You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/andaseat-kaiser-3-gaming-chair.2169/

Now this isn’t my first rodeo. Having reviewed one of E-Win’s chairs back in 2018 I found it a comfortable companion for my day to day work and play. As time’s gone on though, the seat started to show some wear, and in looking for an alternative, AndaSeat offered one up for review: the Kaiser 3.

To start from the start, assembling the chair was incredibly trivial. AndaSeat celebrate their use of magnets to assist in an easy chair assembly, and advertise an assembly that only requires one person. From start to end it was quite simple, and while the magnets feel more novel than crucial, they are appreciated in nonetheless. The basics didn’t change much when compared to the E-Win construction in terms of having a seat and a back, and having to bolt them together. The magnets come into play in adding the cover over the bolts themselves, giving you a really clean aesthetic with minimal additional effort being required. Getting the wheels onto the base is just a case of slotting them in, and the mechanism to raise and lower the chair is more of the same. I can’t imagine many people having trouble setting this up outside of the weight of carrying the initial parcel. At 35kg it is heavy.

The use of magnets does go beyond the assembly process, and I feel these ones are a bit more useful. You see this in both the arm rests and the head rest. What I think is good here is that these are two relative points of failure when it comes to long term use, with head cushions seeing heavy wear, and arm rests typically being the things I accidentally hit other things with. In theory, being able to replace these without having to replace the larger chair is a big win for me, but that is just in theory. While AndaSeat do have a section on their site for pillows and other accessories, the Kaiser 3 stuff seems to be absent. It’d be my hope that AndaSeat would be able to offer replacements if contacted directly, but I have no way to confirm this for myself.

What really drew me to the Kaiser 3 in particular was the availability of a fabric version. I feel gaming chairs too frequently fall into the same designs with that almost rubbery look thanks to the PU leather materials. With my E-Win chair being PU leather, I can at least vouch for its comfort, but to be blunt I just got tired of seeing it. It doesn’t fit in with a normal room, and while garishness is somewhat of a gaming staple, it really doesn’t have to be. AndaSeat aren’t the only company to be putting out fabric options, but having used this chair for a few months now I can say it’s been genuinely refreshing. I love having a chair that doesn’t seem out of place in a room, and the fabric feels great when sat down. The only flaw I could really come to with fabric as a chair material is ease of cleaning. With PU leather you can naturally just wipe it if you spill something, and while you can still tackle fabric with a cloth, it’s something I can see coming into play as the chair sees more use.

In terms of lumbar support, you have a good degree of flexibility in how you want your spine to rest in the chair. On the back of the chair you have a knob on each side that can be twisted to easily move the internal lumbar support up and down, and alter how much it protrudes outwards and into your backbone. It’s really intuitive, and can be altered entirely on the fly to suit your current mood or particular flavour of lower back pain. It’s a huge step up from the simple cushion I’ve previously had, and the flexibility it offers does top the office chairs I’ve used for work.

Can I recommend the Kaiser 3? In no uncertain terms, yeah. It’s comfortable, and that’s obviously the biggest thing you’re looking at in terms of a chair investment. But on top of that, the fabric is breathable, it’s easy to assemble, and makes it easy to replace a few common parts that might fail first. It ticks a lot of boxes for me, and with a two year guarantee to support it, the £400 it costs feels a bit safer.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/asus-rog-azoth-gaming-keyboard.2165/

It’s no secret I’m a fan of ASUS. Since I started reviewing their keyboards, mice, and other fun gadgets, I’ve come to expect a certain quality and a certain degree of fun uniqueness from the products they have on offer. Be it a two-screened laptop or a keyboard that you can move the number pad to the left of, their more out-there peripherals are the ones that have stuck with me, and they’re the ones I’ve gone out and bought after finishing my reviews. Roll on the grand year of 2023 and we’re back with not just a clean-looking 75% keyboard, but one with a small OLED display in its corner? Consider me suitably intrigued.

The out of box experience with any ASUS product is a good one. You don’t quite have that feeling you might expect from something like an Apple product, but it’s still somewhat distinct. It’s a box within a box, with the keyboard protected with a nice sleeve that you might want to keep for transporting it. Underneath the keyboard, you get your usual bits of documentation, a USB C to USB C cable for charging, and a switch lube toolkit that includes tools for removing keycaps and switches, a few spare replacement switches, and some Krytox lubricant. It’s a great set and more than I’d usually expect to see from a gaming keyboard. To me though, this feels like more than just a gaming keyboard.

