Gigabyte Aivia Osmium Review

Overview

 

Here we have the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium Gaming keyboard, the obvious partner to the Gold award winning Aivia Krypton Gaming mouse reviewed by myself just a couple of weeks ago. This fully mechanical Gaming orientated keyboard features Cherry Red MX switches, with support for Anti-Ghosting across all zones of the keyboard. The Osmium also features both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports as well as audio ports (Mic, Headphone). The keyboard is fully back-lit (blue) and has a bank of five dedicated Macro keys, along with brightness and volume controls. Couple this with Gigabyte’s GHOST™ Macro Engine software for programming up to one hundred Macros across five different profiles, suggest that Gigabyte may well have another winner on their hands…

 

 

The Gigabyte Aivia Osmium came in a large, predominately black box with a picture of the Osmium keyboard on the front. Four small images also on the front of the box highlight the keyboards USB 3.0 hub, Cherry Red MX switches (Gaming Tactility), Anti-Ghosting and the fact that the keyboard is fully back-lit.

The back of the box highlights many other features of the keyboard:

• Superior Cherry MX Mechanical Key-Switch Technology
• Supports USB 3.0 SuperSpeed (via motherboard)
• Absolute Anti-Ghosting Multi-Key Press Capability
• 18K Gold-Plated Connector
• 2 Meters Cotton-Braided Cord
• Five Macro Keys
• Dynamic Volume and Backlit Illumination Control
• Full-Sized Wrist Rest
• Ultra-Stable Non-Stick Rubber Feet Stands
• Macro Profile Switch
• GHOST™ Macro Engine
• Non-Slip Wear-Resistant UV Coated Keycaps
• Accessories (Customized Keycaps & Keycap Puller)

 

 

Inside the outer box is a more sturdy plain black inner box that contains the keyboard itself along with its accessories. This inner box protected the contents extremely well with its foam padding, as can be seen in the image above. In fact this is the best protection I have ever seen in a keyboard box (nice one Gigabyte!).

 

 

Within the box is the Aivia Osmium keyboard itself with wrist rest pre-attached, 4 additional keys (with strange symbols on!), a key puller and a Quick Guide.

At the time of writing the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium is retailing for approximately £104 and comes with a (hold on I cannot find any warranty information anywhere, again!!). Have also checked Gigabyte’s website and still cannot find any warranty information as if you follow the Warranty Service link it asks for Motherboard/Graphics Card or Notebook & Netbook!

I shall assume for now that the warranty is 2 years (if it’s not I will update the review) the same as the Gigabyte Aivia Krypton.

UPDATE: Gigabyte says: ‘Our products provide two years warranty, including mouse, keyboard, speaker and WHDI.’

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Gigabyte

Interface	USB 2.0
Activation	Cherry Red Mechanical Switch
Switch life	50 million times
Key Profile	Standard
Travel distance	4mm to the bottom
Pre-travel	2mm to actuation point
Peak force	45g
USB Hub	USB3.0 + USB2.0
Report Rate	1000Hz
Audio	Microphone-in/ Earphone-out
Weight	1500g ±10%
Dimension	454(L)* 257(W)*45(H) mm
Cable length	2.0m ±10%
Support OS	Windows XP/ Vista/ Windows 7
Certification	CE, FCC, BSMI
Color	Black

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

Getting the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium out of the box is no easy affair as this keyboard is big (Length 454mm / Width 257mm / Height 45mm) and quite heavy too at 1596g. In comparison my current keyboard of choice (Corsair Vengeance K60) weighs in at approximately 1086g. The good thing about the weight is that at least the keyboard is not going to move around during those frantic Gaming moments.

The Osmium is a fully mechanical keyboard with all keys (some mechanical keyboards only use mechanical switches on some of the keys!) using Cherry RED MX switches, these switches have an actuation force of 45g and travel 2mm before actuation, with a total travel distance of 4mm. So what does this really mean to the Gamer, well that’s a tough one to answer as the subject is quite subjective, but most people find that once they have used a mechanical keyboard there’s no going back (that’s certainly true for me anyway!). In my opinion a mechanical keyboard (for example, featuring Cherry Red switches) just seems to be more responsive than a normal (membrane type) keyboard. This may also be helped by the fact that these mechanical keyboards often feature Anti-Ghosting technology that allows the keyboard to register multiple simultaneous key-presses (up to 64 for the Osmium). This means that however frantic it may get and regardless of how fast you may be, the keyboard’s not going to let you down…

 

• Keyboard (Main)

The keyboard’s layout is a pretty standard affair and as you can see from the image below the Osmium also features a full length (removable) wrist rest. The top left of the keyboard features an additional section that houses the 5 Macro keys (G1-G5), back-light illumination control and a volume control. The far right of the keyboard sports an Aivia logo with 3 Lock indicators (Num, Caps & Scroll), cleverly this section also acts as the main keyboard profile switch. The Gigabyte Aivia Osmium is fully back-lit with adjustable brightness with the only colour supported being blue (shame, I wanted Red!). The key-caps themselves feature a non-slip rubber coating and also have an additional wear resistant UV coating.

