As mechanical keyboards have bedazzled ever more gamers, almost every hardware maker has piled on—now, even the biggest dogs in the pound, like Acer.
The Predator Aethon 500 ($179.99) is a mechanical gaming keyboard that uses Kaihua Electronics' Kailh Blue switches, not to be confused with the classic MX Blue switches of Cherry descent.
This killer keyboard boasts per-key-customizable RGB lighting and able tweaking software.
Because of the switches' heritage, some gamers will be turned away by the high price, perhaps to models like our Editors' Choice Corsair K95 RGB Platinum, equipped with Cherry switches.
But the Aethon 500 does offer a decent tactile typing experience and lots of bling and gaming functionality.
It just needs a price cut.
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Blue Through and Through
Average in size for a full-layout mechanical keyboard, the Predator Aethon 500 measures 1.6 by 19 by 9.2 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.2 pounds, comparable in size to the Razer Huntsman Elite($199.99 at Amazon), the HyperX Alloy Elite RGB, and the Corsair K95 RGB Platinum.
It's a blue-and-black beauty that's uncharacteristically subtle in appearance for a Predator-branded product.
On this keyboard, the branding is limited to the word "Predator" inscribed below the spacebar, Alt, and Windows keys.
The underside is made of plastic, but the rest of the Aethon 500 feels premium thanks to its all-metal backing plate.
The accompanying wrist rest is a different story.
It's the same width as the keyboard itself, and it measures around 2.75 inches deep.
Its outer shell is wholly plastic, save rubberized non-slip pads on the base.
On its right side is the Predator emblem, bordered with static blue lines.
Some shoppers will prefer a soft, mushy-cushiony material, but the wrist rest did allow for a slight lift of my hands from the table, which does make it more comfortable than using the keyboard without the wrist rest.
Still, I'd prefer that my wrist rest feel more like a pillow than a plastic brick, especially on a keyboard that costs this much.
Back to the design of the keyboard itself.
The Predator Aethon 500 has a standard QWERTY key layout with a number pad on the right side.
Five customizable macro keys on the left can redirect to most any function (more on this later).
In the upper left-hand corner is a Predator "P" button that you can use to cycle through lighting profiles.
The WASD keys are highlighted in blue to increase their visibility.
Moreover, the Aethon 500 has four dedicated media buttons above the number pad—Back, Play/Pause, Skip, and Mute—as well as a cool Corsair-style roller for adjusting the audio volume.
Eat More Kailh? Or Cherries?
One major differentiator between the Predator Aethon 500 and the Editors' Choice Corsair K95 RGB Platinum($170.96 at Amazon) is the Aethon 500's use of Kailh Blue switches, as opposed to the K95 RGB Platinum's Cherry MX Speed or MX Brown switches.
Once the only big-time manufacturer of mechanical-keyboard switches, Cherry still reigns supreme over competitors and imitators alike.
Among the biggest of these switch-making rivals is a Chinese switch maker, Kaihua Electronics, whose Kailh switches are widely deployed in price-aggressive mechanical keyboards.
They are considered "Cherry knock-offs" by many keyboarding enthusiasts, not without justification; they emulate the various clicky or stiff textures of classic Cherry switches.
The Acer Predator Aethon 500 uses the Kailh Blue switches found in many budget mechanical keyboards, and the Kailh Blue switches are rated for 50 million keystrokes per key, the same expected lifespan as Cherry MX Blue switches.
Whether they'll hold out that long is a prospect for the ages.
What Kailh switches do is enable mechanical designs in keyboards across the price spectrum.
For example, the Havit HV-KB390L Low Profile Mechanical Keyboard, with the same Kailh Blue switches, goes for $59.99.
The Aethon 500 costs a whopping $179.99, and though you could argue that you're paying for its RGB lighting and sophisticated software, the Rosewill Neon K85 RGB has Kailh Blue switches and per-key programmable RGB lighting for $79.99, $100 less than the Aethon 500.
The "Cherry MX Blue"-style Kailh key switches under the keycaps of the Predator Aethon 500 are both clicky and tactile, with a palpable bump that you can feel 2mm deep into the 4mm keypress.
The general consensus is that these switches are best used for typing.
Because of their deep actuation point and clicky, confirming feedback, Blue switches afford accuracy while writing, letting you know when you've pressed a key and, so swear many aficionados, reducing typos.
(That said, the clicky feedback may annoy your co-workers.)
You can certainly use Blue-style switches for gaming, too, but they do take some getting used to for twitch-style gaming.
Why? It's more difficult to pull off multiple strokes of the same key in sequence than it is with, say, lighter-pressure Cherry MX Reds, the go-to key switch for gamers.
