logitech g19 tft display pricelist

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.

The G19 is probably the second most anticipated keyboard of all time, after the infamous Optimus Maximus. The inclusion of a separate full-color LCD screen (an update to its predecessor, the G15) was like geek candy, but the question secretly on everybody’s mind was “is it actually going to be useful?” And as it turns out… not really. Let’s explore that right off the bat so you don’t have to read the rest of this review.

Well, the screen has a few basic “channels.” YouTube, RSS Feed, song display, “my videos,” a clock, a performance monitor, a picture viewer, and a timer. Of these, the performance monitor is really the only useful one, because I can’t think of a reason you’d want or need to navigate YouTube or your pictures and videos via this tiny screen. The onlysituation I can think you’d do it is while in a full-screen app or game that doesn’t minimize or alt-tab well. The RSS reader is adequate, but only displays one story at a time. You’d really have to try hard to make use of this thing.

Where’s my bandwidth monitor for uTorrent? Where’s my ammo readout in Counter-Strike or my mini-map in Assassin’s Creed? Of course, it’s on the game and app developers to make that happen, but it’s on Logitech to press them on it. If Logitech is going to roll something like this out, they needed to roll out big or customers are going to see that they’re paying for a fantasy device.

So unfortunately, that’s the G19’s primary selling point, and it’s not very convincing. Maybe in a year there will be more support for it, or a touchscreen, or what have you, but at the moment it’s just not worth it. But what about the rest of the keyboard?

The G19 is, aside from the screen, a very competent keyboard. The keys are big, well-spaced, and have a pleasant resistance to them. They seem to project further from the base than other keyboards, but I have been using the very flat Lycosa for months, so that could just be a bad comparator. The backlighting is the best I’ve seen, and covers the entire rainbow; you can set colors to profiles so you know which you’re in. All illumination turns off with the touch of a button so you don’t have to fiddle with anything if you want a blackout while you watch a movie.

Like the G19’s predecessor, the G15, you’ve got macro keys on the left side and a hard profile switcher — work, play, movie editing, or what have you. Plus, like most gaming keyboards, it detects games you start and will automatically launch a macro/key profile. The macro editor worked well and I use it for blogging shortcuts (inserting image code, signatures, etc) and that sort of thing. I’m not a big macro user but if you are I think you’d enjoy this. The macro keys themselves (G1-G12) are easily available and organized into little blocks of four, excellent for finding without looking (the F-keys are also blocked, thank god).

So what we’ve got here is a failure to launch. The LCD screen has a lot of potential but is only used for mundane tasks which have no real reason to be on there, or at least don’t justify the cost. Other than that, it’s a great keyboard. I enjoy typing on it, the macros are handy and responsive, and everything works perfectly well. It’s just not worth dropping $200 on because it has a screen. Logitech makes great keyboards, and you’d be better off going with another one, at least until this one has adequate support from the community and industry.

We were big fans of Logitech"s two-color LCD-equipped G15 gaming keyboard, but we can"t say we find that the addition of a color screen justifies the $200 price tag for the updated G19 model. Yes, it"s neat to put a full-color image or even a video up on the screen while you"re playing a game (imagine watching YouTube clips during a long griffin ride in World of Warcraft, without alt-tabbing out). With time, the G19 user-developed software library might even come to thrive like it did for the G15. But with relatively few color-specific apps available even a few months after its release, we can"t recommend spending more than twice the price of the G15 for the G19"s color screen and a few design tweaks. Until the software comes around, the G19 is mostly a well-designed, expensive novelty for the PC gaming elite.

Logitech"s $200 G19 Gaming Keyboard boasts a built-in color LCD with exciting capabilities, as well as lots of little improvements over previous models. But with few apps--thus far--that take advantage of the screen in a meaningful way, the G19"s potential remains largely untapped. Until the community software effort gets rolling, we can"t recommend spending this much on a keyboard that, while flashy, has yet to realize its full potential.

Setting aside the screen for a moment, the G19 keyboard itself is only slightly more impressive than the most recent version of the G15. The core key design provides the same crisp keystrokes, with the same 12 "G" keys on the left edge. As with the G15, the G19 gives you three different switchable modes, so you end up with 36 effective customizable keys, along with on-the-fly macro recording. Logitech also includes another hallmark of its G-series keyboards, a switch that lets you disable the dedicated "Windows" key, so you don"t accidentally switch to your desktop screen during gameplay with an errant key press.

New to this model (aside from the color LCD) is its capability to recognize five simultaneous key presses. Macro-happy gamers and digital artists, in particular, should appreciate that feature, which opens up a greater level of mastery to run repetitive commands. We"re also glad to see that the G19 now has two powered USB 2.0 jacks. The G15 is stuck with USB 1.1, which is not as fast. Anyone who regularly transfers large amounts of data between a PC and a portable storage device or media player will benefit from that added bandwidth.

Other features include a smart drum-style volume control above the G19"s number pad, on top of which you"ll also find a set of easily accessible media play controls. As before, the G19 ties into iTunes, Windows Media Center, and other media software apps. Last but not least among the new, non-LCD-related highlights is the option to select from 16 million different colors for the backlit keys. You customize the colors through the only-somewhat-intuitive Logitech Profile software, which lets you tie three different colors to the three mode buttons for the programmable "G" keys. We wish it had a dedicated button to scroll through at least a few preset colors, though. We also wish Logitech would consolidate its configuration software into one application. Instead you have to bounce around between the G-series Key Profiler for setting up the G keys, and a separate LCD Manager app for the built-in screen. Which brings us, finally, to the color LCD.

As with the G15, the G19 provides you with a secondary display, ostensibly to minimize the number of times you switch out of a game to the Windows desktop to check the time, your in-box, or get other information. Unlike the G15"s two-tone model, the G19 gets full color output and a larger 320x240 screen size. Logitech includes 11 different applications you can use on the screen of the G19, among them a clock, a system performance monitor, an RSS reader, photo and video players, and an app that lets you play YouTube videos. All of those programs have option screens--accessible through both the LCD Manager software and through a set of screen menu controls on the keyboard itself--that let you change content source folders and make other adjustments.

The G19 also comes with built-in support for 46 PC games, and four different applications, including Ventrilo, the popular third-party voice chat software favored by many PC gamers. "Support" for those various titles means essentially that the screen will display different information, such as character stats and ammunition counts. We haven"t tried every game on the list, many of which are outdated, but we never found the game-specific information that handy during gameplay. We can see a few possibilities that would make the LCD screen more useful, such as giving you an extra inventory screen or showing an in-game map, but we haven"t seen those kinds of features implemented in the handful of titles we"ve tried. We do, however, like the Ventrilo plug-in that lets you know who"s talking, which can be useful if you don"t know everyone in your World of Warcraft guild by voice.

Potentially more exciting is that, as with the G15, Logitech also includes a software development kit for the G19"s LCD. It took a while for the enthusiast community to embrace the G15"s kit, but once it did, all kinds of mini apps became available for public download. We don"t expect the G19"s software library to have blossomed in the three months since the keyboard"s release, but without a critical mass of homemade applications, it"s hard for us to say what kinds of programs might come from the community. You can use some of the homebrewed G15 apps on the G19, but not all of them work on the new color screen. We also can"t help but wonder what effect the G19"s high price will have on the adoption rate among the enthusiast community. If fewer people buy the G19, that will surely affect the amount of collective effort behind any software development.