Functional Usage

Practical testing

The Viper V765 comes with either Kailh White or Red switches. We tested the first option in this review.

Box Red is a light, linear switch, whereas Box White is clicky. Interestingly, all types of Box switches have the same travel and actuation distance: 1.8 mm for actuation, and 3.6 mm in total. That’s a little shorter than the so-called Default switches (mentioned on page 6), and you can feel a bit of a difference when it comes to speed as well.

• Kailh Box Red: soft linear
• Kailh Box White: clicky

The keyboard can get quite noisy during nightly sessions of gaming or typing, but luckily my computer is not close to the bedroom. If it was, I’d likely be more inclined to go with Red switches in the Viper V765 instead.  

  
We have tested the Viper V765 over many hours of typing and gaming. When I played games like Starcraft 2, PUBG, Battlefield 1, Call of Duty: WW2 or even DiRT: Rally, the keyboard responded to my actions quickly, and accurately, but I had to press the keys rather hard. Precision is one of the reasons why people buy mechanical keyboards, and yeah - you won’t miss it here. The option to record macros may come in handy from time to time. While we’re at it, I should mention that you can’t do that on the fly, and unfortunately there are no dedicated macro keys. There is no dedicated key for changing profiles either, and that’s a pity as well.

  
The keyboard passed an N-Key rollover test, albeit not without some hiccups. The system used in the Patriot Viper V765 works seamlessly up to a maximum of 6-8 successive key presses. After that, N-key rollover starts to behave erratically, with subsequent key presses registered (or not) at random. The Patriot Viper V765 has individually programmable keys that support 16.8 million different backlighting colors. Unlike most other RGB keyboards on the market, the Viper V765 has some nice light strips on the left and right sides of its aluminum chassis. In our keyboard, the strips were stuck on white, and no information on how to change that was provided. It turns out that you can switch the strips from white to off, or to a rainbow animation, by hitting the Fn and right CTRL keys. 

The ergonomics are excellent, and the attached wrist rest makes the Viper V765 ideal even for very long sessions. Some people may not like it (as it’s a bit narrower than the chassis itself), but it’s removable, so no issue here. 
The lighting is not even slightly annoying in the dark. It’s adjustable and you can disable it completely if you prefer. The media keys and the volume roller are a good feature in the in V765, and I found them rather useful several times (why does anyone still make keyboards without this?).