I have found this to be a perfect place to plug in my mouse and USB drives when needed without having to climb under my desk to having to mess with cables running all over my desk. I love that the include the two USB ports on the side of all of the Das Keyboards.
The Das Silent still felt less difficult to push than the Steel Series Sgv2 that we recently reviewed. Although It could easily be in my head, the Cherry Browns are slightly harder to push making the original keys feel “lighter” when typing. When typing I found myself missing the standard Das slightly.
When using the included PS/2 adapter you have full N key rollover, perfect for those heated firefights. When gaming I found the Das Silent to be quick, responsive, and reliable. Using the Das Silent from day to day I quickly adjusted to the new keyswitch and lack of clicking sound. Like our last Das review I put the keyboard through both Office and gaming testing including typing out this review. The G19 is the third keyboard back, the silent Das Keyboard is in the middle, and we have the normal Das Keyboard nearest to the camera.
In this video we have a Logitech G19, Das Keyboard Model S Pro and the Das Keyboard Model S Pro Silent. Rather than waste both of our time I have put together a quick video. I could write paragraph after paragraph about the differences in sound performance between the two Das keyboards and you still might not understand. Because of that they were used in the Das Silent. The Cherry Browns have a standard mechanism without anything to add an additional click. You can see a good example of how it works at the following link. A Cherry MX Blue switch uses what they call a “Mexican Jumping Bean” mechanism to give it that distinctive click. Both switches look very similar from the outside other than the different colors used on them. The normal uses a Cherry MX Blue Mechanical switch while the Silent comes with Cherry MX Brown Mechanical switches. Popping one of the keycaps you can see what’s behind the difference between the normal and silent versions. We will find out if that affects performance in our testing later though. Oddly enough, when using the flip out feet you only have two rubber legs on the table the feet don’t have a rubber grip. To angle the keyboard up, you have two flip down flaps on the back corners to raise the back up just over a half inch. On the bottom of the keyboard you have four inch and a half long rubber strips to keep the board from moving while typing.
As a gamer this is a little disappointing because having the function key in place of the windows key prevented us from bumping the windows key mid game. After doing a little research I found that the media key version is no longer available at all. The silent version is lacking the function key along with the media keys. The non-silent version includes media keys and a function key in place of the left side windows key. When comparing the Model S Professional Silent to the Model S Professional that we covered before there are a few differences other than the obvious difference in mechanical switch used. Unlike the Model M the Das Keyboard includes the windows key though.
The key layout is a traditional one with a single height enter key, similar to the Model M. The entire keyboard is made out of a dust and finger print collecting glossy finish. The new design is a little more stylish than the original. The original Das Keyboard had the standard Model M design but the Model S is a little different.