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Best Gaming Keyboard Under $100 for 2023

Improve your stats with a good gaming keyboard that won’t break the bank.

A keyboard can make or break your PC gaming setup. Don’t let a bad one ruin your gaming experience. A new keyboard is an easy upgrade, especially considering the plethora of great options under $100. We tested tons of budget-friendly keyboards to help you decide which one is going to give you the most bang for your buck.

Just like picking out a new gaming mouse, getting the right gaming keyboard has a lot to do with personal preference — from ergonomic design (hello, wrist rest) to whether you prefer RGB lighting, mechanical keys, tactile feedback, programmable keys, dedicated media keys or so many other features that we can’t even begin to list them. To help narrow your keyboard design preferences, check out GameSpot’s glossary of keyboard terms.

Read more: Best Gaming Mouse Under $50 for 2023

It’s worth noting that Aukey, which makes one of our top picks, was booted from Amazon last year because it was one of several vendors reported to have solicited positive user reviews for gift cards. But since our experience with the quality and value of Aukey accessories has been positive, we continue to recommend its hardware.

Josh Goldman/CNET

You’re receiving price alerts for Razer Cynosa V2 Gaming Keyboard

If you’re most comfortable doing your office work on a membrane keyboard, the Cynosa might be the gaming keyboard for you. It’s a membrane keyboard, not mechanical, so the keys are quiet and definitely feel softer than the others here and some might find them mushy. Still, if you’re looking to use one keyboard for both work and play, this is a fine compromise for its $60 list price.

Many of the original Cynosa’s features carry over, including per-key RGB lighting — a rarity at this end of the market — and durable spill-resistant design. What’s new is a set of media keys added to the upper right corner. Razer also added cable routing under the keyboard so you can keep your desk a little tidier. 

This is also one of the most programmable keyboards here. There are a lot of preset lighting effects to pick from and you can also create your own using the Synapse 3.0 software. There’s also Razer’s Hypershift feature that lets you set up a secondary set of functions for your keys that are accessed with a «shift» key you choose. You can also rebind keys and set macros with the software.

Josh Goldman/CNET

$30 at Amazon

You’re receiving price alerts for WhirlwindFX Atom 60% Gaming Keyboard: Interactive and Customizable Lighting – Immersive, Reactive RGB Experience (Blue Clicky)

Whirlwind FX’s Atom 60% mechanical gaming keyboard isn’t too different from other similarly sized options. The compact build is a space saver, great if you need extra mousing room while you game. It’ll also slide easily into a backpack for travel. (It also has a removable braided USB-C cable to help with that.) The company offers a choice of three mechanical switches, and they’re all brilliantly lit with RGB LEDs. 

The Atom’s backlighting, or more specifically the software that controls them, is where this little keyboard stands out. The thing is, you don’t even need the keyboard to use the software. 

The SignalRGB app lets you set the keyboard’s lighting to have different effects during regular use and when media is playing including various games. The app has a library of game integrations to choose from. I tested the Battlefield V integration, for example, and it does things like turn the keyboard lights red when HP is low or green when you’re healed. The Fortnite integration will change the keyboard to pink and red when you take damage or purple when you add experience. There are a lot of games available and, if you really like to tinker, you can create your own integrations using the company’s open-platform lighting software.

However, the SignalRGB software lets you take things a step further by expanding the effects to your other RGB gaming peripherals. It supports more than 150 devices from Razer, Corsair, HyperX, Logitech, SteelSeries and others. You can also request others that aren’t supported yet. 

Also, if you prefer a full-size keyboard, check out the company’s second-gen Element keyboard that has the same switch options but it has directional keys and a number pad.

Read our Whirlwind FX Atom review.

 

Sarah Tew/CNET

You’re receiving price alerts for Logitech G413 Backlit Mechanical Gaming Keyboard (Carbon)

Even on Logitech’s lower-end models such as the G413 backlit gaming keyboard, the company doesn’t cheap out on build quality and components. It uses the same Romer-G Tactile switches found on its more feature-filled models and has the same slim, simple and durable keyboard design with brushed aluminum-magnesium alloy top case. It has a braided USB cable with a USB passthrough port on the back right and channels underneath for mouse and headset cable management.

The tactile key switch is relatively quiet with no click when actuated, just a subtle bump and a short actuation. If you love to hear and feel your keypresses, this probably isn’t the best switch for you. There’s just one color for the backlight — red — but the backlighting is bright and the key font on this full-size keyboard is easy to read. Logitech includes 12 faceted keycaps, which is nice but we didn’t feel much difference.

The G413 is programmable with Logitech’s G Hub software, letting you set up macros and custom functions on the F1-F12 buttons and there’s a game mode that shuts off the Windows key. Overall it’s a more polished mechanical gaming keyboard than the others here, but it’s also pricier.

Sarah Tew/CNET

You’re receiving price alerts for Logitech G613 Wireless Gaming Keyboard

Finding a good wireless gaming keyboard can be difficult. These babies are a rarity because the last thing you want to do is potentially introduce lag into your performance. The G613’s Lightspeed wireless performs as well as wired and its battery life is stellar at up to 18 months on two AA-size batteries. That said, the keyboard has no backlight whatsoever, which while understandable for the power savings, no keyboard backlighting really kills the gaming experience in the dark. You do get six programmable buttons down the left side, so that’s something.

The G613 uses the same Romer-G Tactile mechanical switches as the G413, so everything I said about that one applies here. I happen to like the feel of this switch for gaming and typing, though I was in the minority for our testing. This wireless keyboard is definitely one you should try before you buy if you can.

