A wireless mechanical keyboard gives you the liberty to experience that tactile feedback while also not being forced to remain tethered to a single place, but at the expense of increased input delay. For one owner of a rather expensive SteelSeries keyboard, reduced latency was more important, meaning it had to remain plugged in. Unfortunately, the excessive charging and discharging caused the battery to swell, turning a rather pricey purchase into a dud, at least until the replacement component arrives.
A SteelSeries keyboard was purchased by Redditor “Molti_gfx” for €100, which is around $115. While some readers are contemplating why we mentioned that the accessory was expensive, as €100 is quite an affordable range, it’s because the aforementioned price was available on sale. Its typical price is around €300, which is too steep for most buyers, but they wouldn’t shell out this much just to have the keyboard plugged in, even though it's a wireless version.
While the swollen battery is likely the result of continuous charging, anyone who knows their way around hardware can simply remove the battery and use the SteelSeries keyboard in wired mode. The only problem is that the company’s engineers adopted a flawed PCB design that forces the use of a battery to retain functionality. Now, the Redditor is required to wait for a replacement cell, and after that’s re-attached to the PCB, the keyboard’s functionality will be restored.
One area that SteelSeries engineers also missed was limiting the battery’s state of charge when it was connected indefinitely. We can’t fault the customer on this either, since the company offered the choice between using the keyboard in wired or wireless mode. If the manufacturer knew that something like this would transpire, they should have simply designed a PCB that would cut off power to the battery as soon as it reached 100 percent charge, routing the power to the keyboard instead.
If you think we’re asking SteelSeries to add these safety measures, it’s only because they’re charging €300 a unit when there’s no sale on it. For gamers who will exclusively hook up their keyboards with a wire, save a little money and skip the wireless models entirely.
News Source: Reddit
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