Drevo Gramr V2 Review – CHEAP 84 Key 75% Keyboard!
|I’ve reviewed the standard Drevo Gramr not all that long ago and loved using it, it’s insanely low price tag combined with good build quality and a reasonable typing feel made it a no brainer to recommend. This, then, is a bit of an upgrade. But it comes at a price, £50 instead of £35. Is it worth it? Lets find out. But first, if you haven’t already, consider subscribing for more videos like this one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Let me give you the highlights. This is an 84 key, 75% mechanical keyboard that uses USB C to connect, technically has RGB although you’d be hard pressed to see it, and uses TTC switches. You can get it with Black, Blue, Brown or Red switches, I’ve gone for browns as they are still my personal favourite from the Cherry MX set, and offers an easily legible font on the key caps, plus MAC support with subscript printing for option and command.
The keyboard is a US layout meaning a short enter key, backslash being above the enter, hash being on SHIFT+3 and @ being on SHIFT+2. As a Brit, this is a little frustrating, although I can get used to it relatively quickly since I review a fair number of laptops with USA layout keyboards. There are a few quirks to it being a smaller keyboard, namely that it still has a full size arrow key set which is excellent, along with delete, home, end, page up, page down, pause and print screen, only skipping insert and scroll lock. I could pretty happily get used to this layout.
Typing feel is pretty good. I’m no connoisseur of mechanical key switches so your mileage may vary, but beyond the relatively loud clack when typing – have a listen – it’s not bad. I didn’t have much trouble typing with it and the tactile bump in the switch was pretty nice for me. The height worked well, although if you want to lift it a little they do include magnetic feet you can stick on the bottom to lift it – a bit of a strange design but they held well and didn’t move when typing or gaming so if it works right…
Speaking of gaming, that was great. As with all keyboards, there isn’t all that much you can get wrong with it to make the gaming experience unpleasant, so there isn’t much to mark this down for. It felt responsive enough, I personally like the tactile bump, and at least for me anyway felt pretty comfortable – something I’d be happy to game on for extended sessions without much difficulty.
There are a few more bells and whistles to this model, namely it’s lighting and USB hub. Starting with the latter, next to the USB Type C port on the back is 2 USB A ports. It’s only a USB 2 hub unfortunately, but if you want to plug your mouse, headset and keyboard in with just one cable this lets you nicely.
As for the lighting, that’s pretty dim. If I turn out all the studio lights you can see it reasonably, but in the light it’s a little hard to make out. You do have some controls for it using FN and the arrow keys, although the slow rainbow cycle mode is actually quite nice even if a little hard to see.
So, is it worth the extra over the Gramr V1? Honestly, I don’t think so. The Outemu switches in the V1 are fine, it still has the same layout and you can get it with RGB backlighting if you want. If you end up with the V2 you are still going to have a great time for sure, but I’d probably buy the white backlit version of the V1 and have an equally decent time for £15 less. Once the V1 isn’t available this is a great go-to and still ridiculously cheap compared to the ‘name brand’ options.