HP Pavilion Gaming Keyboard 500 (3VN40AA)

Mechanics at the price of a membrane keyboard

The idea of mechanical keyboards for gamers has been in the air for a long time, but it turns out to be expensive, so manufacturers are in no hurry to make progress. And the more interesting was the announcement of the HP Pavilion Gaming Keyboard 500, which promised real mechanics at the price of a high-quality membrane keyboard.

Shooter classics

The keyboard itself is made in the usual Skeleton design. The plastic of the base is matte and rough, during the game the fingers do not slip and do not move out even if the room is very hot. The set of keys is standard, there are 104 of them in total, there are no additional gaming buttons. This is partially offset by a proprietary utility that allows you to hang game macros on the F1 — F12 buttons, such as changing weapons or magic attacks. What is convenient, for each game you can create your own profile with macros, and all settings are saved in the cloud and are available on any computer.

Switches from Gateron

The question arises, what then saved? Instead of switches from Cherry HP, copies from Gateron are used. These are the most famous, popular, and community-favorite Cherry MX clones that provide the same tactile feel, but with slightly smoother key travel. The problem is that the stem on the Gateron dangles more noticeably than on the Cherry, which can make typing on tactile and clicky switches particularly annoying. In addition to this, the Pavilion Gaming Keyboard 500 does not have a Russian-language layout. So in all respects this is an option purely for games, typing texts on it is inconvenient from the word “absolutely”. Well, the backlight here is purely monochromatic with 4 different colours and a minimum of customization options. But it is green, not red like everyone else, and with individual illumination of each key.