It Came From Outer Space - GravaStar Mercury K1 Pro Review

Ever look at your keyboard and wished that it looked it would eat your face off? No? Well, apparently GravaStar thinks you should - and they designed probably the most aesthetically insane keyboard I've ever laid hands on: the Mercury K1 Pro. But is this keyboard just all bark and no bite?

You might wonder why I almost never review MX switch keyboards on this blog. Well in my mind, they're usually not that exciting. The vast majority of modern MX keyboards all seem to be a riff on "lubed linear, hot-swappable, gasket mount" - and everything else is just garnishing. It all gets a bit boring - and then a company called GravaStar decided to make the garnishing absolutely ridiculous.

GravaStar is a relatively new player to the peripherals market and they seem to be tapping into a little bit uncharted territory within the existing market for peripherals - make the most aesthetically polarizing products imaginable, but let's also try our hardest to not make them suck. If you've ever owned a 2010s-era Mad Catz product, those are two things that might feel mutually exclusive.

Source: GravaStar

That polarizing aesthetic comes in the form of pure biomechanical insanity. GravaStar's Mercury M1 mice, Mars and Supernova speakers, even something as mundane sounding as a wall charger all look like the lovechildren of Neill Blomkamp and H.R. Giger - and its Mercury K1 keyboards are no less unhinged.

The Mercury K1 keyboards come in three tiers. At the $90 entry level, you have the K1 Lite which is an all PC plastic affair packing a 4000 mAh battery, BSUN linear switches and a PC switch plate with hot swappable sockets. The $130 mid-range K1 is largely the same except it now has PBT/PC doubleshot keycaps, an aluminum alloy outer casing, Kalih switches, a multimedia knob and a bigger 8000 mAh battery pack. Lastly, there's the $180 range topping K1 Pro which introduces fully dye-sublimated PBT keycaps, an FR4 switchplate, more aggressively tuned Kalih switches, and cranks the aesthetic absurdity dial up to eleven.

Seriously. Take a look at this fucking thing.

There is... an awful lot to unpack here.

This keyboard looks like it scurried out of the vents of the Nostromo. GravaStar is infamous for its extreme biomechanical design language that makes even the most dedicated RGB gamer-bait fanatics go "dude, that's too much," and they managed to adapt it perfectly to a 75-percent keyboard.

The aluminum alloy chassis of the K1 Pro is formed in this organic exoskeleton-like design that makes the keyboard look like it was grown rather than cast. The entire package is very weighty at 2.6 pounds, extremely rigid and finished really beautifully - like it was coated by an automotive design house rather than some fledgling peripheral company. $180 is undoubtedly a lot of money for a keyboard, but this on just pure heft and quality of finishing feels like it's worth at least twice that much.

Oh yeah, I guess we should talk about the crab legs next.

Those crustacean-like appendages aren't just for looks - they're actually the functional flip-out feet of the keyboard. They don't add a tremendous amount of rear lift - only about half-an-inch - but they feel extremely sturdy and have a really meaty detent when you flip them down. GravaStar even went through the trouble of putting LEDs in the damn things as if they needed to stand out any more.

Yeah. LED keyboard feet. You don't get that kind of shit from Razer.

The keycaps are MDA profile PBT with solid colored tops and dye-sublimated legends. The sides are all fully transparent, allowing for the full glow of the RGB to thine through. I absolutely love the feel of these keycaps. They have a slightly more coarse texture than most keycaps I've used but they also have those old-school scalloped tops like you'd find on a vintage electric typewriter.

Visual madness aside, I find the dye-sub quality on these keycaps is merely just fine. The legends themselves look very sharp and detailed but I found that not all of them are centered properly. But even then, there's so much shit going on with the legends that you'll likely never notice that they aren't formed with 1980s IBM-like precision.

You'd better expect then, for a keyboard with this much effort put into its styling and construction that it had better have the same attention to detail put into its typing experience too. Well, I'm glad to report that GravaStar did indeed do their homework here.

The Kalih Speedy Mint linear switches its equipped with are rated at 45 grams of force at a hair trigger 1.2mm actuation point. Those specs means these are decidedly gaming switches first and in my own personal experience, I find extremely twitchy switches to be a bit burdensome when it comes to doing anything that isn't strictly focused on pushing APMs.

And yet, I still found the K1 Pro was still a marvelous keyboard to type on. The feel of these switches is extremely consistent and the smoothness is godly. I actually found I didn't make a huge amount of typos while using it despite the high set actuation point. A lot of this has to do with the overall quality of the switches but I also think the stable mounting and solid - but not excessively stiff rebound of the FR4 plate makes a noticeable difference here.

I was also a little nervous that the use of an FR4 plate in this keyboard instead of PC like the lower end models wouldn't be all that great for the sound, but it's still a very satisfying noise to fill your ears with. While it's not as quiet as most gasketed linear switch keyboards with more flexible PC plates, the FR4 generates a solid but still pretty satisfying bottoming out. I would not consider this keyboard to be office friendly in a million years though - at least not without a switch replacement.

