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OVERVIEW
Viper V760
The Viper V760 is a standard full-sized keyboard, with no extra keys or switches. There are also no extra keys or knobs/wheels for volume control. It is of the standard ANSI 104 key layout with the exception of the right Windows key being replaced with an “FN” key that displays the Viper product series logo on it.
The Viper V760 has a plastic body while sporting an aluminum upper half, not unlike other high quality mechanical keyboards on the market. In a bid to keep their product unique, Patriot has added a rounded trim to the edges of the keyboard in addition to a thin chrome strip around the top of the keyboard. Beneath the plastic piece on the bottom-most front side there is a metallic strip that allows for the included magnetic palm rest. On the back right side of the keyboard there is a single USB 2.0 port.
The Viper V760 is based on Kailh switches; in the case of our sample they are brown. Metallic stabilizers are used for the larger keys, which normally run the risk of being wobbly if not properly applied, but we ran into no such problem with the Viper V760. The only real downside of this setup is that the larger keys can be more of a pain to remove since they must carefully be removed from the stabilizer.
An LED array at the top of each switch provides the RGB lighting. Kailh does not use clear switching bodies so the light is not diffused all around the key and is instead focused on the key’s characters, though there is some light that escapes from the top of the key. The Spacebar opening is lengthened but the single LED only lights up the center, so there’s a noticeable amount of dark space when the key is pressed. The keyboard uses an HSAK3201 ARM processor and HSAK021 LED drivers.
VIPER SOFTWARE
With the Viper Software, all of the options are accessible on one screen and are listed along the left side of the screen. At the top there is an option for 11 different preset lighting settings; Static, Breathing, Wave, Reactive, Sidewinder, Ripple, Spectrum, Raindrop, Vortex, Spotlight and Radar. Just below this, there is the option for picking colors. By double clicking on any of the color options, a color palette menu is opened and allows you to choose from over 16 million colors.
When using any of the Lighting Profile 1-5 options you are able to double click all keys (excluding the bottom left hand Ctrl key) and individually pick a color for that key. For the Wave and Radar options there are directional settings just above the color options that give you the ability to pick the direction the lighting effect will follow across the keyboard. Below the color options there are two adjustable sliders for Brightness and Speed of the lighting effects (Static doesn’t have an adjustable speed as it’s persistently illuminated).
Next we have the Macro Management option, when pressed it opens a second menu that will show all of the programmed macros and allow for you to program more into the profile. The capabilities of the software are fairly basic, only keyboard keystrokes are registered with the options to record the delay between keystrokes and setting a number of loops for each macro. There is no ability to insert mouse-related options or to manually edit the macros. The individual keys can also be programmed by use of single or combined keystrokes, programmed macros, basic windows functions as well as more advanced functions like opening different apps, folders or external music files or even to disable a key all together.
At the bottom left hand side of the screen, there are the options to control the response time and the report rate.
