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Get Your Optical Switches (Eventually): A4tech Updates Bloody Keyboard Line
Bloody is not exactly a household name when it comes to peripherals, but the brand and its company, A4tech, are not to be ignored. Bloody’s keyboards are the only ones to date equipped with A4tech’s optical Light Strike (LK2) switches, and there are some new keyboards in the family coming, too.
The company has numerous keyboards in its lineup already, but it’s adding and/or replacing many of them with a new crop of devices. Of the new keyboards, Bloody has the B860 and B840 listed now on its website, and the B830 is forthcoming (although it may not be sold in the U.S.).
The B860, B840 and B830 are strikingly similar to one another. As you’ll note in the table below, the only differences pertain to chassis design and form factor. The B830 is the TKL version, and the B860 has a removable wrist rest and some extra chassis flair, including a slot where you can prop up your smartphone.
A4tech did not divulge pricing for any of these keyboards but did tell us that they’ll be available in September. They’ll be available in “Golden Black” or “Gun Black,” which are really just metallic gold and gunmetal gray, respectively.
-Angular chassis design-Aluminum chassis-Removable wrist rest-Slot to hold smartphone-Eight additional convex silicon key caps-”Screw enhanced” spacebar-Spill-resistant layer under the keys
-Aluminum chassis-Eight additional convex silicon key caps-”Screw enhanced” spacebar-Spill-resistant layer under the keys
Price/Availability
September
B840
The Others
Although we’ve been given no timetable for the rest of the the new Bloody lineup, we do have a sense of what’s coming.
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The B845L, which was on display at Computex, appears to be essentially the same as the B840 but has the numpad on the left side of the keyboard instead of the right. This design decision is one we’ve seen elsewhere, mainly with removable numpads that can slot onto either side of the keyboard, and it’s a smart one. With the numpad on the left, you can use the extra buttons for macros, without having to use your mouse hand.
The B740S appears to be identical in every way to the B740 and B740A (they differ only in color, as far as I can tell). The new member of the family is all black with RGB lighting and LK2 Black switches. In a similar vein, the B850 looks to be a copy of the B840, but with LK2 Red switches instead of LK2 Blue.
B740
The final four upcoming keyboards in Bloody’s lineup are the B2148, B2318, B2328 and B2120, all of which have a numpad and blue backlighting. (The B2418 and B2318 have wrist rests, too, and the B2318 has a left-side bank of macro keys). Unlike the rest of the keyboards mentioned above, this quartet of products has LK2 BLue switches only under eight keys--the WASD cluster and Q, E, R and F. Although we have no pricing information on any of these keyboards, clearly the B2000 series is meant to be a budget line, offering gamers a semblance of the performance of the LK2 switches on oft-used keys.
