adjust in any way.

Interestingly, not all of the extra functions have been expanded for the G19 as you might expect though. While the new LCD screen certainly has been improved (and we’ll get to that in a minute), some features have been trimmed down. There used to be 18 programmable G-keys for you to assign macros, shortcuts and commands to on the G15 and G11 models, but now there are only 12.

What used to be three columns of buttons organised into three blocks is now only two columns and, while that’s not going to be a problem to the everyday user or FPS gamer, hardcore MMORPG players may find something to complain about here. To regular MMOers macros are a great way to save time and effort when grinding, so scaling down the number that you can set up on a keyboard may be reason enough to stay with an older keyboard.

Thankfully though, the G19 still retains the profile function of the older G-series keyboards and you can cycle between different macro settings using the three M1, M2 and M3 buttons at the top – so 12 G-keys really equates to 36 G-keys. That’s without even considering the fact that you can set up different profiles for different games too and the G19 can still detect when you launch a specific game and will enable the profile for you automatically.

The question is whether or not there is anything in particular worth boasting about here? Game-detection and automatically loading game profiles is all well and good, but the earlier and significantly cheaper G-series keyboards could do that all too. In fact, close inspection reveals that the G19 actually uses the same software as the G15 – so, there really is nothing new in terms of how customisable the keyboard is. Same profile system, same drivers, but less keys.

The media keys have changed a bit at least, with the buttons now being a lot smaller, but chunkier than those on the G15 which sat flush with the board shell. The controls have been relocated too, shifted over above the numpad instead of beneath the LCD – probably because the LCD has changed drastically too.

The volume control in particular is worth pointing out as it’s now a fancy, small scroll wheel. While it looks very swish with its rubberised grip and all, we actually weren’t big fans of it when we had to put it to use. Not only did it wobble noticeable in the body of the keyboard, but we found it also a little insensitive, with multiple spins needed to really alter the volume.

I"m considering the possibility of my friend (although he"s being kind of a d♥♥♥ lately & hard to get a hold of) modding the screen from my G19s (the one that is wearing out & I"m attempting to replace) into an external USB case so that the screen can still be used, if not the keyboard itself; the only reason I even considered this was because he"s been known to put backlit, high-definition screens into old handheld game systems, so he"s pretty smart when it comes to this, but it might require leaving the entire board for the keyboard in one piece (if anything, I suppose I could keep the old keyboard connected to the computer for the screen only & use another keyboard that isn"t having the sticking problems)... Of course I still have to use old software/drivers regardless, seeing as Logitech still can"t seem to fix the issue... And just FYI, the G19 also has the capability to play videos (even online videos & live streams) & picture shows on it, however I"ve never used it for that purpose (it was always used for informational purposes in my case). There were a number of functions that were also available, however I didn"t particularly want those running while running games or streams of those games, using more processing power/bandwidth than is necessary.

Item condition: Manufacturer refurbishedThis is a manufacturer refurbished product. Keyboard comes in non retail packaging. Satisfaction guaranteed! Product IdentifiersModel G19SMPN 920-004985Key FeaturesKeyboard Type GamingInterface USBTechnical FeaturesConnectivity Technology WiredLogitech G19s Gaming KeyboardSettle for nothing short of everything. Harness the power of greater intelligence with a keyboard for gamers who don’t know what it means to have too much information. A GamePanel color screen feeds you a steady flow of vital intel. Programmable G-keys simplify complex actions. Take your game to higher levels with advanced technology to light your way forward. 1. GamePanel LCD requires software that supports Logitech GamePanel technology. Visit www. logitech. com/gamepanel 2. G-key programming requires Logitech Gaming Software available at www. logitech. com/downloads

Cons: known issues with connecting and disconnecting over and over, backlight it too dim, the screen is essentially worthless as you cant display anything useful. and it requires external power (wall power, not just usb power)

Re-released in 2017. The new model uses Logitech Options instead of SetPoint, and the programmable thumb button got removed. 3-year battery life on 2 AA batteries.

A wireless addition to Logitech"s Pro Line of Products. While it is named very similarly to the Pro Gaming Mouse, It uses a different shape. Has fully customizable RGB lighting. Used by around 27% of professional gamers.

Update to G PRO Wireless with lighter weight design and omission of right side buttons and DPI button. Widely regarded as one of the best gaming mice from Logitech.

The ball diameter of the TrackMan [Marble] Fx measures exactly 2 inches, which rounds to 51 mm. On Logitech"s Japanese website the ball diameter is (was) listed as 50 mm.

The Wireless Trackball M570 has a resolution of 540 DPI according to its Logitech Product page, but a resolution of 400 DPI according to its Logitech Support page.

Professional 6DoF device built by the Logitech subsidiary LogiCad3D. In 2001 Logitech bought Labtec and LogiCad3D was merged with Labtec"s 3D Motion Control Technology Group (the former SIMC/STI of SpaceBall fame) to form 3Dconnexion. (See 3Dconnexion for 3D mice after 2001.)

Features a folding blue backlit 160×43 pixel monochrome LCD-display, "game mode" switch (which disables the "Windows" keys), and a 2-port USB 1.1 hub.

Logitech ScanMan Color 2000 (1996) -- Hand-held, 24bit color scanner, 400x800 DPI (1600x1600 DPI interpolated); connector: DB-25F or DB-36F Centronics.