The back of the keyboard is a pretty unexciting affair (as you would expect), but the Osmium does have 2 height adjustments one at the back that raises the back of the keyboard by approximately 20mm and one at the front that raises the front by approximately 6mm, these can be used independently of one another. As you can see from the image below all of the adjustment stands have rubber non-slip feet, the wrist rest has these too, this should help to ensure that the keyboard doesn’t move when in use.

Attached centrally to the back of the keyboard is a rather heavy duty cable, this 2.0 Metre cotton braided cord supports both USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and audio (Mic, Headphone) and a Ferrite Bead about 100mm from the keyboard. All of the connectors are also Gold-plated for optimal signal transfer quality.

 

 

• Macro keys (G1-G5)

The five additional Macros keys found at the top left of the keyboard are fully programmable via the Gigabyte’s GHOST™ Macro Engine software. These keys are relatively well placed as they sit just above the normal WASD key area, although I cant help but think that there should have been more than five perhaps…

 

 

• Illumination/Volume Control

To the right of the Macro keys are two rotary control wheels (very similar to a mouse wheel), the first of which allows control over the keyboards’s blue back-lighting. By depressing this control the back-lighting can also be switched off. Next to this is an identical control that allows the main volume to be adjusted, depressing this control allows the volume to be muted. Both of these controls are illuminated and are very tactile in use and provide great feedback via the graduations in the rotation.

 

 

• Sides (left & right)

The left side of the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium features what appears to be Gigabyte’s GHOST™ Macro Engine logo.

The right side of the keyboard has a single USB 3.0 socket, a Microphone-in socket and a Headphone-out socket. The USB 3.0 socket will only be enabled by plugging in the optional USB 3.0 plug (blue, thicker cable). This can be plugged into either a USB 2.0 or 3.0 socket on your computer, as it really is only a USB extension.

 

 

• Back

At the back of the keyboard is a single USB 2.0 socket.

 

 

As mentioned earlier the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium comes with some additional key-caps and a key puller. Now I can see why you may want a key puller and I can see why you may want some additional keys; but these keys have some rather strange images on them (Shield, Ghost, Lightning & Fire)! What was wrong with just supplying an additional set of WASD keys? Maybe as there are 5 Macro keys, it would have been nice to have had 5 additional key-caps and not 4. Strange…

 

 

Overall though it seems that the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium keyboard pretty much ticks all of the right boxes (Mechanical Cherry Red switches, back-lit, wrist rest, Macro & Profile software), I guess we should take a look to see how it performs, I’m looking forward to this…

 

Hardware Installation

 

The Gigabyte Aivia Osmium keyboard has a fair number of connections, yet only the USB 2.0 plug need’s to be connected to the PC for it to work. The other three plugs (USB 3.0, Mic & Headphone) are only needed should you wish to extend this functionality to the keyboard. In my case all four plugs were connected for testing purposes. It nice to see that Gigabyte have included plug covers for all of the plugs, especially as not all plugs need to be used (nice!).

It is also worth noting that you can, if you wish, connect the USB 3.0 plug to a USB 2.0 socket on your PC, as this will just extend USB 2.0 functionality to the keyboard instead of USB 3.0.

 

 

The Gigabyte Aivia Osmium requires both Software and a Driver for full operation and this is not provided in the box (although this is now common!). The First step (Installation) in the Quick Guide calls for the GHOST™ macro engine installer to be downloaded from the Gigabyte official site, although no URL is given. The AIVIA GHOST™ MACRO ENGINE software can be found here.

Version 1.03 of the GHOST™ Macro Engine software was installed and no Firmware updates were available at the time of the review.

 

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

The Gigabyte Aivia Osmium was tested using my rig with a fresh installation of Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit (service pack 1) installed together with all the latest relevant drivers and software.

The following games were used to help in the evaluation of the Osmium:

• Blacklight Retribution
• Borderlands
• Diablo III

 

Hardware Performance

 

• KEYBOARD

Hopefully by now you will have realized that the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium is a mechanical keyboard, using Cherry Red MX switches. Now the good thing about mechanical keyboards is that if you’ve used one your more than likely to like another (from a pure key usage point of view). Needless to say that as I prefer mechanical keyboards, the Osmium keyboard is already onto a winner, giving excellent feedback and responsiveness by way of its full set of Cherry Red MX switches. If you’ve not used a mechanical keyboard before then I suggest that you try one, once I’d tried my first one (Corsair Vengeance K60) I was converted…

So the Osmium has a great key-set, but really what does it bring to the party above and beyond its competitors? Quite a lot actually…

The first thing that springs to mind is back-lighting, for me this is really important as I game mainly in the evening (and often into the following morning (shhh!)) and it’s nice to see those keys lit up when your fingers have lost their way. The back-lighting of the the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium is probably that best that I have seen, not only are all of the keys well lit (no half lit keys here!), but via the illumination control wheel the brightness can be adjusted from hardly visible to well, you might just need sunglasses! Removing a key-cap reveals that every switch has its own LED. So, that’s a big tick in the box right there, although being a little picky (fussy!), I would have liked a couple more colours to choose from (blue is so last year!)…

