Score: 6/10
Price: $80 AUD in 2006 (no longer produced)
Pros:
-Short key travel for faster response
-Compact format
-Backlight
Cons:
-Old design from year 2002
-Fatal1ty logo is rather tacky
-Quite ordinary and nothing really special
Verdict: An okay keyboard for playing games like Starcraft 2, etc, but there is nothing particular special about this keyboard.
Picture 1. Creative Fatal1ty keyboard with backlight off.
Review
I got this keyboard back in 2006 as a gift from my friend, whom loved Creative products. He thought this keyboard would be something i would enjoy, since very few keyboards back then had backlight and used laptop style short travel keys mechanism. Personally, i never shared the his sentiment for his keyboard, but i never told him that i dislike it. The keyboard key mechanism is okay, the tactility and key response is probably one of the better one on the market (much better than the Lycosa one that i reviewed earlier), but the ergonomic of this keyboard is not that good. This keyboard is fairly thin, but it is not thin enough to employ the design that Creative used and in order to type comfortably on this keyboard, one would need to use a small palmrest (which isn’t supplied).
Picture 2. Creative keyboard compared to the regular Apple wired keyboard.
Picture 3. Creative Keyboard with the backlight on.
Picture 4. Closer shot of the Creative keyboard with the backlight on.
Picture 5. Side profile comparison of the Apple wired keyboard and the Creative keyboard.
Picture 6. Rear kick stand of the Creative keyboard.
The biggest reason that i don’t like using this keyboard, is the fact that there is constant humming noise when the backlight is on, which seems to be an inherent design problem (since my friend’s one also have the same problem). Also, this keyboard design was actually a copy of a keyboard design that was released in year 2002 (http://gizmodo.com/198053/creative-fatal1ty-keyboard-same-shit-different-name). So basically Creative slapped on a Fatal1ty badge and charged a small fortune for an old keyboard, which is no way to do business at this end of market.
Conclusion
An average keyboard with an extraordinary price. Only Fatal1ty fan would purchase this junk, personally i wouldn’t pay anything more than 30 dollars for it.