When searching for the best gaming keyboard we keep an eye out for features, feel and value for money. Each of the gaming keyboards in this guide deliver on these three points, though we've focused on various price points to cater for any sort of budget.
The best gaming keyboard right now is the Asus ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless. It excels in every aspect—superb mechanical feel and a full-size yet compact design. But if you want to go for something cheaper, we've been absolutely blown away by the G.Skill KM250 RGB, which is easily the best budget gaming keyboard in 2024.
One vital aspect of any gaming keyboard purchase is whether to pick a mechanical keyboard. Generally, we'd say it's always worthwhile considering a mechanical switch over a membrane one. They feel much better for typing and gaming and they're generally quicker. Though nowadays we're seeing more and more specialised switches, such as Hall effect, optical and even induction, which are becoming great picks for competitive gamers due to features like rapid trigger.
There are few keyboard enthusiasts as enthusiastic as our Jacob. He's been professionally testing for many years now, and has been collecting mechanical key switches like Smaug hoarded gold for years before that. Whether it's Hall effect or straight mechanical, he's poked and prodded more keyboards and switches than any one man should, and is our expert on all things keeb.
The quick list
The best overall
The Strix Scope II 96 may have a ridiculous name but it's still a dream to game and type on. Silky smooth switches and clever media keys make this the best gaming keyboard right now.
The best budget
The KM250 is an outstanding entry-level gaming keyboard, with the versatility to become almost an enthusiast typing board for less than the price of the cheapest barebones kit.
The best mid-range
Gaming keyboards are soaring in price these days, but not all. We've a few budget picks in this guide, though for just a little more you can score this fantastic Ducky. It's mechanical, lit up like the fourth of July, and extremely sturdy.
The best tenkeyless
With a superb build quality and delectable typing feel (seriously, that's not hyperbole), the Keychron Q3 Max is easily the most drool-worthy tenkeyless (TKL) keyboard we've tested.
The best compact
Mountain has taken all it's learnt from its first keyboards and created the best-feeling, most usable 60% gaming keyboard I've ever used. It's solid, reliable, responsive, and offers the best typing experience around.
The best rapid trigger
The Wooting Two HE uses the magic of magnets to deliver a gaming keyboard like no other. There's a whole bunch of flexibility here, a great app, and superb build quality. So yes, I'm absolutely a fan.
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The best budget wireless
A handy entry-level mechanical board with a good build and set of features. The Keychron manages to deliver wireless connectivity for a fraction of the price of most others.
The best ergonomic
If you want to prioritise your health and posture while typing, you'd better opt for an ergo board. Luckily, that doesn't mean sacrificing any important gaming features, thanks to the Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB's blend of both.
The best low profile
A snappy and responsive compact keyboard, the ROG Falchion RX Low Profile comes with lovely lubed switches to make gaming and typing a joy.
The best membrane
If instead of a mechanical board you prefer the squishy flaoom of a membrane, this is for you. It's a solid, no-frills, nice-looking keyboard that's the best membrane option we've tested.
The quietest keyboard
Thanks to a unique key design and its own capacitive switches, the Realforce R2 is sort of a hybrid of mechanical and membrane keyboards. The good news is that it feels great to type on, and is as quiet as a church mouse.
Recent updates
This guide was updated on August 14, 2024 to freshen up the review copy and to add the Topre Realforce R2 as the quietest gaming keyboard. The "also tested" section was also rebuilt to make it clearer to read.
The best gaming keyboard
✅ You want the smoothest typing experience: With lubed switches out of the box you don't need to waste any energy with a pot of lube and a paint brush in order to get an immaculate typing experience.
✅ You want the best generalist gaming keyboard: You can find faster keyboards, and definitely flashier ones, but the ROG Strix Scope II 96 is by far the best generalist board and excels at a lot.
❌ You want speed or analog features: As fast as most other mechanical keyboards, nowadays you can find faster keyboards than this using Hall effect or optical switches.
The best gaming keyboard is the Asus ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless. It's rare that a keyboard is such an all-round joy to use as this is. There are faster, smarter, even cheaper boards—you'll find all of those recommendations below—but the Strix Scope II 96 Wireless brings together many of the features we're looking for in a modern gaming keyboard.
Firstly, some of the smoothest mechanical switches in the biz. You can pick between ROG-branded NX Snow or NX Storm switches in this board. I've been using the Snow switches, which are your regular linear dealio with an actuation force of 45g, though the Storm switches are a moderately heavier tactile option. These switches alone aren't anything special, but a little lube goes a long way.
A drop of lube on every mechanical key switch makes a surprising amount of difference to the typing experience. Each key press is smooth, consistent, and every thwack produces a glorious clack. This lube is already pre-applied to each switch, which saves you the hassle of opening each one and applying it yourself. We've done that before and it can get messy.
