Introduction

James Donkey is a PC peripheral brand established in 2014 and known mostly in Asia for its keyboards and mice in addition to many other products offering good value. The brand name also no doubt helps get word of mouth going but, as we saw before, the keyboards are decent enough to not just be a funny name. Indeed, the previous James Donkey review was of its RS2 keyboard that gave you 99 keys in a modified 96% form factor to allow for more functionality while still saving some space on your desk. I thought that keyboard was worthy of consideration given the feature set but was held back by some design shortcuts and a lack of customization. It seems that James Donkey listened and recently released an updated version. Thanks to MechKeys, via James Donkey, for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp!

The James Donkey RS2 received an update last year itself with the RS2 2.0 that updated the hardware drivers and added software support too, thus already addressing my main complaint. The even newer RS2 3.0, which we are examining today, retains the base functionality and goes with a slightly different form factor to add in an LCD screen in addition to offering both pre-built and kit versions of the keyboard. This means the already feature-rich keyboard has the potential to be even better now. There’s the expected RGB lighting, hot swappable switches, triple mode connections, built-in battery etc, and now we have both onboard and software-based customization too. James Donkey has also updated the aesthetics from the previous retro design to this white and blue color scheme. Let’s take a closer look at the new James Donkey RS2 3.0 keyboard in this review beginning with the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications