We’ve featured everything here at TGH revolving around the MadCatz range of Cyborg peripherals. Their PC centric hardware has proven notoriously favourable in our past reviews, and now MadCatz are testing our verdict again with their Cyborg V.7. keyboard.

The older brother of the hippie designed Cyborg V.5. board, the Cyborg V.7. comes Completely redesigned (a good thing) and packs in a lot for its price. It may not feature the confusing array of mechanical Cherry MX colour keys everyone seeks in their boards these days. but that’s of purse omitted from the price. Instead we have the strengthened rubber dome switches seen on most boards but with the thicker design seen in older sets rather than the flat, low profile keys of modern day general use products. While they look no different from standard boards, the Cyborg keys offer a nice bouncy and tactile feedback rather than a squishy or wobbly feel of cheaper products.

As usual with the Cyborg range, it’s a heavily customisable board. A fantastic way to ensure the board fits any users comfort needs and to limit the readjustment period seen when transitioning to a foreign keyboard. While you won’t be readjusting key height or positioning, the standard rear back legs are much more chunky. Even if this is just to support the extra weight of the board, they’ll offer a lot more durability to the legs themselves, a part very prone to snapping off in other, thinner, products. Not only that but twin front legs also pop up should you be more comfortable with a fully lifted keyboard rather then just tilted. Once you’re done with adjusting the tilt and height, feel free to pop on the robust, perhaps too big, fully sized wrist rest and have at it.

Even for a cheaper keyboard than other higher branded products, the Cyborg V.7. also features a rather nice touch panel covering the entire top width of its body. The usual media controls sit along the left side with a diagram of the board itself laying opposite. This acts as a very intuitive way to personal and again customise your keys by allowing you to cycle through the 3 under key lighting colours and 4 brightness settings across each area of the keyboard meaning you can amplify certain key clusters or dim the less important ones. Everything gets very personal again with the Cyborg gear.

If you’re the kind who would rather keep their letter keys intact, the V.7. also feature 12 programmable macro wing keys on either side of the board. 6 a PEICE. While the included software doesn’t make the programming experience the most user friendly proceedure, it’s still there and with a lot of potential for those who rely on fast automatic excecution of skill in their games.

As usual, the Cyborg range is the king of customisability. While the V.7. doesn’t feel entierly solid or expensive, that’s because it isn’t, and that’s a good thing. The keyboard offers a lot for its measly £50-60 cost when compared to others. While those spoiled by the feel of mechanical keys will likely never go back to standard keys. The Cyborg V7 is a fantastic, if not huge, board fully suited to a gamers need to show off.

Final Score: 4/5