Both of the available switches actuate at 1.8mm, which is pretty snappy, though not quite as snappy as the Corsair K70 Max at its lowest adjustable actuation point of 0.4mm. Similarly, the Strix Scope's polling rate is a mere 1000Hz—slower than the K70 Max at 8000Hz. Not that I noticed that in-game—the Scope II 96 feels extremely responsive.
It's also relatively quiet. The sound of the linear switches reduced to a light pitter-patter by the sound dampening foam, sturdy PBT plastic keycaps, and switch pads. Lubed up, sturdy stabilisers also keep the larger keys, namely the spacebar, quiet.
You are able to swap out any of the NX Snow switches on this keyboard for keys of your choosing. However, if you don't replace them with lubed switches I will personally hunt you down. Don't do the Scope II dirty like that.
The Scope II 96 is nearly a full-size board—it importantly retains a full numpad—though it's been squished down into a more compact chassis. As a result, the delete key is further away from your pinky than normal. It takes some getting used to, but I've been tapping away on it for a couple of weeks now and I feel I've got typing on the Scope II 96 down to a fine art.
Still, it's been a long time since I've been blown away by a gaming keyboard—so many seemed carbon copies of what Corsair did 10 years ago—but the Scope II 96 is mighty impressive. It focuses on nailing the actual mechanics of a mechanical gaming keyboard. Importantly, it's also great for gaming and doesn't cost anywhere near as much as its smaller, more premium sibling, the ROG Azoth.
Read our full Asus ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless review.
The best budget gaming keyboard
✅ You're looking for the best on a tight budget: With features galore and many unexpected additions for this sort of price tag, we've not seen anything better for less.
❌ You want the best typing experience out of the box: Without some of the more high-end materials in used in the casing of this keyboard, the typing experience can be a little hollow.
Mechanical gaming keyboards can cost a fortune. The G.Skill KM250 RGB's best skill is that it doesn't. That's why it is our pick for the best budget gaming keyboard in 2024. It's nowhere close to costing a fortune, yet it still offers mechanical switches, per-key RGB, hot-swappable keys, and discrete media controls.
The G.Skill KM250 redefines what it means to be a budget gaming keyboard. Features that were once enthusiast only are right here, for just $40. During a time when PC peripheral prices generally appear to only be increasing, that's important.
If you're after a good compact board you honestly don't need more than what's being offered here. A simple and small frame with Kailh linear mechanical switches, it's a no-nonsense design if ever there was one. Though you'll be pleased to know that it retains one fan-favorite feature: per-key RGB backlighting.
If you prefer you can jam in some higher-end switches and create a lovely little semi-custom build inside the G.Skill KM250 chassis. It is obviously lacking the high-end luxury of sound dampening and super-fancy stabilisers, but those are reasonable compromises to make for such a supremely cheap keyboard. And honestly, we've experienced far worse stabilisers on expensive NZXT and Razer keyboards in the past.
The included Kailh switches are not bad, but definitely not great and, combined with the plastic chassis you do end up with quite a hollow-sounding typing experience.
But, having changed out the linear Kailh Red switches for a set of Halo True heavy tactile switches, the difference in the sound is clear. It's not the ultra rich-sounding experience of using the Mountain Everest 60 or Asus ROG Azoth, but it now feels great to type on, dampening or no. It's also at most half the price if you include fancy new switches, and if you've got a headset on you'd be hard pressed to feel the difference.
The board layout itself is pretty standard 65%, which makes for a few more useful keys than a 60%. There's a little bit of spacing between the bulk of the keys and the cursors, and you also get separate Del, PgUp, and PgDn buttons, too. A neat selection.
And a discrete volume wheel. It's a genuinely lovely little extra we wouldn't have necessarily expected on such an affordable board. It's not just volume up and down, as there's a click down to it which will mute or unmute your audio as well.
We've been genuinely impressed with the package as a whole, and if you want a proper mechanical keyboard experience without paying enthusiast money, the G.Skill KM250 is an outstanding option.
Read our full G.Skill KM250 RGB review.
The best mid-range gaming keyboard
Gaming keyboards are getting more and more expensive—looking at you, ROG Azoth Extreme. That's why we love this keyboard from Ducky; it's surprisingly affordable. The Ducky Zero 6108 gives us everything we're after and all for under $100/£100, an easy pick as the best mid-range gaming keyboard.
Ducky is pretty well known in the gaming keyboard world for producing sensible, reliable and sturdy keebs. The Zero 6108 might be the best modern example of that design mentality.
Take this thing out of the box and you'll be greeted with a fairly standard looking gaming keyboard. It's full-size, though there are some extra media keys along the top right. Each cluster of keys has been slightly squished together to save on a bit of room, though it's still a pretty big keyboard by comparison to, say, the Q3 Max or Mountain Everest 60.
