Some Background On the Durgod Hades

Today, we will be taking a look at one of Durgod’s keyboards and we have one of their flagship products, The Hades 68, which is their 65% Layout mechanical keyboard which includes the arrow keys and has the tenkeyless design but at the same time minimizing the footprints by removing few more keys and adding their functions in other keys as secondary functions.

If you do not know about Durgod, you can check out my previous experience with their product by clicking Here. Durgod is known to make really good pre-build keyboards and is a peripheral equipment brand established in Zhuhai, China.

Currently, they are in the process of distributing their awesome keyboards worldwide and are looking for distributors from all over to help them with their sales and know about.

As usual, you can select the type of key switches that you desire from cherry switches to Gateron to Kailh jades and Kailh white box RGB switches. I chose the Kailh White box RGB switches as these are the best switches you can currently buy along with the Kailh jade switches as both their performance and durability are top class.

The keyboard comes in the same box as their previous Taurus K320 that we looked at before in my review. The Hades comes in the same small and compact box and is very light and minimalistic in design with the Durgod logo on the right side.

Inside the box, we find the Hades keyboard itself wrapped in a proper plastic case and covered with the white foam just like the K320 keyboard. We also get the usual key puller and the velcro strip and also 2 different USB cables (Type-C to Type-C & Type-C to USB-A).

Build

Let’s talk about the build quality of the Hades keyboard, as these are some of the best out of the box keyboards on the market right now. The best thing about this keyboard is that the base of the keyboard is full aluminum and cause of that it’s heavy.

You will immediately notice the quality of the Hades keyboard as soon as you take them out of the box, the build is fantastic, it’s very minimalistic and elegant with all the RGB glowing out of the Double Shot Translucent Shinethru Keycaps. It would have been really good to see the Double Shot PBT Keycaps here but the Translucent Shinethru Keycaps are decent as well.

On the bottom, there are no kickstands like in the traditional mechanical keyboards but the four rubber feet will provide ample height for your usage. They remain in place and do not move around unnecessarily which is good to see.

The Hades keyboard gets connected by a USB Type C cable and there is nothing else on both the sides of the keyboard, thus going with the minimalist theme.

There are 3 different Led indicators showing the CAPS Lock and also certain key functions like the Windows lock key as well.

Keys/keycaps

The Hades version that I selected for my review comes with the Kailh White Box RGB keys with Double Shot Translucent Shinethru Keycaps with the RGB shining through them and it looks absolutely stunning. These are by far my favorite keys as they are sharply tactile, are similar to Cherry MX blues in sounds but a bit less noisy and have light key travel distance providing a very good typing and gaming experience for users.

Users with other switches like the gateron switches or the cherry switches will immediately notice the difference cause of the travel distance. Please note, that the preference of keys depends on the user themselves and some may like a particular key over the other.

On the bottom right, you will find the Function 1 and the function 2 keys along with the arrow keys. Fn1 and Fn2 keys can be used to perform different features in the keyboard over an existing key.

This can also be customized by the HERA software which I will take about later down the line in the software section. Pressing Fn1 and a particular key will perform the function as shown in the key below the normal font like the Pause, Prt Sc, Insert, End, etc and all these can be customized if you want from the software itself.

The Hades keyboard in spite of having so many different keys and functions still manages to be a compact and minimalist keyboard that is perfect for people with less desk space or for someone who just wants to have a smaller footprint keyboard.

The keys have less wobble and in spite of being a compact keyboard, The Hades provides a pretty satisfying typing and gaming experience with a good amount of space between different keys.

All these features and functions along with the full aluminum body make Durgod hades the perfect buy for someone looking into 65% layout keyboards.

RGB modes can be controlled from the keyboard by pressing the function and the “+” key. The function key with the up and down arrow key will control the brightness as well.

Function2+ up an down will control the speed of the RGB lighting. You can also control the RGB functions via the HERA software which we will talk about now.

Software

Durgod has its own software to control and map the keys of the Hades keyboard via their HERA software which you can find from their own website. The software is very straight forward as you can see from the pictures below.

You can customize the colors of the board, map your very own macros by creating project files and having your own custom self made project/profiles as you might call it and save them. Import/Export work as well but there are a few bugs like the app keeps crashing most of the time.

You will be able to map your own RGB lighting as well from the lighting tab and save them in custom project/profiles. You can also map the Fn1 and Fn2 function keys individually or both of them combined if you wish as well.

Once you are done, you can easily import/export your project for easy accessibility.

The software is still on beta so I expect few issues like random crashes and delayed startup bugs to be fixed by the time they release the final version.

Pricing/Availability

The Durgod Hades 68 65% RGB Mechanical Keyboard is not available in India since they are looking for distributors to help them sell their keyboards here.

This very unit costs around 120$-130$ US which is equipped with Kailh White Box RGB Keys so depending on which keys you buy, the price would vary accordingly. This is one of their flagship keyboards and it would have been really good to see these here in India, even though there is not much of a demand when it comes to high tier pre-build keyboards.

We will let you guys know when these hit the markets here in India and we will update this article as soon as possible.