Gamdias Hermes Gaming Keyboard Review

Up Close

It is tempting when you’re trying to get your product noticed in a very crowded marketplace to festoon the packaging with an array of eye catching elements, shouting loudly about the potential contained within. In an interesting show of confidence Gamdias have taken a very minimalist approach, letting the photograph of the Hermes keyboard dominate proceedings. 

Opening the box there is a rather curious side effect to the use of the clear window on the top of the packaging, namely that the plastic cover has a hole cut out of it. And we do mean literally cut out. This isn’t designed this way, someone somewhere has the job of cutting squares from a piece of plastic. It lends itself to a rather slapdash first impression.

      

Thankfully once you’ve freed the Hermes from the confines of it’s container, things pick up. The manual is well laid out, glossy and covers all the necessary points. Two stickers allow you a choice of which one you’d rather use to advertise your choice of keyboard.

The wrist rest is, if anything, more of a star than the proclaimed Gamdias Element. It’s as big as the keyboard and has magnets to keep it in place. No flimsy plastic fingers nor fiddly screws needed.

      

Why, you may ask is it as big as the keyboard? Because it doubles as a dust cover. A neat trick and one that had us nodding in appreciation of the cleverness of the idea. Anyone who uses a keyboard should be using a wrist rest, and anything that keeps the dust and spills from your keys has to be good too. Combining those two things is a smart bit of thinking, although we’re left rather confounded as to why something that’s already huge couldn’t be made slightly bigger to cover the F keys too.

      

As you can see, it’s hardly the smallest keyboard in the world. With the Hermes, and a good sized mousepad, you’d need a desk akin to an aircraft carrier to utilise it all.