Each switch is adorned with a PBT keycap—these generally last longer than ABS—and most come pre-applied with lube. If you're noticing a pattern in this guide, that I'm mentioning lube a lot, it's because it really feels like the biggest improvement we've seen in gaming keyboards in a little while now, outside of perhaps Rapid Trigger for competitive gamers.
The Cherry MX2A switches included on the Zero 6108 are great. They're the Cherry switches we've come to know and love over the years, much improved for 2024. The MX2A Blue switches we reviewed don't actually have any lube applied, though they're less for gamers than the Red or Brown switches, which do. Our reviewer Reece has plenty of good things to say about the new Blue switch, and we've tried the new Red switch within the Cherry Xtrfy K5V2 and have plenty of good things to say about those, too.
To say the Zero 6108 comes with few frills would be wrong. There's per-key RGB lighting and you can get it in a gorgeous white finish like the one we looked at for review. The RGB can be controlled via the board itself, too, to save on unnecessary apps clogging up your PC.
What's most surprising about the Zero 6108 is its wireless connectivity. We've seen some manufacturers ramp up prices for the inclusion of wireless 2.4 or Bluetooth connectivity, and yet others, such as Ducky and Keychron, seem averse to raising prices all that much for it. That's fantastic news for this Zero 6108, which feels reasonably priced even without the wireless connectivity.
So, new switches, full-size, RGB lighting, media controls... and it's from a respectable brand with a good reputation for long-lasting products? Yeah, you can see why the Ducky Zero 6108 ranks so highly for us.
Read our full Ducky Zero 6108 review.
The best tenkeyless gaming keyboard
✅ You want the complete package: I've tried many tenkeyless keyboards over the years, and none get so much right like the Keychron Q3 Max.
❌ You are looking for affordable excellence: The Q3 Max delivers excellence, but it's far from affordable.
A delightful typing experience wrapped in a weighty block of aluminum, the best tenkeyless gaming keyboard has to be the Keychron Q3 Max.
Don't be fooled into thinking the tenkeyless (TKL) gaming keyboard market isn't as competitive as the full-size one. It absolutely is. We've tested heaps of excellent TKL boards over the past few months alone, such as the Razer Huntsman V3 Pro TKL and ROG Azoth—two fantastic keyboards from big names in the industry. and still we've come away most impressed by the Q3 Max.
Keychron isn't a household name, though with more boards like this, and the K2 below, it's going to make one helluva name for itself.
The Q3 Max is crafted out of a piece of thick, machined aluminum. It weighs a whopping 2.045 kg as a result. Don't be put off by that, however. We often find heavier keyboards are sturdier and offer a much improved typing experience over lighter, flimsier boards.
That's the case here. The Q3 Max is a dream to type on. The many layers making up its construction include sound dampening foam, film, a latex pad and more foam. This produces a steady and consistent typing experience that's on another level next to some.
And the sound of it. The Q3 Max sounds divine.
One of the key benefits of a TKL keyboard is that it takes up less room than a full-size keeb. That means lopping off the numpad, hence the name, and usually losing other extraneous features, such as dedicated media keys. However, we've seen a growing trend for keyboard manufacturers of stuffing some sort of media controls elsewhere, and that's exactly what Keychron has done here.
The Q3 Max comes with a knob, otherwise known as a dial, which offers volume up/down, or zoom in/out, or brightness up/down, or a whole lot more. It's whatever you want it to be, within reason, and changeable via the open source QMK firmware keymap tool, Launcher. Launcher is available to use via a browser, which is pretty neat.
Each key on the Q3 Max is fitted with an RGB backlight, which is also controllable via that same dial and the onboard shortcut keys. There are three switches to choose from: Gateron Jupiter Red, Brown and Banana. All three come pre-lubed, which means like the ROG Strix Scope II 96, they're slick to type on.
With wireless functionality across 2.4 GHz via a provided dongle and Bluetooth, or a wired USB Type-C connection, you have a pick of options for connectivity. The battery is a good 180 hours on paper with the backlight disabled, or 100 hours with it on, and in practice we rarely had to reach for the USB cable to charge the Q3 Max.
Though it does cost a fair chunk of cash, which is to be somewhat expected, but doesn't make it sting any less. At least you can be sure you're getting your money's worth. A simply fantastic TKL gaming keyboard and office hero, the Keychron Q3 Max really is the complete package.
Read our Keychron Q3 Max review.
The best compact gaming keyboard
✅ You have a small desk: You can save heaps of room by trimming down your gaming keyboard. More room to flick your mice around or just fill with figurines.
❌ You're stuck in your ways: It might seem silly but compact keyboards often require learning new typing tricks to do everything you're used to. If you're an old dog and don't want to learn new tricks, stick to a full-size or near full-size board.