Integrating With the Software
I had to do some digging to find the Aethon 500's accompanying Predator software for this keyboard, which lets you customize the lighting and profiles.
At this writing, the software is compatible exclusively with the Acer Predator Cestus 500 mouse and the Predator Aethon 500 keyboard.
It took flipping through the manual to find this Acer link to a direct download.
Once you install the program, you open it to reveal six different menus, each with its own option sets.
From top to bottom, they are Game Profile Management, Profile 1, Button, Sensitivity, Lighting Effect, and Synchronize.
Click on Game Profile Management, and you will find five profiles that you can edit and link to an executable (EXE) file on your computer.
Click Profile 1, on the other hand, and you will be greeted with a menu that lets you switch among the various profiles you've created in Game Profile Management.
Each of these profiles encompasses macros, sensitivity settings, and lighting effects of your choosing.
The Button menu is where you can change the functions of the keyboard's dedicated macro keys.
Click on one of the five, then click the "+" symbol to create a new macro.
From there, you can record a macro of your own creation and give it a custom name.
Also in the Button menu, you can customize the function of Game Mode to disable the Alt-Tab or Alt-F4 functions, disable the Windows key, or swap the WASD-key and arrow-key functions.
You can also change the function of the N-key rollover feature to suit your needs, between six-key and all-key modes.
By enabling all-key rollover, you can ensure that each keypress is registered independently of one another.
Likewise, with six-key rollover enabled, you can press up to six keys at the same time and they will still register.
Because some older BIOSes will not recognize keypresses when N-key rollover is enabled, in some (increasingly rare) instances, engaging six-key rollover will be preferable.
To test for N-key rollover on my supported system, I pressed down 10 keys at the same time in Aqua'S KeyTest, and all registered, as shown in the screenshot below...
The Sensitivity menu in the Predator software is where you can adjust the polling rate of the keyboard.
The top setting, a 1,000Hz polling rate, means that keyboard input is updated once every millisecond.
A lower polling rate puts less pressure on your computer's performance.
That said, most modern PCs can handle a 1,000Hz polling rate just fine.
More practically, in the Predator software, you can set the repeat rate, which determines the speed at which a key repeats itself when it is held down, or the repeat delay, which adjusts the interval at which a second keypress is registered after a single key is held down.
The Lighting Effect section of the Predator software is the fun part.
You can change the lighting mode, separate from the general profiles I mentioned earlier.
You can toggle among modes using the "P" button to the left of the Esc key.
Furthermore, in the Lighting Effect menu, you can change your lighting profile manually by clicking one of five lighting modes (dubbed Game A to Game E), enabling you to use each mode for a game of your choice.
Below these lighting modes are five drop-down menus comprising the names of pre-cooked lighting settings, among them Breathing, Reactive, Scroll, Ripple, Radar, Fireworks, Blink, Wave, and Customize.
Most of these settings are animations (comprising the greatest hits of pretty much every RGB gaming keyboard ever), while the Customize setting is where you can change the color of every key separately.
It is disappointing that, with a keyboard at this price, you cannot create your own animations.
Instead, customizing your own lighting setting leaves you with a static arrangement of keyboard lights, albeit a pretty one unique to your own tastes.
Last, the Synchronize menu lets you adjust lighting effects so that they sync up with other Acer Predator peripherals.
For instance, if you have both the Acer Predator Aethon 500 gaming keyboard and the Acer Predator Cestus 500 gaming mouse, you can configure them so that both pieces of hardware "breathe" or "blink" in a coordinated fashion.
You can also adjust the speed of pulsation and the brightness of the lighting effects in the Synchronize menu, where applicable.
Aethon, Go on Sale
That's a lot of lighting sophistication, to be sure, and there's a case to be made for the Acer Predator Aethon 500 given the RGB sophistication; the per-key-customizable RGB lighting and workable software add a bunch of value.
Plus, the Kailh Blue switches feel close to Cherry MX Blues, making them suitable for typing and gaming because of their tactile feel and clicky sound, even if Kailhs are typically found on keyboards that cost much less.
But, assuming the $179.99 price holds, you're better off buying an older, discounted gaming keyboard with true Cherry MX switches if you're a mechanical-keyboard connoisseur.
The Corsair K95 RGB Platinum and HyperX Alloy Elite RGB( at Amazon), for example, are both readily available for under $160.
But if the Aethon 500 is heavily discounted (and we'd expect it), it will be a fine buy among clicky mechanical gaming boards if it manages to undercut them.
Pros
View MoreThe Bottom Line
The price is high, but Acer's Predator Aethon 500 mechanical gaming keyboard may find an audience with typists and gamers alike who prefer the tactile and clicky feel of Kailh Blue switches over those made by Cherry.
