REVIEW – About 8 years ago I got sucked into the mechanical keyboard hobby. And down a rabbit hole I went. Over the years I had accumulated a myriad of different boards from various different companies. But the Fizz K617 is the first board I have tried from Redragon. And it is also the first keyboard I have ever used with magnetic switches.
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Price: $64.99
Where to buy: Redragonshop
What is it?
The Redragon Fizz K617 is a 60% mechanical keyboard with magnetic switches.
What’s included?
- Redragon K617 M Wired Keyboard
- Detachable USB Type-C Cable
- Keycaps Puller
- Switches Puller
- User Manual
- A handful of extra switches
Tech specs
60% layout (61 keys)
QWERTY layout
Height adjustable feet
Full Rollover
8k Hz Polling Rate
Detachable USB-C cable connection
Hyper fast actuation
Rapid Trigger Tech
Magnetic switches
Adjustable actuation point
Downloadable Software to make adjustments for PC (Mac not supported)
Dimensions: 12.6 x 5.51 x 0.18 inches
Weight: 0.6 kg
Design and features
About 8 years ago I got sucked into the mechanical keyboard hobby. And down a rabbit hole I went. Over the years I had accumulated a myriad of different boards from various different companies. But the Fizz K617 is the first board I have tried from Redragon. And it is also the first board I have ever used with magnetic switches.
At first glance it looks like any other 60% keyboard, and to be honest the feel is not that different from any other board with linear switches. But these are magnetic switches. Because of this, it allows you to adjust the actuation point to be either higher or lower on the press of each key. So for instance, you could set the actuation higher so that the computer would recognize the keypress earlier and take action. This would help a lot if you were gaming and wanted the fastest response time possible.
In regards to that software; I was not able to test out the software to actually adjust the actuation since I’m on a Mac, and they only offer said software for a PC. The only PC I do have access to is a work issued one and there is no way in a million years the IT department of a major bank is going to let me install proprietary software. So I’m out of luck there.
The other positive about magnetic switches is that since there is no physical mechanism that registers the keypress the switches should last longer in theory since there would be less wear and tear on them. That said most mechanical switches have an estimated 50 million or more presses anyway.
If I had that software, one of the nice features would be the ability to assign 2 different actions to a single keypress based on different pressure and travel. So, if I understand that right, you could have a single keypress perform one action on the downstroke of the key and a completely separate action take place on the upstroke of the same keypress. This is again something that I could see being very useful in a gaming situation where you could perform an attack twice for each press of a key.
I could not for the life of me find the weight of the springs on their website anywhere so I have no clue how heavy they are. I could not even find the switches to buy outside of this board on the website either. But they do feel good to type on, and are very smooth. If i had to guess i would say they are around 45g to 50g. I tend to like a heavier switch (around the 90g mark!) so these were a little light for me, but they still felt really good, and I made very minimal mistakes while typing.
The switches are also not hot-swappable, meaning you would need to desolder them for the PCB if you wanted to put different switches in the board. So why did it come with a switch remover? I’m a little confused on that one.
I myself prefer Topre switches. Instead of being mechanical, Topre switches have a rubber dome over a canonical spring. If you have never tried them, I highly recommend it. It is a completely different feel, and for some will totally ruin other kinds of boards. Given that these are magnetic, they are technically not mechanical, but it’s a similar feel.
The keycaps themselves are fine. Nothing to get too excited about. I like the gray gradient as well as the shine-through legends so you can view the RGB lighting in the letters. If you like that aesthetic (which I don’t). You can also change the pattern of the lighting. Nice, but I would much rather be able to set the whole board to a single color (which you can’t).
The sound of the board and the keys is also something to consider. The space bar is – what they refer to in the hobby – thocky. The alpha and number keys are clacky. And the modifiers are inconsistent. Some are thocky. Some clicky. And some are almost silent. It is very strange. I assume this has to do with the stabilizers cushioning the stroke, but I don’t know why it’s not uniform. Maybe some are lubed and others are not. Or maybe there is a varying amount of lube on each of them. The clack of the alphas you get on both the up and down stroke of the press. But this could be a “me” thing as these are lighter springs that I am used to and I type rather aggressively. And the plastic case adds to that clack of the keys. This is only an issue if you are sensitive to the sound of the board. But keep in mind that if you are taking this into an office setting with a somewhat open layout, you will definitely hear it from your co-workers.
Another thing to consider is that this is not a wireless board. The good news is that you don’t have to mess around with pairing Bluetooth or potentially losing a 2.4GHz dongle. On the other hand you DO have to bring a cable with you. For a 60% board that touts portability as one of the features it seems like a miss to not have a battery in the ample room within the case (and a plastic cable as opposed to a braided one at that). That said, if you are going to be using this board for gaming you will want the lowest latency possible, which would require a wired connection anyway. Win some; lose some I guess. And one last note about the connection; the USB C port is on the left side of the board, as opposed to the top like most other boards. Not an objectively bad or good thing by any means, but do take that into account when considering this board in your set up.
One last thing to consider is the placement of the arrow keys on the function layer. They are placed under the WASD keys. Which makes complete sense as WASD are used for many computer games for navigation. However, coming from a standard board where they are located on the right side of the board, or on the function layer under keys also on the right side of the board (as they are on my HHKB), it can be a little jarring.
Final thoughts
All in all, this is a great board for the money. It is by no means something I would recommend as someone’s “endgame” board. It compromises in too many areas to make up for that price, from the plastic case, to the cheap keycaps, to the bargain bin generic white cable included. But, it still is a very good board if you want to try out magnetic switches. They have a good not-too-light, not-too-heavy weight to them (even if I can’t find any info on what that weight is), and with a tape-mod and some nicer caps it could be a great budget upgrade to whatever keyboard came with your computer. I would recommend anyone pick up this board if you are even a little intrigued.
What I like about the Fizz K617 keyboard
- Weight and feel of the switches
- Solid case (even being plastic)
- Price point
- The 60% footprint is a favorite of mine as well
What needs to be improved?
- No Mac support
- Cheap plastic cable
- no wireless option
- Cheap keycaps
- Not hot-swappable
- inconsistent sound of the switches
Price: $64.99
Where to buy: Redragonshop
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Redragon. Redragon did not have a final say on the review, and did not preview the review before it was published.
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I wonder if anyone’s tried setting letter keys to display the lower case character when lightly pressed and the uppercase when depressed further. No idea if that’d actually make sense for typing, but it seems like it’d be fun to try at least once. (Alas, I’m Linux and wouldn’t be able to try it even if I could justify purchasing a second keyboard.)
That is an interesting idea. I type so hard that I’m bottoming out on every keypress so I would not be able to do it but for someone that types lighter that would be helpful.
What Linux distro do you use?? I’m on Mac and have been for ages but I have always been intrigued by Fedora.
Yeah I tend to bottom out my keystrokes too, so it’d definitely require a lot of brain-training to avoid shouting in capslock all the time.
I started using Linux Mint Debian Edition in 2014, then switched to plain Debian stable two years later and have been using that ever since. I have enough computer know-how to handle the occasional issue that crops up, but I like Debian in large part because issues are generally rare (compared to what I hear people on more cutting-edge distros deal with). To get more frequent updates for user-space programs where it matters, I changed a number of programs to Flatpak rather than getting them from the Debian repository. (Things like GIMP, Inkscape, Audacity, etc.) I don’t know much about Fedora, but my impression is that it’s another similarly stable distribution.
That is great! Thanks for the info. I think I might have to do some testing.