I’ve never quite understood car people, but the closest I think I’ve come is my love of gaming keyboards. The first time I took the MelGeek Centauri 80 out of its shuttle packaging, I felt myself exclaim and didn’t even realise I’d done it. Like a geeky Patrick Bateman describing the differences between business cards, I felt myself in awe of the shape, aesthetic, and build of the keyboard.
But alas, I know what it is. It’s a showpiece, and not necessarily one I’d actually recommend buying. Though I’d certainly get a few sneaky glances if your rich friend picks one up instead.
The Centauri 80, as you might be able to guess from the name, is a keyboard obsessed with space. With a white and silver aesthetic, it almost looks like a space shuttle. The caps lock icon is a ‘status’ bar with a silver wrapping, and an extra key and dial over the right-hand side have the same detailing. This is before mentioning the OLED touchscreen. It could have been ripped straight out of Starfield, Blade Runner, or an actual space station. It also comes with a themed wire and key puller, which is a neat touch.
To top off the look, all the keys are see-through, with RGB backlights, and it has a stripe of RGB all around the side. It lights up in a dark room, but also looks gorgeous when it’s not on. Unfortunately, though, that can make it a little hard to read if it’s dark enough. See-through keys don’t give much background for the white lettering to contrast with, making it tough to parse with both RGB and without.
(Image credit: Future)
Switches: Magnetic white switches
Keycaps: Transparent
Lighting: Yes
Polling rate: 8,000 Hz
Connection type: Wired
Layout: 83 keys
Extra: 1.78-inch OLED touchscreen
Weight: 1.87 kg
Price: $359
It’s a gaming keyboard I’ve spent almost as much time admiring as I have gaming—and I’ve spent a lot of time gaming with it. It’s even admirable in terms of sound. With layers under those keys, it sounds thocky but in a very satisfying way, and keys go down smoothly with little resistance. There’s clearly a lot of love put into the design and build quality here, but love alone is not a reason to spend $350.
In games, it performs well. Keys are comfortable to press, they sound good, and the switches are super snappy. The Centauri 80 can go all the way up to 8,000 Hz in terms of polling rate, which is certainly nice, though for 99% of people it’s far too high to see any benefit. It’s got Hall effect switches with rapid trigger, so keys register the moment you let go, rather than the second they hit a threshold. This means you can spam them quicker if you’d like to, or for tactical shooters, you can stop moving and get a smaller reticule just a moment earlier.
FutureFutureFutureFuture
That is exactly the case in Valorant, where you are more accurate the second you stop walking. I found the spacing between keys to be solid here, and it’s just generally easy to use. With 83 keys total, I didn’t find myself in need of an extra one in any of the games I played. From shooters to RPGs, from first to third person, it doesn’t let up, and its super sturdy chassis means it practically never moves on my desk.
At just under 2 kg, the keyboard is super chonky. The case is built from an aluminium alloy, and I doubt my ability to dent the shell even if I wanted to (which I definitely don’t). This hefty weight does make popping it in a backpack pretty difficult, but the Centauri 80 is more something you’d pop behind a glass panel than something you’d bust out on the train.
As far as typing feel is concerned, the Centauri 80 is great. It feels smooth to use, and I like the TTX x MelGeek magnetic white switches. Key hits feel commanding thanks to strong feedback, but not hard to do at the same time. Despite not always being able to see the keycaps when it’s dark enough, I almost never struggled to hit the right key without looking. It’s well-proportioned, and everything feels very natural.
FutureFuture
Two things I’m not a fan of is the enter and space bar. The space bar says “Back to the space” and enter says “Enter to the universe” on it. I get that these keys are supposed to tie into the space theme, but I actually think the specific choice of wording is just a little off.
It only comes in a wired variant, but wireless keyboards feel a tad less useful to me than wireless gaming headsets, wireless mice, and wireless controllers. It’s mostly designed to sit in one spot, so a rogue cable has never really bothered me.
One peculiarity I did find with the keyboard is that many of my USB Type-C cables refused to work with it. It does come with a nice braided white one in the box, but casually bringing it with me to plug into a different rig with a different cable resulted in the keyboard refusing to turn on. Not only do some cables not provide enough power to run it, but the USB port is quite recessed, and some of my cables simply can’t get far enough into the base to connect to it.
FutureFutureFutureFutureFuture
The OLED touchscreen is nice and bright, and even comes in colour, so you can pop your own GIFs or images in there in all their full-coloured glory. Its use cases are perhaps a little niche, but it looks good at pretty much all times. Effectively, when you don’t touch the media dial, the screen will display one thing (a gif of your choice, a status bar, key actuation display, etc.), then when the media dial is active, it changes the screen into a whole new set of functions.
As far as typing feel is concerned, the Centauri 80 is great.
Those functions correspond to the dial underneath it. When set to volume mode, it makes the dial adjust the volume of your rig. Media control makes the dial play, pause, go to the next song, or go to the previous one. That means that, though there is a single media control on the entire keyboard, it has solid versatility.
Just under that dial is an orange button that immediately takes you to the MelGeek web app. This can also be changed, but I find accessing a web app with a shortcut is a neat use of the button. MelGeek’s web-based software is a little slow, but solid otherwise. From it, you can adjust lighting, set custom controls, activate rapid trigger, get updates, and more. It does a good job of making it so you don’t have to download the software, which is kind of the point of a web app.
✅ You need your keyboard to make a statement: The Centauri 80 is eye-catching in a truly great sense, and the thunk as it hits your desk could clear all the dust out, too.
✅ You really like space: This keyboard is so committed to its space aesthetic that it’s admirable in a very geeky way.
❌ You don’t need the Centauri 80 specifically: The aesthetic and touchscreen are unique, but there are equally viable keyboard choices at half its price.
❌ You stare at your keyboard as you game: The transparent keys look neat, especially with RGB shining through them, but that makes it hard to make out at night.
MelGeek says the Centauri 80 comes with smart voltage monitoring to combat fluctuating voltages, and this apparently even allows it to warn you when it detects moisture, which is pretty neat. If it’s going to be a showcase piece, it helps that it seems built to last in many ways.
That price will be the biggest sticking point for the Centauri 80, and for good reason. For $150 less, you can pick up weighty and impressive keyboards like the Wooting 80HE or the Logitech G512 X, which I’d argue is also a showpiece (and comes with 8K polling too). Though it doesn’t offer colour, the OLED screen in the $220 Steelseries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3 is very pretty, and the keyboard is lovely too.
And if you are simply looking for rapid trigger Hall effect switches, the likes of the Gamakay X NaughShark NS68 offer it for almost ten times less. The MelGeek Centauri 80 doesn’t offer anything in specs or feel that can’t be found cheaper, and even with better feel (or key visibility) elsewhere.
However, its aesthetic and build quality are undeniably top-notch, and I feel at least a little lucky to have got my grubby mitts / grubby eyeballs all over it. If you’re looking for value, you won’t find it here— but the Centauri 80 does feel truly unique despite it.
