At a launch event in the Stade de France on Thursday, Philips announced a brand new gaming brand, Evnia, with a full lineup of monitors, keyboards, mice and headsets. The name comes from the Greek Εύ and νοια and reportedly translates as ‘smart thinking’, and plays into an overall wholesome and inclusive vibe with a focus on ‘reinventing the rules’ of PC peripherals. Ironically, this kind of credo is fairly endemic amongst gaming brands, but Philips has at least made some plays to differentiate themselves, designing products with refreshing off-white/grey colourways, partially built with recycled materials and fronted by Kenyan fighting games pro QueenArrow.
As well as offering a bit of a different look to your standard black-and-red gaming gear, the keyboards, mice and headsets announced also held up well in the brief testing session we were afforded, particularly the keyboards that offered some interesting features on top of solid fundamentals. These units were still pre-production models, but there’s enough of interest here to mention ahead of their planned release date early next year.
First up, the SPK8708 full-size mechanical keyboard. Like other high-tier Evnia peripherals, the SPK8708 is a fully wireless model that supports both 2.4GHz and Bluetooth, with the former offering lower latency and the latter broader compatibility and longer battery life. Like Philips TVs, it comes with Ambilight branded lighting that spills out behind and around the keyboard, complementing the LEDs behind each keycap. A volume wheel in the upper right corner seemed to have an integrated display inside, which could offer some interesting options along the same lines as the DF-favourite SteelSeries Apex Pro – although it didn’t seem to be operational in the unit we had access to.
Source – eurogamer.net
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