Armaggeddon Kalashinikov does sound like someone related to Mikhail Kalashnikov but it isn’t, Armaggeddon is a brand that specializes in gaming products and they’ve been around for quite a while. The AK-550i is the latest of their gaming keyboard with a rather fierce product name that reminds one of the AK-47 but just how well does the product fare?
The packaging is simple for the AK-550i, what you get is just a CD and the keyboard.
Here’s the keyboard itself, it’s a plain keyboard with programmable shortcut buttons at the top.
The key caps are of low profile types.
The under side of the keyboard with tilt adjustment stands, the design is horrible because there’s no padding at all for the rear stands.
The AK-550i comes with backlit LED, it’s available in either red or blue.
More details at the official product page.
User Experience
The Armaggeddon Kalashinikov AK-550i’s build quality is average and the keys are tough to press, really something that’s not towards my liking. It has a slight bump like brown Cherry MX switches but one can easily feel the difference between them.
I didn’t like it that they fail to provide proper padding for the keyboard, some rubber padding at right places could help reduce vibration during use. The backlit keyboard might be a selling point but I didn’t like it that they did not provide the option to reduce the intensity or disable it.
One thing Armaggeddon did right this time is the software, one that actually allows customization of the keyboard.
The Verdict
The Armaggeddon Kalashinikov AK-550i retails at RM 79, the products doesn’t look as special, it doesn’t have the option to adjust LED and it’s rather tough to press (this is subjected to preference) BUT the saving point would be the software, this gives this very basic keyboard more functionality that many sub RM 100 out there.
