GIGABYTE Aivia K8100 Pro Reviews

It doesn't have the honest solidness of Mionix's Zibal or the versatility of the Roccat Isku, and really does suffer by comparison. It's a decent effort by Gigabyte, but the dedicated keyboard-making competition have a serious edge.

Overall, GIGABYTE delivered an excellent keyboard aimed at the hard-core gamer audience. From the grandiose presentation and functionality to the solid construction of the product, gamers will be hard-pressed to find better quality. Pricing is $69.99 for the matte black and $79.99 for the Lamborghini yellow and red versions. The elastic force system brought a question of performance into the formula: it worked flawlessly, and even proved advantageous for games, but performance may vary with standard Windows applications and everyday tasks.

We'd like to thank our friends at Gigabyte for providing the K8100 Aivia gaming keyboard for our review today. This was their first attempt at building a PC gaming keyboard and overall I think they did a fantastic job. The exterior is unmatched in terms of design, but they did have a few missteps in the placement of the macro keys and backlight switch. The actual backlight itself seemed a bit too low for my taste and the keys were difficult to see with it turned off too. The volume control touch panel functioned properly and added a little more style to this already creative and unique keyboard. The Aivia performed superbly during FPS gaming and the rubber keys were highly responsive to each keystroke as I noticed my kill rates grow from 10 to 15 kills per match. That's a big jump in my book and I contribute that increase to the Aivia's elastic force in my basic movement keys. I probably could have been a bit quicker if the macro keys were closer to the basic movement keys on the left side of the keyboard. Word processing was also a bit cumbersome at times because of the varying elastic force across the entire layout of the keys. Overall, this was a wonderful experience and one Gigabyte should be able to build and learn from. The overall design and layout of the Aivia was executed well, but it lacked in terms of balance between being a gaming keyboard and basic keyboard used for word processing. I'm sure we'll see several improvements in the next iteration of the Aivia gaming keyboard series.

The Gigabyte Aivia K8100 will light up your gaming experience with a bold and sporty keyboard.

Overall, we really like the Gigabyte Aivia K8100 gaming keyboard. It combines an aggressive styling with some down right impressive engineering. This keyboard really has been designed from the ground up with gaming in mind and everything besides gaming comfort and gaming enhancement is of secondary concern. The K8100 absolutely excels in the market niche it was designed to target and as such wins our Dam Good Award.

You know that expression “this is the Ferrari of keyboards”? Well, it seems that Gigabyte got inspired by it and created a great gaming keyboard that, aside from really behaving like a Ferrari of gaming keyboards, it also features a design clearly derivative of the Italian car maker. The Aivia K8100 comes in black, red and yellow versions and features an emblem on the wrist rest that just looks too much like the ones found on sportst cars.

If you're a hardcore gamer seeking only the best features included in a keyboard, then consider purchasing the Aivia K8100. However, if you intend to use this keyboard for something like word processing - or if you don't game very often - then there are cheaper alternatives.