Ideazon Zboard MERC Review

Overview and Features
You can tell a Zboard because of its unique "butterfly" directional keys and others that fit most peoples hand allowing for pressing critical keys for the type of game they play. Ideazon has made a new Zboard while giving up the changeable faceplate for games there is now a more permanent selection to choose from.

Starting off with the Directional keys, the normally WASD along with Q and E are slightly rotated to the right to give players a more relaxed feel. However some people (like me) would like their keys to not to be rotated. An easy fix on rotating the keyboard itself can do this. The Merc unit has several very nice keys to play with. One of my favorites are the weapon hotkeys right above your arrows. This can be extremely useful for games like Guild wars and World of warcraft for selecting and casting spells at in a hurry. You got your reload, use, and several other commonly used FPS keys to the right and your other common keys like run, crouch, tab to your left.

The rest of the keyboard is more or less standard. You got your volume and multimedia keys on top along with three programmable hotkeys labeled I, II, III that you can assign in the Zboard software.

In Use
Messing around in a few games like FarCry, World of Warcraft, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Guild Wars, my transitions from WASD to those arrows were a bit shaky at first but I managed to handle pretty well from the general use and quickness the MERC keyset offers. One thing I noticed was the keys feel very soft. No Clickie klack noise while this may be a feature some needs it kind of threw me off in using UT2004 as I am one of those fast jumping bastards that double clicks the forward key along with the strafe keys causing me to do a sidestep jump. The lack of clicking just threw me off.
Another thing is the reload key is a bit cramped between the use key and the 6 key. Once in a rare while I'll accidentally hit the wrong key.

After my four hour gaming spree I began to look at the numpad area. There are various shortcuts for windows pictured on the keys that can help. There is a key specify designed for your alt-f I began to look at the numpad area. There are various shortcuts for windows pictured on the keys that can help. There is a key specify designed for your alt-f4 closing goodness if you are one of those people that gets thousands of popup. (Not me) along with a restore and maximize key.

I was not fond of the lack of a "real" numpad, and the insert, Del, end, page up, page down, along with the arrow keys being all part of the numpad area. I will assume Ideazon made the keyboard this way to save space on the desk. The only thing that really throws me off is the small 0 key rather than a big easy to slap 0 key.

Conclusion
The Zboard MERC is an excellent gaming keyboard while not so great for office like tasks, Feeling strong and has abit of weight into it keeps it from sliding around. The software that you can use to configure your keyboard is easy to use and when new games comes out you can go to their website to download more preset keys for your enjoyment. So far all the presets are just the way I like them and I will be using this keyboard for a lot of FPS and MMO's in the future.