The Mountain Everest 60 is the best compact gaming keyboard, and, if we may be so bold, cute as hell. It has all the enthusiast keyboard extras you could want, but crucially has the total utility to be your daily driver of a keeb.
Mountain isn't the first to create modular keyboards—Asus even made its own years back—but it's the first to get it right. Offering a solid, secure fit for the modular components, as well as multiple mounting options, makes the whole setup actually useful and not just some marketing gimmick. On its own, though, the Everest 60 isn't modular, but there is a dedicated numpad that can be purchased separately, and it's hot-swappable. Crucially, for me, it will also attach to either side of the board.
If you're still rocking a numpad on the right-hand side of your gaming keyboard then you're just plain doing it wrong. The key benefit of a smaller keeb is that your mouse and WSAD hands are closer together, and switching the numpad to the left means you still get to use the extra buttons and the extra desktop real estate for your gaming rodent.
The tiny right shift key does take some getting used to, but the addition of the cursor keys makes a huge difference to the overall utility of the Everest 60. But that's not the only reason we've fallen in love with the board, however: this thing just oozes quality.
The base of the keyboard has a layer of silicone inside it, to add weight and dampen the sound, but then there are also two layers of foam, on either side of the PCB, to again improve the aural experience. Mountain has used genuine Cherry stabilisers on the board, too, but has made sure they're fitted and lubed properly for the Everest 60 to ensure there's no rattle on even the broad spacebar.
And we've been impressed with the Mountain mechanical keyboard switches the company is shipping inside the Everest 60 for the first time. Mountain is also selling them separately, in Tactile 55 (denoting the 55cN force needed for actuation), Linear 45, and Linear 45 Speed (which have a shorter travel and actuation point). We've been using the Tactile 55 in our sample, and they feel great. Really stable, responsive, and factory lubed—so there's none of the grittiness you can sometimes get from a tactile switch.
All this good keeb stuff does come at a price, however. And the numpad accessory is extra. There are some bundles packaging the two together, and ones that include the colourful new PBT keycap range, which can make it a bit cheaper. But not by much.
Read our full Mountain Everest 60 review.
The best rapid trigger gaming keyboard
✅ You want to heavily customise your keeb: There's no shortage of customisation options on the Wooting. From actuation points to double-function key presses, it's all changeable in the excellent app.
❌ You want the best mechanical feel: The Wooting's Lekker switches are lovely, but you can find smoother switches elsewhere.
The Wooting Two HE is the best rapid trigger gaming keyboard. What the heck does that mean? It means this keyboard employs Hall effect switches to its benefit in competitive games. By measuring when a user releases a key and 'resetting' it faster than would be possible on a standard mechanical switch, this keyboard can improve a user's response time in games like Valorant and Counter Strike.
You need to know how a traditional mechanical switch works before you can truly appreciate rapid trigger.
Take a Cherry MX Red switch, for example. This will require a set amount of travel (2 mm) and a set actuation force (45 cN) to hit the operating position. This is when the switch's metal contacts meet one another and a signal is sent through the keyboard to your PC and a key press is registered. After which, the switch travels back up and hits a reset point just about the operating position. None of this can be changed as it's based on the mechanical parts within the switch. You could, however, buy different mechanical switches for a different mix of actuation force, travel and reset.
A Hall effect switch is different. There's a magnet within the stem of every Lekker switch, and by measuring the magnetic force of that magnet as it moves, through a Hall effect sensor on the keyboard's PCB, the Wooting Two HE is able to accurately track the full depression and return of the mechanical switch. Since this isn't predetermined by the switch itself, a user is able to adjust the operating position and reset point accordingly in a keyboard's firmware.
Other switch types are able to do this, too, including optical and induction. Though right now, we feel Wooting does it best.
Rapid trigger is a feature that intuitively changes the reset point based on each key press. So, when you press a key, the reset point is always engaged the moment you release it. This means you can then depress the key again without having to fully release it each time.
For competitive games, that extra time saved on every key press can be pretty important.
The Wooting Two HE also offers fully-analog controls on each key, which used to be its headline feature before rapid trigger took off in the world of esports. Other cool features include dual actuation and easily adjustable typing and gaming modes.
Wooting generally does a great job of living up to expectations in other ways, too. The keyboard is solid, well-built, and comes with a two-year warranty. If a switch breaks, you can swap it out, as the board is hot-swappable. That's one benefit of there not really being all that many mechanical moving parts with a magnetic Lekker switch, and another is that there's less to break in the first place.
That's what we've loved about every Wooting keyboard we've looked at so far, and no more so than the Wooting Two HE: they're not built on a great concept; they deliver it. Even if you think you're sold on the analog movement of the Wooting, and it can be limited in scope depending on your preferred games and genres, there are many other great reasons to love it beyond that.
Read our full Wooting Two HE review.
