I'd like to share my experience with this keyboard. I have used a Logitech G15 for several years and decided to upgrade to the G19. The G15 is excellent and still in working condition, but I really wanted to use the color display on the G19 for video playback. I purchased the G19 in April 2012, and it worked wonderfully. Should you get this keyboard, definitely look into the freeware application LCDHost. It lets you make custom displays with tons of options. Currently, my G19 is displaying the time, outside temperature, weather, memory usage, cpu usage across all for cores, i/o on 4 hard drives, in and out speed of my internet connection, and the number of emails in my inbox, all updated in realtime, simultaneously, with a custom background picture to boot.



The keys have a much softer feel to them than the G15, and the fully customizable backlight color is a great feature. The built in apps are adequate. I don't really like the new resource monitor. The bar chart format for memory and cpu usage on the G15 was much easier and faster to read than the tachometer-style meters on the G19. As I said above, you can fix that by making a custom config with LCDHost. Also, the movie playback plugin often doesn't recognize a lot of formats. There is a plugin for an older version of VLC that lets you redirect video to the LCD. That's great, but it means having 2 versions of VLC installed, and some twiddling.



Now, for the bad. I heard that this keyboard had issues with Intel X58 and AMD 790 chipsets. I have an AMD 790 based board, but everything was fine...until I reinstalled my Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty PCIe sound card, which I had take out to make room for a graphics card. After installing this card, I started getting the same issues that have plagued a lot of users. The keyboard would work fine for 20 minutes to 4 hours, and then it would lock up. It often locked up when Netflix was playing, or in the middle of a game of Battlefield 3. No amount of driver re-installation would fix the issue. Logitech's forums had lists of suggestions, but many of them were ridiculous, like disabling Crossfire. I have a Crossfire system, and I don't think that disabling my second graphics card is a great tradeoff. It didn't work, anyway.



So, for a few months, I have been using the G15, occasionally hooking the G19 up and trying a different suggestion. Nothing seemed to stop the constant lockups. During this process, I noticed that the AC adapter was making a loud buzzing noise. I had high hopes that I might have a bad AC adapter, so I ordered a new one from Logitech. The new adapter does not buzz, but the keyboard had the same lockups. I tried tweaking USB settings in the BIOS, as directed by Logitech. They even claimed that cell phones sitting near the keyboard could cause lockups. Moving my iPhone across the room didn't fix it, and to be honest, I'm not surprised.



In a last ditch effort to get this expensive (but really nice to use) keyboard working, I bought an IOGear 5 port USB card (which can be found on Amazon). I hooked up the keyboard, and it finally works with no problems again. There is still a downside, though. The USB card isn't recognized until Windows boots. So, I still have the G15 hooked up, sitting in a corner, in case I need to get into the bios or tell Windows to start normally after a crash. Obviously, this isn't exactly ideal. But, the keyboard is so good that I'm willing to put up with it. If it had worked well without any issues, it would be a five star product.



So, in conclusion, if you buy this keyboard and it works for you, you will really enjoy it. Combined with LCDHost, it is an incredible piece of hardware. If it doesn't work, you might as well either return it or go straight to using a USB card instead of your onboard USB. I haven't really been satisfied with Logitech's explanations for these keyboard issues. I can see how there might be a problem with one particular USB chipset, but the USB logic on the Intel X58 and AMD 790 is completely different. I believe that there is either a hardware flaw with the keyboard, or a flaw in their drivers. I don't think it has anything to do with the Creative hardware or drivers, since plenty of people encountering this issue have used onboard sound.