Redragon Devarajas Review

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Redragon is known for budget gaming peripherals that feel as solidly built and responsive as high-end peripherals, and the Devarajas K556-RK mechanical gaming keyboard is no exception. The Devarajas is as sturdy as it comes with responsive brown-switch keys and a sleek aesthetic that will blend in with any desk for work and gaming.

What makes the Devarajas different from a standard keyboard?

If you’re unfamiliar with mechanical keyboards, you might be wondering what makes them different from the everyday keyboard you’ve been using, and what are brown switches?

Mechanical keyboards tend to be studier than membrane keyboards, both in build quality and in how long they will last. The mechanical switches that give mechanical keyboards their name are rated for approximately four-to-ten times as many keypresses as your standard membrane keyboard. Mechanical keyboards are designed to last longer and feel better, thanks to mechanical switches, than the standard membrane keyboard.

When you type on a membrane keyboard, you’re pushing a rubber membrane dome onto a circuit board. Mechanical keyboards feature keys elevated from the circuit board that operates with a spring and a switch to tell the computer what key was pressed, allowing for quicker responses, higher accuracy, and a more satisfying press. There are a wide variety of switch types, but we’ll be focusing on the MX brown switches found in the Devarajas.

MX brown switches are sort of a half-way point between gaming and work. They don’t have the “click” commonly associated with mechanical keyboards (that tends to be reserved for blue and green switches), but they do still have tactile feedback, letting you know when you’ve actually pressed a key and haven’t just tapped it. For mechanical keyboards with brown switches, that feedback comes in the form of a bump around halfway through a full keypress and is clearly felt in the Devarajas.

How it Looks

The first thing you’ll notice opening the Devaraja is its weight. The Devarajas is an incredibly solid keyboard, supported by a black steel aluminum frame with no give or bend. That steel aluminum frame gives it a sleek, minimal look that accentuates the matte-black keys over the frame, especially with the raised keys lifting away for easy cleaning.

The Devarajas is a full-size mechanical keyboard, including a number pad, but, unlike a lot of gaming keyboards, it doesn’t extend past the size of your average keyboard. With the addition of the FN, or function key, the Devarajas puts the F-row on double duty, serving as both the F-keys and media keys, including volume, playback control, and app buttons. It wastes no space, keeping everything compact, with just enough breathing room to make sure it still feels good to use.

Of course, no gaming keyboard is complete without customizable RGB backlighting and, thanks to the reflective steel alloy and raised keys, it looks great. Even at its brightest, the lighting never overpowers, instead of creating a cloud of reflected light for your keys to sit on. Or, if you’re a fan of rainbow effects, the Devarajas comes with a suite of pre-programmed color profiles to make lights dance across your mechanical keyboard or react with every keystroke. The FN key can even adjust your RGB backlighting on the fly, no need to open the app.

How it feels

Each key is lightly textured and concave, creating just enough of a grip that there’s no danger of finger slips while keeping movement fluid and easy for both gaming and work. There is definitely some height to the keys, but actuation time, the amount of time needed for a keypress to register, is still short and snappy thanks to its MX brown switches.

The Devarajas’ MX brown switches are, as with all brown switches, quiet and tactile. There’s a small amount of feedback about a quarter of the way through a keypress, just enough to know you’re using brown-switch keys. While the switches themselves are quiet, the keyboard does have a bit of snap to it when fully pressing a key, giving it a satisfying “typing” sound. The switches are a bit heavy as well, so if have a habit of resting your fingers on your keyboard, you’re probably not going to accidentally type ‘dddddddddddddddddddddddd’ in the middle of an important email or walk yourself off a cliff in Warzone.

After typing on the Devarajas for several days, I can safely say it's incredibly comfortable to use. The keyboard layout is tight, but there's still enough room between keys that I never found myself hitting multiple keys with a single stroke. It has a great response time, and I never saw a dropped input, both contributing to a great gaming experience.

Like most mechanical keyboards, the keycaps are easily removed for deep cleaning both the keys themselves as well as the keyboard should you spill anything.

Unlike most mechanical keyboards, the Devarajas comes with a switch puller as well as a test selection of MX red, blue, and black switches. To really customize this keyboard, you could swap out the "W" and "S" with blue switches, making it very clear where your hand is on the keyboard. This is usually an advanced modification, and a recommended one if you're a gamer, but Redragon makes it easy.

Download the Devarajas App!

The Devarajas app is minimal, clean, and easy to use. It offers multiple profiles, so if you're one to regularly switch your RGB backlighting, you can set up a few options ahead of time. It also offers macro options though, unlike other gaming keyboards, without designated macro keys. You may want to sacrifice some of your number pad keys to utilize this macro functionality.

Final Verdict:

There's not a lot bad to say about the Deverajas K556-RK. While it is a budget mechanical keyboard, there's nothing about it that feels budget. The MX brown switches are satisfying to use, the chassis is incredibly well built and won't bend, even under stress. The app is certainly simple, but it shines for it, opting away from vast confusing settings for simple, easy-to-use RGB backlighting and macros. And a gaming mechanical keyboard with a number pad that isn't oversized is always a nice find.

If you’re looking for a budget brown-switch mechanical keyboard, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than Redragon’s Devarajas K5556-RK. A sleek, solidly-built chassis and wide utility make the $54.99 price tag an easy recommendation.