I knew that version 1 of the G15 was too good to be true. Everything about the keyboard reeked of awesome, and easily became my favorite component of my obsolete-but-still-pretty-powerful computer. The volume wheel was awesome, the screen was on a hinge for times when I wanted to see my keys without the screen hogging up my peripheral vision, and it had more macro keys than you could shake a stick at. The only flaw of this otherwise spectacular keyboard was that it was *huge*, sometimes too wide to fit on people's desks (get a new desk).

Logitech decided to revise the G15 to make it smaller. They shaved off 12 (!) macro keys leaving you with a grand total of 18 possible saved macros, which is plenty fine by me since I hardly used them in the first place.

Here's what I think happened: Logitech realized that simply cutting the keyboard's length wasn't enough to consider it a "revised keyboard," but because they built the thing so marvelously, the only direction they could go was down. And down they went, indeed.

Before I continue, I would like to point out that this review is coming from the perspective of someone who owned version 1 of the G15 for a year and had grown very fond of it. However the G15 was caught in the crossfire of some unpleasentness between myself and my housemates and suffered an undeserved premature death. I was promptly paid back for this injustice but by that time, version 1 of the G15 had long since been discontinued. Figuring that a revised version of the G15 couldn't be any worse than its predecessor I happily shelled out the $80 for it. Man, was I wrong.

Color: I am grossly unoriginal and thus like to have as much blue as I possibly can on my computer. The original G15 was blue. Version 2 is orange. Whatever, I don't like it. I know it's a personal preference so I won't mark it down heavily, but it's just...meh. The backlight still works perfectly fine for typing/gaming in the dark. It's bright without being intrusive.

Screen / Media Keys: Why did Logitech change anything? Raise your hand if you crucified the flip screen or pried out the volume wheel due to how cumbersome it was. Nobody? THEN WHY DON'T THEY EXIST ANYMORE?! The screen is now embedded into the keyboard for no adequate reason, and the media keys have lost any shred of convenience they may have once had. On version 1, you had a wheel for volume control, and above it 4 keys for media. Bottom right was play, bottom left was stop, top right was skip forward, top left was skip back. Simple. Easy. Now?

Now you have play on the bottom right side of the console, stop on the bottom left, the skip keys are now vertical on the left side of the console and the volume controls are stacked on the right. It's not the end of the world but after using version 1 for so long, it's irritating and awkward.

Technical Limitations: Two things that in my mind have absolutely crippled this keyboard are as follows...

1. Most of the third party apps you used for version 1 of the G15 won't work for you anymore, most glaringly the Itunes app, which was brought down from the heavens on a golden pillow. Now it simply will not work, and it was the only music app for the G15 that I considered absolutely perfect. Playing games and cycling or searching (!!!) through your music couldn't have been easier for the Itunes app, and it won't work. There don't seem to be any plans for this app to port over to version 2 either.

2. For some completely arbitrary reason, V2 chokes on multiple key presses. On V1, the keyboard would recognize you holding down all four arrow keys and a pretty much every other key. You could mash like crazy and every keystroke would be recognized. V2 doesn't provide this luxury (not so much a luxury I suppose, since most every other keyboard allows this nowadays). Only two arrow key commands can be registered at a time. Why is this such a problem? Well, I play a lot of FFR (www.flashflashrevolution.com) and suffice is to say this new lack of command recognition is a real problem.

Anyone who is the proud owner of the original G15 shouldn't so much as glance at the revised version since it's utterly useless compared to the original. If you're stuck with a beige PS/2 keyboard and have been looking to upgrade for a while, this keyboard will seem like a godsend. Despite all its glaring shortcomings over its predecessor it's still an adequate keyboard.

Logitech has since discontinued selling V1 of the G15 (although the G11 is still around), probably because they hate me, passionately. I would much rather recommend finding V1 on Ebay than settling for this pile of crap, only made so because of how terrific it's father was. What a complete utter disappointment.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 80