Genius Scorpion K20 Review - ComputerShopper.com
Fat price tags often dissuade new PC gamers from the peripherals they lust after—today, especially, in keyboards of the elite class. Mechanical key switches add plenty to the price. (Tricked-out mechanical gaming keyboards often top $100 or $150.) And RGB lighting and advanced software utilities bring their own costs. Fortunately, veteran keyboard maker Genius, which has specialized in affordable PC peripherals since 1985, now offers a roster of seven budget-friendly keyboards within its GX Gaming line. These are positioned to be long on features but low on price compared to conventional gaming keyboards. We've seen a few of them over the years, most recently the Genius GX Gaming Manticore, which we reviewed a couple of years back and which remains, improbably, on the market here in 2017 from a few outlets.
Admittedly, there’s only so much a manufacturer can do for $30 or so, but with the Scorpion K20, Genius still provides an enjoyable gaming experience without veering way up into the usual $100-plus range for this category. You get multicolored lighting and more bling that you'd expect for the money. One thing you don't get is configuration software, however, so if you're looking for high levels of tweakability outside of what you can program from within your in-game options menus, you'll want to look a bit more upmarket.
Design
The Scorpion K20 is far from the only keyboard of its kind that Genius offers. Most models within its GX Gaming lineup pick and choose from a short list of core features, such as backlighting, multimedia keys, and anti-ghosting. Some models will have more anti-ghosting keys; others will do RGB rather than one-color backlighting, and so on. On the product page for our Scorpion K20, Genius takes care to talk up its keys: “Special keycap design provides a tougher, more resolute feeling to key presses, and has an awesome tactile feel and smooth click with each keystroke.”
These are…well, alternative facts. There’s no click, because it’s a membrane design. Normally, a tactile keyboard is one in which there is a tangible “bump” felt as the key is depressed, just before the key reaches its activation point. Membrane/rubber-dome keyboards, including those found in most notebooks, have a rather soft bump. The K20’s bump is even softer than that. Whether this feels “resolute” and “awesome,” well, awesome is in the eyes (and fingers) of the beholder. For us, the key feel was fine and functional, especially for the price, but certainly nothing special. For us, the most interesting feature in the GX line is a set of three built-in key commands that allow users to adjust the keyboard’s repeat rate by pressing Fn and one of the other top-row function keys. However, this unusual feature is shared by only two models, the Scorpion K5 and the K20 model we are examining here.
The K20’s key layout is your typical QWERTY keyboard, with the inclusion of an Fn key for alternative functions on some of the keys. (While Fn is common in advanced keyboards, it remains absent in others, including Genius’ own mainstream keyboard line.)
The K20 has two blue LED strips on the deck’s forward-facing edge, separated from each other by the GX Gaming logo. Like most models that profess to serve the gaming-keyboard market, the K20 has RGB backlighting. Ten multimedia keys flank the Genius logo along the top, with three for audio control, three for video control, and four for Search, Mail, My Computer, and Web browser functions. There are small status-indicator LEDs for Num Lock, Caps Lock, and Scroll Lock. A Win Lock is included, as well, to forestall the frustration of accidentally minimizing your game’s tab or application window with an accidental stroke of the Windows key.
The two front-facing LED strips rest at the end of a short slope that serves as a stubby wrist rest. We hesitate to call it this, since the lower edge of this slope landed right across the middle of our palm heels, well before the wrist. The ergonomically sensitive will know that this is less than optimal and will want to add a foam or gel wrist rest—which will then entirely block the LED strips. Moreover, the strips are centered in relation to the entire keyboard rather than the QWERTY key deck, so both strips remain glaringly visible during use, with one between your arms and the other to the right.
The keys all have concave tops except for the bottom row, which sports rounded tops. Viewed from the side, you get a wave-like profile reminiscent of true ergonomic keyboards that curve the deck to better accommodate finger lengths and reach. This small detail is easy to miss in conventional top-down product photos, but we did find that it made prolonged use more comfortable than flat-deck alternatives.
Conversely, we must take small exception to the unbraided cable. While this doesn’t hinder the K20’s performance, taking the keyboard to a LAN party (or, as in our case, leaving it available to a mischievous cat) could be risky due to the lack of additional cable protection. The cable is hard-wired into the keyboard, so there’s no way to remove it for safer transportation, or to replace it if it gets damaged or frayed. Then again, on a sub-$30 keyboard, damage gives you an excuse to upgrade.
