When it comes to PC gaming, the right keyboard is the most important upgrade you can make. It’s your primary interface with the vast open worlds and harrowing battle maps that your favorite games call home, so you want to be sure it’s comfortable, easy to use, and offers the perfect amount of tactile feedback.

Choosing a keyboard is a highly personal choice that will depend on your own preferences and budget. Josh likes clicky, tactile switches that give him a clear sense of the actuation point and mechanical sound, while Lori prefers more programmability and shortcut options. This makes it hard to find one perfect keyboard that would satisfy both of them, but the Roccat Vulcan II Max comes very close. It uses a unique key switch design that eliminates the clack of traditional gaming keyboards, replacing it with layers of foam to create a more subtle soundscape. Combined with its lightweight keycaps, this gives the Vulcan II Max an exceptionally smooth and responsive typing experience.

It also features a slew of conveniences that we think most gamers will appreciate, such as a customizable control wheel, dedicated media keys, and USB passthrough. The fact that it offers full programmability and a large number of RGB lighting zones, including individual key lighting, is a nice bonus as well.

If you’re on a tighter budget, the SteelSeries QcK Medium is an excellent option. It offers a soft and flexible micro-woven cloth base in a variety of sizes, with stitched edges or not, thick or thin padding, and a range of iCue RGB lighting around the rim and a convenient USB passthrough port. It also scored very well in our testing, with 104-key rollover and excellent anti-ghosting, beating out the likes of the Corsair K100 Air Wireless. best gaming keyboard