 

 

OK so its got a great mechanical key-set and it’s got excellent back-lighting, but what else does the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium keyboard bring to the party? Well there’s the removable wrist rest, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 support, Audio connections (Mic/Headphone), an additional 5 Macro keys (although maybe these are a little hard to reach), Volume control, the keyboard is a adjustable in height, the Anti-Ghosting technology and to top it off comes the GHOST™ Macro Engine software…

Anything programmed via the software (described below) can then be accessed via any of the 5 profiles, these profiles (Blue, Green, Red, Pink, Light-Blue) can be accessed via the Aivia switch panel (see image below) found at the top right of the keyboard.

 

 

Overall the keyboard side of the Osmium is almost perfect the only real niggles are nothing to do with the functionality of the keyboard in itself. Maybe the Macro keys could be better located, but really this just comes down to a matter of preference; I would have liked the wrist rest to have been a little higher or even adjustable, but again this is preference. The only real niggle that we can’t do anything about; is that the cable attached to the back of the keyboard really is a little too heavy duty…

 

• SOFTWARE

The Gigabyte GHOST™ Macro Engine software needs to be downloaded, once installed it gives you access to the main Aivia software with links to both the Aivia Forum and the official Gigabyte website.

The main software is split into two main sections, these are outlined below.

 

• SOFTWARE (Profiles)

Clicking on the Profiles menu of the Gigabyte GHOST™ Macro Engine software takes you to the main Profile setup page, here you can see the 5 Macro keys that can be programmed. It’s important to take note of the colours near the top of the Profiles Window as the highlighted colour shows what Profile is currently selected (red in the image below). This is a little too subtle, but once you’ve sussed it, it works perfectly well…

Once the selected key has been chosen you are then taken to the Basic programming Window that allows you to assign a number of pre-programmed commands (Cut, Paste, Media Player etc).

 

 

Clicking on the Macros menu takes you to another Window that allows for far more complex programming and Macros to be assigned. Up to 100 individual Macros can be programmed and then assigned; from there clicking EDIT allows for a new Macro to be created or and existing one to be edited. Creating and editing Macros is a simple affair that consists of dragging commands into the main Macro area and then editing, the sequence of the commands can also be moved by just dragging commands up/down. In addition to this Macros can be exported to a file (and later imported) should you wish.

 

• SOFTWARE (Settings)

Clicking on the Settings menu takes you to a Window where you can select one of two different settings.

The first setting takes you to the Manage Profiles screen where the Profiles can be enabled or disabled should you wish. In addition to this the breathing (Aivia logo) effect can also be enabled or disabled. The second option (On Board Memory) allows the user to clear the memory effectively performing a factory reset.

 

 

The software while fine in its operation didn’t seem quite as well featured as when I looked at the Gigabyte Aivia Krypton, this is a little odd as the software version (1.03) is the same! Certain operations that were available for the Krypton Mouse (select profile colour, name profile, backup/restore memory) were missing, which is both odd and a shame! Also again here changing something within the software seemed to have an immediate effect, making the Save button somewhat defunct!

 

Final Thoughts

 

If you’ve been reading through the review (and you haven’t just skipped to the Final Thoughts!) you will know by now that the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium does indeed seem to tick all of the right boxes!

The Osmium came very well packaged and presented and the keyboard itself is as good a keyboard as I have ever used. The mechanical Cherry Red switches performed flawlessly throughout my time with the keyboard, but not necessarily any better than any other mechanical keyboard! The real bonus here is what else the Gigabyte brings to the party. Now of course these extras do come at a cost, but I think that the asking price of around £104 at the time of this review is actually a pretty good deal.

So what do you get beyond a great mechanical keyboard? First and foremost you get back-lighting (damn good back-lighting too!), you get a full size (removable wrist rest), both the front and the back of the keyboard is height adjustable, the keys have a rather nice rubberized non-slip coating, there are 5 additional Macro keys, Illumination Control, Volume Control, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, Audio ports and even some additional keys and a key puller. This is then topped off with the excellent GHOST™ Macro Engine software allowing you to program 5 Profiles and up to 100 Macros.

It would appear that the Gigabyte Aivia Osmium is the perfect keyboard then? Well probably yes; only a few small niggles (and they are truly only niggles!) prevent me from giving the Osmium perfect scores. The braided cable at the back of the keyboard is just too heavy duty, it’s not a real problem but should anything get in that cables way, the cable going to win! The software has some defects in it, none of them are show stoppers by any means as functionally it works fine. The other possible issues are really just down to preference; the Macro keys may have been better placed and there are no dedicated media keys, but neither of these issues bothered me at all…

If you like mechanical keyboards (especially those with Cherry Red switches) then you’re sure to like this keyboard; if you’re thinking of buying a new mechanical keyboard then from my experience they don’t come much better than this.

 

Verdict