Review: Bloody B720 Light Strike Mechanical Gaming Keyboard

• March 26, 2017
• James Skemp
• review

The following is a review of the Bloody B720 Light Strike Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, received as part of the Amazon Vine program.

Questionable Spacebar, But Otherwise Quite Nice

When I was building my gaming rig a few years ago I picked up a Logitech G710+ Mechanical Gaming Keyboard. That was my first mechanical keyboard, and still works great, but I don’t do too much PC gaming these days.

So when I had the opportunity to review Bloody’s B720 Light Strike Mechanical Gaming Keyboard I opted to take it to work, especially since the keyboard I had there was showing its age.

I’ve now been using it there since March 1st, and save one issue, quite like it.

First, I haven’t used/attached the included wrist rest, I switched out the eight silicone keys, and I didn’t download the extra software. For work purposes the silicone keys aren’t required, and I’ve never been a fan of WASD gaming. The included key puller worked fantastically well.

The extra software leads to a longer discussion. Out of the box the backlighting on the keys can be switched from off to a few different intensities. By default it will also enter ‘demo mode’ after a few minutes of inactivity.

As a developer there’s extended periods of time when I’ll be navigating through pages via my mouse, with no need to interact with the keyboard. For the first few days I was mesmerized by the patterns the keys would take when it was in this mode, but rather quickly the novelty ran off and I my eyes weren’t drawn to it. However, this isn’t to say that I grew sick of it, since I haven’t gone out of my way to install the extra software to switch this off. If you’re easily distracted, or foresee that this could be an issue, know that a software install will be required.

I don’t know if the demo mode would impact the lifetime of the keyboard, but I did find that the lights do need to be on to see which key is which letter. I type everyday, and given a keyboard with all the keys taken off, could put it back together 95+% of the way (num pad and lock keys might cause some trouble), this isn’t an issue.

With the Logitech G710+ the keys are a single color, but with the Bloody B720 each row of keys is a set color. I actually don’t care either way, but actually like the different colors. Would I like to be able to set them all to a solid color? Yes. But not a big deal.

The only thing I don’t like about the B720 is the spacebar. It just doesn’t feel as solid as the other keys, and when I’m really going I feel like it doesn’t trigger when it should. More usage may fix this, or may help determine why it is that I feel this way. Since the spacebar is used so much for gaming, and this is a gaming keyboard, I wouldn’t have expected this to be a key with issues.

It sounds like a mechanical keyboard, but if you’re looking for one you realize that that means it’ll be louder than a non-mechanical one. I have my own office so this isn’t an issue for me.

Ultimately, I would have loved for the ability to control the ‘demo mode’ via the keyboard itself, without a software install. I’m also ‘worried’ about the performance of the spacebar. Otherwise, I really like this keyboard, and give Bloody’s B720 Light Strike Mechanical Gaming Keyboard a solid 4.5 of 5 stars. Since Amazon requires full stars, until I know what the spacebar is going to do, I’ll therefore give it four stars.

• review