[Review] Armaggeddon KAI-9 Sentinel keyboard

This company approached me a few weeks ago and wanted me to review some of their products. Obviously I wanted to test it for myself , so I agreed since I have seen their products being sold in many places, and have heard of personal recommendations from friends too.

However when I got the parcel from the courier, the first thing I noted when I opened it was the keyboard’s name. Their website says it’s the NightHawk KAI-9, but on the keyboard it’s printed as KAI-9 Sentinel. Well, which is it? I’ll just call it KAI-9 throughout this review.

Putting that aside though, it’s get on into the review.

No, I’m not going to take pictures of huge rectangular box which just shows you a keyboard when opened.

The included stuff alongside with the keyboard is pretty simple. There’s an envelope with the manuals inside, a CD for the driver which you can also download it online, and some extra rubber feet for replacing the worn out ones should you need them.

Keyboards… there aren’t really much to talk about its box and accessories.

Oh yes, there’s also a 2-year limited warranty, which even had its warranty period printed at the back of the keyboard.

[nextpage title=”Look and feel”]

First off let me talk about what buttons are present and what is not. Right off the bat, I like its clean and symmetrical look, and the Armaggeddon logo at the top of the middle section, lit by an LED.

Then there’s the 6 programmable keys at the most right side, as seen on many other gaming keyboards. Nothing extraordinary here.

The interesting – or should I say the redundant part – is the media control keys at the top right side. There’s a play/pause, previous, next, volume up, volume down, and mute button. Yes, that’s great.

When it comes to the function modifier key, or Fn key, the same buttons appear once more, alongside with some extras such as RPS adjustment, and a button specifically to launch your media player.If F1 to F12 can do everything with the Fn key, what’s the point of the row of buttons at the top right???

As for the key’s design, my only complaint is the Shift and Enter key’s size. Personally speaking, button beside the Shift key should be moved to the upper half of the Enter key – at least that’s how I would prefer it to be, since I’ve gotten used to that configuration.

The Fn key replaces one of the most stupid buttons found on keyboards, and I give that a thumbs up, even though that placement does take a little getting used to.

The texture of the keys is something to be highlighted. It has this uneven surface that you can even feel by brushing your fingertip on the keys itself. I don’t know what the real purpose is – fashion or science.

Armaggeddon promoted that the KAI-9 has “7 different colours of backlight in one keyboard” on the product bog and also on their website, but then again all the colours I can find is only those two above – red and green. I wondered how I can get the other 5 colours but that’ll be on another section in this review.

[nextpage title=”Typing”]To get a gist of what the KAI-9 is about, I’ve decided to use it as my daily keyboard for more than a week and see how that goes. My method of testing is simple – I replace my Microsoft keyboard-mouse combo with what they sent me, and see how that goes.

To start off, the keyboard is pretty good in its tactile feedback for a membrane switch keyboard. Keys are high enough to feel the goodness of a complete press, but doesn’t make much noise when pressed with more force.

As my personal preference, I did feel the keys require a little too much force for me to type on as compared to my main Microsoft keyboard, and it did take a while for me to get used to such strength requirement.

Now I wouldn’t say it’s not that good to require such strength; I did type my entire assignment with this keyboard and am now typing this review using this keyboard.

My first complaint is that some buttons can somehow get stuck and would not bounce back up, which I have no reason why and I have to press again to let it bounce right back up. It happened to the Enter key, the right side Shift key and also the backspace key. What it seems like however, is that the key itself got stuck by catching itself with other keys. Seriously?

My second complaint is this : if the keyboard is going to be so thick, then give us an armrest.  The KAI-9 is so thick that even if you wanna use it without the keyboard legs propped up, it’ll still be too thick to type on in the first place. Definitely an issue for me during my typing experience.

Also if you’re typing in the dark, you’ll realize how much light leaks are present on the keyboard. You can tell that the front piece and back piece didn’t exactly seal up together well enough, leaving a relatively large seam and has green light coming out of it.

The keyboard can have 3 different profiles – great! It’s not as great as it sounds though – my fourth complaint is how the backlight changes between profiles. Like I said, there are only two out of the total of seven colours for my to control from. Profile 1 and Profile 2 uses the same green colour, whereas only Profile 3 alone uses red colour backlight. Seriously, can’t they just use up 3 of the total 7 colours to differentiate each profile?

Other than that, I don’t really have much to complain for the typing experience. It’s has a pretty OK build quality, twisting it from side to side and the keyboard does make some noise, but it doesn’t flex much. Pressing the keys in the middle doesn’t flex too.

[nextpage title=”Software”]This is where the goodness of the keyboard goes to the not-so-good part.

Starting off with the backlight colours. They claim that the keyboard has 7 different colours, but the ones that you can choose from is only 2, that is red or green. The other 5 colours is only shown when you change the backlight mode to “circular breathing”, where it pulses across all the 7 different colours. The available colours are red, green, blue, purple, cyan, yellow, and white (which looks pretty much like cyan).

On the other hand, the software has a very raw look into it, feels like it’s some kind of alpha version with its lack of polished looks.

Here is the main menu of the driver, with its features again slapped on the software. Take note again that the keyboard is just called KAI-9 in the driver, not Sentinel or NightHawk. Those social media icons at the lower left is completely useless – they can’t be clicked, except for the link back to Armaggeddon’s website.

Onward wit the button settings, you get a layout of the keyboard itself. Here, you can change nearly all of the keys. Technically, you can morph this keyboard into a DVORAK layout through this menu. Toggle between the 3 profiles to have some other layouts too, if that’s what you want.

Another thing I’d like to be able to change is these 3 buttons. Yes, My Computer and the Home button are great, but the email button? Not so much. It automatically launches Hotmail on my browser (I don’t have Outlook installed) and I don’t use Hotmail at all. Oh wait, Hotmail is no more, it’s all Outlook.com now.
I really do hope that I can bind something more useful to these keys. I mean come on, even my cheapo Microsoft keyboard can do what. Let’s not forget those redundant multimedia keys on the top right side too.

And oh, the image is deceiving. They do not light up at all.

Onward to macro settings, this is where you program all the 6 macro keys on the far left side of the keyboard. There’s something I would like to see here is a profile switcher section in this menu so that I know which profile I’m actually setting my macro keys to.

The last part of the menu is where I could expect to change the KAI-9’s backlight colour right? WRONG. I can’t find any part of the software that I can change the backlight, and most cringe-worthy part of the software is the spelling mistake. Please fix it.

Also, the Windows key setting is just to enable or disable the Windows button, so you don’t accidentally press it and get headshot in the intense game of CS:GO. However, shouldn’t this option be at the Button Settings menu instead of the Advanced Settings?

[nextpage title=”Wrap up”]The keyboard is something well built and quite confortable to type on, especially with the key height. Problem arises when ergonomics is concerned, and there is no wrist rest. The software is sub-par and felt like an alpha version, and I can’t get even control half of the advertised number of backlight colours. Yet with all these, Armaggeddon is charging RM149 for the KAI-9 keyboard.

Rating : 6/10

For the KAI-9, it’s just not so suitable for me. As for me, ergonomics is very important and Armaggeddon didn’t get it right this time. The backlight colours were just plain confusing. With such a thick keyboard body, I was hoping to see some cable management capabilities, but that was nowhere to be found.

Compared to my Microsoft Wireless Desktop 3000 keyboard-mouse combo set that costs even lower than the KAI-9 , that Microsoft keyboard can do pretty much everything and more. Also, their software is really giving out some amazing customizability.

Address some of the issues present though, it can be a pretty badass piece of keyboard for the price.

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