The $50 G14 is one of the most affordable mechanical gaming keyboards available and Aukey has stepped up its game with the build quality and software without increasing prices. This TKL keyboard is chunky but still saves desk space since it doesn’t have a number pad; check out Aukey’s G12 if you want that feature.

Although the case is all plastic, it has the heft of a metal frame. Combined with the nonslip pads on the bottom, this keyboard won’t slide around while you’re gaming. Plus, there are two sets of flip-out feet at the back giving you three typing angles to choose from — something you don’t always find on pricier keyboards. And while its USB cable is attached to the body, Aukey did add routing on the bottom so you can send the cable out to the left, right or center. 

The company’s blue clicky switches are good for both typing and gaming with a tactile bump you can feel and hear. These switches have a loud click to them, something to keep in mind if you share a workspace). Also, there is no pinging from the switch springs, unlike the slimmer full-size G12 keyboard, so all you really hear is their click. There is some key wobble but it’s relatively minor and overall it’s a solid typing experience.

The keycap legends are difficult to read with the backlight off. However, with 18 preprogrammed lighting options to choose from and four brightness settings, there’s little reason to have the lights off entirely while you’re working. You can always replace the keycaps, too, and Aukey includes a puller. Software for the keyboard can be used to create your own per-key RGB lighting, set up key macros or change key assignments and save multiple profiles. The G14 is a great place to start if you’re just getting into mechanical keyboards for work or play.

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Apple, I’m (Sky) Blue About Your iPhone 17 Air Color

Commentary: The rumored new hue of the iPhone 17 Air is more sky blah than sky blue.

I can’t help but feel blue about the latest rumor that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air will take flight in a subtle, light-hued color called sky blue.

Sky blue isn’t a new color for Apple. It’s the featured shade of the current M4 MacBook Air, a shimmer of cerulean so subtle as to almost be missed. It’s silver left too close to an aquarium; silver that secretly likes to think it’s blue but doesn’t want everyone else to notice.

Do Apple employees get to go outside and see a real blue sky? It’s actually vivid, you can check for yourself. Perhaps the muted sky blue color reflects a Bay Area late winter/early spring frequent layer of clouds like we typically see here in Seattle.

«Who cares?» you might find yourself saying. «Everyone gets a case anyway.» I hear you and everyone else who’s told me that. But design-focused Apple is as obsessive about colors as they are about making their devices thinner. And I wonder if their heads are in the clouds about which hues adorn their pro products.

Making the case for a caseless color iPhone

I’m more invested in this conversation than most — I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t wrap my phone in a case. I find cases bulky and superfluous, and I like to be able to see Apple’s design work. Also, true story, I’ve broken my iPhone screen only twice: First when it was in a «bumper» that Apple sent free in response to the iPhone 4 you’re-holding-it-wrong Antennagate fiasco, and second when trying to take long exposure starry night photos using what I didn’t realize was a broken tripod mount. My one-week-old iPhone 13 Pro slipped sideways and landed screen-first on a pointy rock. A case wouldn’t have saved it.

My current model is an iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium — which I know seems like avoiding color entirely — but previously I’ve gone for colors like blue titanium and deep purple. I wanted to like deep purple the most but it came across as, in the words of Patrick Holland in his iPhone 14 Pro review, «a drab shade of gray or like Grimace purple,» depending on the light.

Pros can be bold, too

Maybe the issue is too many soft blues. Since the iPhone Pro age began with the iPhone 11 Pro, we’ve seen variations like blue titanium (iPhone 15 Pro), sierra blue (iPhone 13 Pro) and pacific blue (iPhone 12 Pro).

Pacific blue is the boldest of the bunch, if by bold you mean dark enough to discern from silver, but it’s also close enough to that year’s graphite color that seeing blue depends on the surrounding lighting. By comparison, the blue (just «blue») color of the iPhone 12 was unmistakably bright blue.

In fact, the non-Pro lines have embraced vibrant colors. It’s as if Apple is equating «pro» with «sophisticated,» as in «A real pro would never brandish something this garish.» I see this in the camera world all the time: If it’s not all-black, it’s not a «serious» camera.

And yet I know lots of pros who are not sophisticated — proudly so. People choose colors to express themselves, so forcing that idea of professionalism through color feels needlessly restrictive. A bright pink iPhone 16 might make you smile every time you pick it up but then frown because it doesn’t have a telephoto camera.

Color is also important because it can sway a purchase decision. «I would buy a sky blue iPhone yesterday,» my colleague Gael Cooper texted after the first rumor popped online. When each new generation of iPhones arrive, less technically different than the one before, a color you fall in love with can push you into trading in your perfectly-capable model for a new one.

And lest you think Apple should just stick with black and white for its professional phones: Do you mean black, jet black, space black, midnight black, black titanium, graphite or space gray? At least the lighter end of the spectrum has stuck to just white, white titanium and silver over the years.

Apple never got ahead by being beige

I’m sure Apple has reams of studies and customer feedback that support which colors make it to production each year. Like I said, Apple’s designers are obsessive (in a good way). And I must remind myself that a sky blue iPhone 17 Air is a rumored color on a rumored product so all the usual caveats apply.

But we’re talking about Apple here. The scrappy startup that spent more than any other company on business cards at the time because each one included the old six-color Apple logo. The company that not only shaped the first iMac like a tipped-over gumdrop, that not only made the case partially see-through but then made that cover brilliant Bondi blue.

Embrace the iPhone colors, Apple.

If that makes you nervous, don’t worry: Most people will put a case on it anyway.

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Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.

The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea. 

According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»

The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»

Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.

Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»

K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.

More research to do on finding life on K2-18b

The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.

«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»

Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»

The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»

As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.

«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»

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