For overall build quality, though, the Scorpion K20 is sturdy enough. We never got that rickety feel you sometimes get in low-end keyboards, yet it remains conveniently lightweight. And between the RGB backlighting, LED strips, and sleek, angular edging, the Scorpion K20 does make a striking first impression. Whether the aesthetics remain impressive beyond the first week will depend on you, and on how many higher-end Razer, Logitech, and Corsair keyboards you set eyes on to compare down the road.
Performance & Features
The K20’s media keys are fully functional as soon as you plug in the keyboard, no drivers necessary (or provided). Similarly, Genius dispenses with any complicated configuration software. You adjust the backlighting by holding Fn and “scrolling” through the settings with the PgUp and PgDn keys. (Tapping PgDn once changes from 100 percent brightness to 60 percent.) According to Genius, another press will have the K20 enter “breathe mode,” a setting wherein the backlighting repetitively dims and brightens slowly. Our review unit did not do this. Instead, it merely went into a dimmer mode, perhaps 40 percent of full brightness. One more press beyond this, and the backlight turned off.
These settings also affect the front-facing blue LED strips. No matter what mode we were in, though, we found that the front LED strips overpowered the key-deck backlighting. The company’s product photography does not properly capture this (we tried our best below), and we wish Genius would have implemented separate brightness controls for the strips and key backlighting.
For those new to gaming keyboards, let’s quickly recap key ghosting. Key ghosting happens when you press multiple keys at once, but some keystrokes fail to register. (Remember what used to happen when you hit multiple typewriter keys at once? It’s sort of like that.) The K20 does not have 100 percent anti-ghosting—to be expected, given its price—but it does have 26 anti-ghosting keys: WASD, the keys near WASD, and the arrow keys. These indeed we found impossible to digitally jam up.
By holding Fn in combination with the function keys, you can change the K20’s repeat rate. For example, Fn+F1 will result in 21 characters per second (the default). Fn+F2 is 30 per second, and Fn+F3 is 62 per second. The higher the repeat rate, the faster that keystrokes will be repeated when holding down a key.
While this can provide an advantage when playing fast-paced games, beware. While testing this feature during a game of Overwatch, we encountered an odd, sporadic bug. When holding down W to move forward and leave our team’s spawn room, rather than moving smoothly, we stuttered forward, as if the key were being pressed very quickly rather than held down. Reducing the repeat rate helped fix this glitch temporarily, but it happened again when holding down tilde (~) for the push-to-talk voice chat. Our voice “stuttered,” cutting rapidly in and out, thoroughly alienating everyone else in the chat.
However, the increased repeat rate did make playing reflex-intensive heroes easier due to how much more responsive key presses became during times between glitches. We found that unplugging and reconnecting the keyboard would help extend the gap between these annoying moments. We found that a repeat rate of 30 per second was the best setting to help avoid this bug. Even though we only encountered this issue once on 21 per second, the issue becomes an minor inconvenience at 30.
The Scorpion K20 lacks any macro-recording feature, another concession brought on by the absence of driver/utility software. Since this keyboard seems slanted toward entry-level gamers, most using it likely won’t need macro recording. But it may limit the unit’s appeal among some buyers, depending on their current and future gaming needs.
Also, as mentioned earlier, the K20 is not a mechanical-switch keyboard, nor is there any expectation that it should be at its price. Rather, it’s a membrane keyboard. Had we not been alerted to this fact, we might have missed it, since the feel of the K20’s switches is very similar to that of standard rubber-dome switches. Remove a key, and you’ll see the underlying bump of a continuous membrane instead of the discrete bubble of a rubber dome. Membrane keyboards tend to be less responsive than other designs, but the K20’s action feels accurate enough for most needs. It will never rival the precision of a mechanical keyboard, but it’s also less than half the price of the cheapest of them.
Ultimately, the K20’s design isn’t as spectacular as Genius promises, but its responsiveness is at least on par with that of an average rubber-dome model.
Conclusion
Does the Scorpion K20 deserve your hard-earned $30? We think so. While the K20 comes with a few notable shortcomings, its feature set stands above most competition in this price band.
The K20 offers media keys that don’t require drivers, has a responsive feel despite being a membrane keyboard, provides adjustable brightness settings, and even offers an adjustable repeat rate. Compared to other $30 keyboards, the K20’s feature set impresses. By comparison, the comparably priced Azio Levetron L70 only offers two advantages over the K20: multi-key rollover (a feature that scans keypresses independently of one another) and a volume knob.
If you can live with the few drawbacks of the Scorpion K20, then Genius has you covered with an impressive keyboard that will be as rewarding for your wallet as your game play.
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