Logitech G413 TKL SE
Rating: ★★★
REVIEWED BY MICHAEL ROBERTSON
Mechanical keyboards are fun. They’re tactile, a bit loud, and great to use.
Unfortunately, a lot of mechanical keyboards are rather expensive as they have a lot of features, some of which I can see not being useful to a lot of people. This is where the G413 comes in, a neat little budget keyboard, stripping a mechanical keyboard back down to its bare essentials. Keys, some LEDs, and nice clicking.
The Logitech G413 SE is a TKL or TenKeyless keyboard, which comes without a numpad, in exchange for a cheaper price point. I was never a huge fan of these; the full size keyboards are more my style, but I can understand the uselessness of a numpad to those who aren’t accountants.
Unlike other mechanical keyboards, the sound that the G413 makes when typing is rather quiet. I dare say it would be fine in an office setting, only slightly louder than a conventional membrane keyboard. The brown switches inside are quieter than other mechanical switches, which contribute to this. It initially felt weird to type with as I was more used to a more tactile click and less friction when the keyboard registered a key, rather than the quieter thunk and coarse feeling of the G413 SE. I found myself pressing a little harder than I should have in the first few hours, but adapted quickly and found myself enjoying the experience.
The keyboard has all of the media controls that a modern laptop has. Adjusting volume, or stopping and skipping music, is easily done via holding the FN key and then pressing one of function keys. In low light however, the media controls are not visible, as they have no backlight themselves, which I found to be quite a problem during my late night gaming sessions.
The keyboard lacks any customisation or macro features like Logitech’s other, up-market models, with all of the changes you can make via software limited to the lighting, which you can swap between five different modes. You also only have white lighting - not an issue for me, but if you like lots of pretty colours then you are going to be sorely disappointed. The key-caps are almost invisible when the backlight isn’t on, essentially mandating the use of it even in bright light.
While the keyboard looks nice with an aluminium base, I almost would have preferred a plastic one, if it meant that the money could have been spent towards using it without the backlight, or exchanging the rubber cable with a braided one for longevity.
Despite the lack of features and slightly underwhelming construction, the strength of this keyboard comes in its price. Its one of the cheapest mechanical keyboards on offer from Logitech, and is a decent choice if you want to dip your toes into the mechanical keyboard world without spending hundreds of dollars. However, I’d call this keyboard more of a jumping-on point, rather than something you’ll want to use for years. It’s not the best, but if it gets you into mechanical keyboards, then maybe it’s done its job.
