TECH NEWS – They bought the wireless keyboard on sale and ran into a minor technical issue in return.
A wireless mechanical keyboard allows us to enjoy tactile feedback without being forced to stay tethered to one place, but this comes at the cost of increased input latency. For the owner of a rather expensive SteelSeries keyboard, lower latency mattered more, meaning they had to keep the keyboard plugged in. Unfortunately, due to excessive charging and discharging, the battery swelled, rendering the rather expensive purchase unusable – at least until the replacement unit arrives.
⚠️ A hard lesson in tech: Why you shouldn't leave wireless keyboards plugged in 24/7!
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A Reddit user bought a SteelSeries keyboard for 100 euros. The product usually costs around 300 euros, which is too expensive for most buyers, and they would not pay that much just to have to use the keyboard while it is plugged in, even if it is a wireless model. Although the swollen battery is likely the result of continuous charging, anyone familiar with hardware could simply remove the battery and use the SteelSeries keyboard in wired mode. The only problem is that the company’s engineers used a flawed printed circuit board (PCB) design that makes the battery mandatory for the device to function. The Reddit user now has to wait for a replacement unit, and once it has been reinstalled on the PCB, the keyboard should work again.
Another area SteelSeries engineers appear to have overlooked was limiting the battery charge level when the device remains plugged in indefinitely. We cannot blame the customer for this issue either, since the manufacturer provided the option to use the keyboard in either wired or wireless mode. If the manufacturer knew that something like this could happen, it should simply have designed a circuit board that cuts off power to the battery once it reaches a 100% charge level and instead routes the power directly to the keyboard.
Gamers who connect their keyboards exclusively via a cable can save some money by choosing a wired model instead of a wireless one…
Source: WCCFTech
