35 key Gaming keyboard for a Mac?

[myotis]

Can anyone suggest a 35/40 key gaming keyboard for photo. editing. Programmable might be useful and happy to have it wired. The ones I have looked at are called 35 key, but I mean the ones that seem to take up about 1/4 to 1/3 the space of a full sized keyboard.

I use keyboard shortcuts a lot and one of these plus a tablet seems a good way of speeding up editing but I'm a bit bewildered by the choice (looking on Amazon). And not all give any information of the OS they work with, which is relevant as I want it for a Mac and some are Windows only.

As so often happens the reviews are confusing, with every option seeming to have both great and horrific reviews. I would like to spend as little as possible, many seem to be around the £20+ mark, which would be fine, but will consider more than this if I am likely to get a big leap in quality/reliability.

I have no games on my computers (at least none I am aware of) so it would only be used for editing.

 

[Tori_T]

Perhaps check out some manufacturers sites?
Razer
Logitech
They should have detailed specs, and then you can look for a place that sells what you want?

 

[myotis]

Perhaps check out some manufacturers sites?
Razer
Logitech
They should have detailed specs, and then you can look for a place that sells what you want?

Thanks, I did actually do this, as these were names I was familiar with but I couldn't' find anything on the logitech site (maybe I'm looking in the wrong place) and the Razer ones were a bit more than I wanted to spend, the cheapest is £74.

Maybe that is just how much I need to spend for a decent one.

 

[JonathanRyan]

I have this keyboard

K50 RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard 35 Keys One-Handed Blue: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

The page lists all the flavours of Windows it runs on but doesn't mention Macs. However, I just plugged it into a MB Air running a few versions back OSX. It refuses to identify the keyboard but when I tell it that it's an ISO European one it works.

Very nice keys and decent build quality. You can programme macros, but at the risk of stating the obvious you *can't* map keys it doesn't have. E.g. you couldn't map something to Ctrl-P because there's no P key You also won't have an Apple key. It's a really nice sub £30 keyboard but it certainly isn't a Loupedeck

 

[myotis]

I have this keyboard

K50 RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard 35 Keys One-Handed Blue: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

Thanks, and useful to know as I had looked at this and noticed it didn't list supporting Macs. The lack of an apple key (on any of the ones I've looked at) has made me stall on the idea a bit, as so many keystrokes make use of it. Still would be useful for the main reason I wanted it, but maybe I need to look at wider/different options.

The one I had pretty decided on was this one.

Hoopond One Handed Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Gaming Keypad

But as I say still very useful to have the feedback on the K50.

 

[myotis]

The one I had pretty decided on was this one.

Hoopond One Handed Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Gaming Keypad

To reply to myself, Amazon warehouse had the above keyboard for just over a tenner, so it seemed worth a punt .

Minor problem setting it up as, when plugged in, it was unrecognised and my Mac asked me to set it up. I was asked to press the key to the right of the left shift key and then the key to the left of the right shift key, but there is no right shift key !

Not entirely sure what I did, but I seemed to manage to bypass the second question, and I was then asked what kind of keyboard it was. I selected ISO (as per Jonathon's comment above) and it seems to be working.

Lots of flashing and "racing" lights when I got it running, but these could be switched off. It's bigger than I expected, but it's already a lot easier/quicker than navigating my standard keyboard. Capture One's new speed edit tool is now even speedier

 

[MickSturbs]

hmmm, "one handed keyboard users" conjured up an entirely different mental image than gaming or photo editing somehow...

 

[myotis]

As maybe a final comment on this.

My cheapest model Wacom tablet allows me to program keys to the four buttons it offers, so the missing command (apple) key on the 35 key gaming keyboard is now a key on the tablet.

So far it's all working very well.

 

[Retune]

Are there specific, popular games that only use the left half of the keyboard? Since the PC games I play are mostly ancient, I haven't got a handle on when something like this would be useful (my games tend to use keys all over the board). I can understand why having a small pad of programmable keys would be useful, but it seems quite odd to see the standard lettered key caps for only half the board! Yet there must be a significant market to justify making them like this.

 

[myotis]

Are there specific, popular games that only use the left half of the keyboard?

I am guessing so, as there seems to be a lot of them about. I have assumed that games use a joystick or something for the right hand and then use the left hand keys to control other things. Apart from once trying a flight simulator, I've played no computer games so can't give any informed view.

The latest version of Capture One added a speed edit feature that assigns every/most editing tools to keys on the left hand side of the keyboard, which when combined with a tablet, or arrow keys dramatically speed up (initial) editing. This half keyboard, as well as giving better keys than my Mac keyboard, lets me get the keyboard and the tablet into a better position than using my "all key" Mac keyboard and tablet.

I know this doesn't actually answer your question, but hopefully someone else will come along.

 

[JonathanRyan]

Are there specific, popular games that only use the left half of the keyboard? Since the PC games I play are mostly ancient, I haven't got a handle on when something like this would be useful (my games tend to use keys all over the board). I can understand why having a small pad of programmable keys would be useful, but it seems quite odd to see the standard lettered key caps for only half the board! Yet there must be a significant market to justify making them like this.

Yes.

Imagine paying a game with keyboard and mouse. Right hand on the mouse, left on the keyboard and ctrl-p is going to really suck as a command most FPS use the wasd keys for movement and mouse for direction and other left hand keys for other actions.

Doom for example since 1993 - which we used to use to "test" the office Lan.