For connectivity options, the K1 Pro can run either off 2.4 GHz wireless with the included dongle, Bluetooth, or wired over USB-C. Operating modes are switched with the three-position switch on the back of the keyboard, and there is another switch present for switching the keyboard between Windows and Mac layouts.

The built-in 8000 mAh battery pack is properly massive for a wireless keyboard and GravaStar estimates that the K1 Pro can get up to 470 hours of battery life before needing to be plugged in. Doing what exactly, they failed to specify. I can only imagine such a number wasn't obtained while running the extensive RGB at full on "solar flare". Despite that, I can attest the keyboard does last for a very long time without ever needing to touch a charger.

GravaStar offers both locally run software and a web based tool for configuring the Mercury K1 Pro. Both options are very lightweight and the web tool has the benefit of being able to be used agnostic of whatever device you have the keyboard connected to, so long as you're using a Chromium based browser that can interface with USB.

That being said, I absolutely hate web tools from an ownership point of view because there isn't any easy way of backing up or redistributing a web tool in the event something happens to the company hosting it. And if that happens, how are you going to reconfigure your keyboard? GravaStar at least had the good sense to offer both web and local options, but a lot of companies only offer the former, and I think that should be treated as massive red flag. Thankfully, not in this case.

The tool itself is pretty typical of most mechanical keyboards from China, featuring a keymap and macro editor, RGB customization, and optional music visualization. It also doesn't need to run in the background, nor does it require an account to use. Not really much else to it, but in a world where the big OEMs love to pack all manner of useless resource sapping shit into what should otherwise be a pretty simple piece of software, this is sort of stuff is pretty refreshing.

I do have one tiny gripe with the config tool though, and that's its inability to control the case lighting. In order to control the RGB lighting of the case, you have to resort to key combos that are listed in the keyboard manual. It's not a huge deal, but this is the kind of problem that I typically encounter on a sub-$100 keyboard from Epomaker or Aula - not a nearly $180+ prestige keyboard.

Source: GravaStar

And honestly, many of the popular Chinese 75-percent keyboards are all similar enough in terms of the exact execution of certain features that I wouldn't be surprised if they shared a not-insubstantial number of the same bones. That's not an indictment against GravaStar, and there really isn't anything wrong with doing that in general - but it does raise the question of how close can you get to this keyboard without making your wallet ache.

I think the existence of the regular Mercury K1 really hurts the value proposition of the Pro model. The standard K1 is built almost exactly the same as the Pro model, even down to the same 8000 mAh battery pack - just with slightly more forgiving switches, a less rigid PC mounting plate and no crab legs. I also think if you plan on using this keyboard in low light settings you might appreciate the shine-through legends of the doubleshot keycaps on the standard K1 more than the dye-subs of the Pro model.

Source: Aula

As for the other, much larger cachet of users who justifiably don't care for the wild biomechanical looks of the GravaStar keyboards? They should take a look at the Aula F75 or the Onikuma G83. Both keyboards are almost functionally identical to the GravaStar keyboards albeit in a less flashy, but much cheaper package. The Aula is the much more popular choice but I think the Onikuma is at least equally good for even less money.

I personally believe that's the biggest pitfall of the K1 Pro and so many other premium mechanical keyboards like it. If the sheer extravagance of the thing fails to land, then what exactly does this keyboard accomplish that something less expensive doesn't? You would have to REALLY want this exact combination hardware in order to brave the $180 hole this keyboard is going to put in your wallet.

But if that person is you? I have very little reason to believe you wouldn't really like it.

I will be the first to admit that I thought this keyboard was hideous when I first saw it in the photos. I couldn't think of a single setting where it wouldn't look comically out of place. But it quickly grew on me because I figured if you're going to design a keyboard with the intention of making it absolutely stand out - you might as well hang your balls out there. GravaStar definitely nailed that assignment.

To top it all off; the fact that this keyboard actually legit; types great and is built like a murder weapon is just the icing on the cake. The Mercury K1 Pro really should be a joke: the kind of obscure product you buy late at night on AliExpress because "it's probably going to suck, but at least it looks fun?" Except it doesn't. It really doesn't. It's goddamn fantastic.

So go ahead. Buy the facehugger keyboard. I dare you not to smile when you take it out of the box.

What's Good

• Super tight and buttery smooth linear switches.
• Great feeling PBT keycaps with dye-sub legends.
• Incredible attention to detail and construction.
  
• Big 8000 mAh battery pack.

What's Crap

• Extremely divisive looks.
• Switches might feel a little too sensitive for casual typing.
• Keycaps are unreadable in the dark.
• Substantially less expensive keyboards can easily challenge it.

Verdict

A fantastic MX keyboard whose true worth is determined by how badly you want its insane aesthetics.