[section_title title=”Closer Look”]Closer Look
The Gigabyte Osmium Aivia at first glance is a very large keyboard with a consistent black theme. The additional keys and palm rest make it incredibly deep for a keyboard.
Part of the reason the Osmium is so deep, is because of the five extra macro keys and wheels for controlling the lighting and volume. By pressing the lighting wheel, you can turn the backlighting on or off, or adjust the brightness by scrolling. The volume wheel is just like the brightness, except it controls the audio level instead – which you can mute by pressing down on the wheel. Just below the macro keys are additional media keys, which can control various aspects when listening to music.
The bottom row of key caps (row 1), features non standard key caps, including a 1×1 windows key and an unusual shaped space bar, which extends out of the keyboard.
Moving to the top right corner, you have the Aivia logo and the lock key LEDs. This section can actually be pressed to change the profile you are using.
Just below the profile button on the side, is a USB3.0 port and a mic and headphone jack. This is to help avoid having to faff around behind your PC to connect your headset.
Just along the top edge there is also a USB 2.0 port, which would be ideal for the likes of a USB headset.
The Aivia comes in two switch flavours, red…
…and brown. The switches are upside down so the LEDs are positioned at the top
The key caps are made of a thin, translucent ABS plastic, which are painted then lasered to produce clear, backlight compatible key caps. The stems are slightly thinner than most key caps, which is most likely to reduce costs but adds risk of them breaking easier.
The base of the keyboard is relatively plain, however it does have an addition feature you don’t often see on keyboards…
The Aivia also features some smaller feet near the front edge of the keyboard to increase the angle of the palm rest and the overall height of the keyboard. To the bottom right corner of the photograph you can also make out part of the clip that holds the palm rest to the keyboard.
The back of the keyboard has the standard feet with rubber bases, to increase the angle of the keyboard, which some users will prefer.
The palm rest is easy to remove, you just pull it down and it unclips. Without the palm rest attached it almost reminds me of the old Dell keyboards.
The Aivia features a monster of a cable. It houses the USB3.0, USB2.0 and the mic and headphone jack so it has quite the diameter. Each connector is gold plated for a better connection and the cables are covered in a very high quality, albeit stiff, braid.
Below is a photo of the Aivia with red switches and also there blue LEDs
The brown switch variant has white LEDs which I prefer over the blue.
So that concludes our look at the Aivia, now lets see how it performs.