The ROG team have somewhat outdone themselves with the larger design of this keyboard, bringing in some of the features you’d generally only expect to see in your custom DIY models on top of their usual bells and whistles. On the surface you have what looks like a fairly normal ROG keyboard. It’s all black, got plenty of lights, and is packing great connectivity with a combination of USB C, Bluetooth, and 2.4 GHz wireless. It’s not all too different to the STRIX Scope RX I looked at last year at a glance. There is an elephant in the room though, and that’s the compact OLED display and associated knob that sit in the top-right of the device. I don’t want to oversell this, you’re not getting something like Razer’s Deathstalker Ultimate. This screen isn’t going to house a browser window or really do anything spectacular. Instead, ASUS opted to shift a lot of what you’d usually find on a traditional function layer into this neat package with a simple but really clear display. Here, you can control audio, media, and the keyboard lighting, as well as a few other interesting things with the help of ASUS’ Armory Crate, like your motherboard fan speed. The display can also show a number of things while sitting idle, ranging from a looped gif to system stats, to the date and time. The controls for the display are a really simple knob that clicks up and down, as well as being able to be pressed in. It’s a really intuitive implementation of features you would generally expect on this kind of keyboard, and while I don’t necessarily think it’s a revolutionary feature I’d struggle to do without, I do think it’s a meaningful addition.

There is more yet to the keyboard though. Screens and other eccentricities might be what you expect from a gaming keyboard nowadays, and to an extent I certainly do. What I don’t expect however are a build quality and typing experience on par with DIY builds. In no uncertain terms this keyboard is a joy to type on. The switches come pre-lubed, and thanks to there being three layers of dampening alongside a silicone gasket mount design, typing feels cushioned and much more muted than other gaming keyboards I’ve come across. Still having the STRIX Scope RX on hand, its similar RX red switches feel far more hollow. I don’t think I’d notice half as much of a difference using clickier switches like blues, but with reds this muted and cushioned feel is genuinely sublime.

Looking at the larger build quality of the keyboard, you have a metal top cover paired with a sturdy plastic base. ASUS did comment in the promotional materials that the plastic base was picked to minimise wireless interference, but it really doesn’t take away from the larger premium feel or aesthetic. I actually quite like the two-tone look the two materials provide. Despite the plastic base, the keyboard itself is rather weighty, coming in just shy of 1.2kg. For comparison, that’s around 300g heavier than my full-sized Wooting two HE. It sits really nicely in place on the desk at the cost of being slightly more difficult to justify carrying in a backpack.

I took a bit of time to play with the keyboard itself, dismantling it and throwing on some keycaps I had lying around. Due to only having ANSI keycaps handy, it looks like a bit of a monster with some of the keys having light shine through them and some not, but it did highlight a small design issue for me. I really don’t like the spacing of the function keys. This is definitely a subjective point, and I do understand why they’re clumped together with the space being needed for the screen. Putting my own keycaps on, I realised just how much nicer it was to have some kind of definition, even if it was just having the central four function keys be a different colour to the rest. But that is some of the joy of this keyboard, and in fairness, a good number of keyboards lately: you can make them entirely your own. To give due credit, there aren’t many gaming-oriented keyboards with hot-swappable switches, and it’s nice to see a brand like ASUS take that step. I bought ASUS’ Claymore II for its great wireless connectivity and flexibility, and I am genuinely considering this keyboard as a base to just have fun with. Once you throw on some new keycaps and turn off the lighting, you really wouldn’t know this is a gaming keyboard, and in a market of often-garish and in your face designs, I think this is a really cool thing. It’s a bit of a shame ASUS didn’t take it a step further and offer different case colours or designs, but I can understand the need to stick with a simple black, if only to maintain parity with the larger ROG brand.

Can I recommend the Azoth? Being told it’ll retail around the £200 mark, I think I can. This is the first gaming keyboard I’ve looked at that really does feel like more than just a gaming keyboard. This feels like the keyboard of an enthusiast, and a grand entrypoint to the larger world of keyboard customisation. With a useful screen and connectivity that you generally wouldn’t see in a lot of DIY models, it does enough to sell itself as a unique product while keeping up in the areas that really matter.