Redragon K686 Pro SE and M916AK Eisa Review
The Dragon Girl Waifu Invasion
Redragon sent us a unit of the K686 Pro SE and M916AK free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.
Retail Price: $91.98
Having a company mascot seems like all the rage nowadays. When it comes to keyboard maker Redragon, it’s only fitting that their mascot is a dragon. It just so happens that the dragon is a cute anime waifu named Eisa. The Chinese gaming accessories maker sent us a couple Eisa themed products to review that left me surprisingly more impressed with the performance of the products than the cute dragonspawn plastered all over the products.
Dragon girls are quite popular in anime culture. I’m well versed in the isekai craze, yet for some reason the only dragon girl that comes to mind for me when writing this review is Tio Klarus from Arifureta (a terrible but sometimes entertaining show). Clearly dragon girls aren’t my preferred waifus, but it does make sense that a company called Redragon would create one for their own marketing. Although at first glance I mistook Eisa for being a Demon Queen with her dark horns poking out of her ash white hair, I’m ashamed to admit that it took me a few days to correlate the dragon theme.
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K686 Pro SE Keyboard
Retail Price: $74.99
While Eisa is a big part of the identity of this K686 Pro keyboard, she’s actually not viewable on the front side. The art piece of the dragonspawn is printed on the backside and if you’re using your keyboard correctly, her face should be planted into the table. That’s not to say the front side of the board isn’t pleasant to look at though.
The keycap color theme revolves around white, a dark navy blue, and red. You can see the distinct pattern of what I assume is either fire or some kind of anime aura spread across the main keyboard area. Eisa does make an appearance on the front side with her nonchalant face covering the space bar. Throughout the layout of keys, certain dye-sub PBT caps replace the traditional ANSI symbology with symbols that look like they jumped straight out of an RPG skills menu. There’s a medieval theme going on with the font on the K686 that does make it somewhat unique in a market saturated with highly futuristic technology based keyboard themes.
The major selling point of this particular Redragon board is the colorful anime-inspired art theme. It’s coated by a dual UV spray paint that doesn’t look too bad from a distance. Upon closer inspection, the colors and the definition of the images aren’t as sharp as they appear from a distance. I find the keyboard to still be a more natural print than on the mouse.
As for the functionality and performance of the K686 Pro SE, this board is a gasket design that cushions off a lot of the noise you normally get from typing on other styled boards. It’s a comforting soft noise that comes off the Hi-Fi Custom Switches. One thing I immediately noticed was how comfortable it was to type on the K686 Pro. When I initially unboxed it, I was expecting it to feel like a membrane board for reasons I will equate to the packaging and somewhat playful aesthetics. But once I got off the ground and running with this 98 key typing experience, I quickly saw the keyboard in a much higher light.
Make no mistake about it, Redragon may offer keyboards for budget price points, but that doesn’t mean they’re lower quality in performance. The K686 Pro SE is an extremely satisfying typing experience. It’s quiet, doesn’t feel too cramped, and it's smooth for the fingers to flow through. Redragon also threw a volume knob on the right corner of the keyboard. It’s not the most premium feeling thing, but it controls the audio levels of your computer like it's intended to so that doesn’t really matter.
There’s a 3000 mAh battery that powers through all the RGB backlighting and gaming anyone can possibly need. I’ve gone off one charge for more than 3 full weeks. Redragon implemented a neat way to track the battery life level by just combining the FN + Delete keys. The numeral row will light up to the corresponding numbers based on the remaining life on the battery.
My only frustration with the board is that I have a hard time recalling the functions of some of the keycaps on the Eisa board. As their symbology is replaced with icons that have nothing to do with computing, it took me a few days to get a feel for the layout without clicking through them to check. I also didn’t love the placement of the delete key which is a sword symbol directly above the backspace key. It took some time to alter my typing rhythm to mesh with the placement.
The symbols instead of traditional keyboard symbology also threw me off when cycling between Windows and MacOS. This is a wireless capable board which uses Bluetooth, a 2.4 Ghz receiver, or a USB-C cable to connect with a device. As with many keyboards on the market, the K686 has toggles for not only the connection, but the operating system it's currently on as well.
M916AK PRo Mouse
Retail Price: $36.99
Like the K686 Pro SE equivalent, Redragon also sent us an Eisa skinned version of their M916AK Pro wireless mouse. And just like that keyboard, the waifu gets you into room, but the actual product she’s on gets you staying in the game. This is a shockingly capable mouse for a low price tag. The major selling point to the M916AK Pro is that it is super lightweight. I really mean it. This isn’t just a hashtag marketing thing you see repeated by people a hundred times. I don’t think I’ve used a mouse that felt like this before in my career. It weighs in at 42 grams, but at times I felt like I was moving a piece of foam around my desk pad. It’s a weird feeling for a claw grip. I actually think this mouse is way too light for everyday use.
As a wireless mouse, there’s nothing tethering this Eisa piece from flying around your desk. It has the standard Bluetooth and 2.4 Ghz receiver connection methods as well as a USB-C port at the top for charging and direct input to a computer.
Now when it comes to gaming, I did run the M916AK through a bevy of games. With a PAW3395 sensor the mouse glides across my desk mat effortlessly. Sometimes I actually lose where the cursor is on my 49-inch ultrawide monitor. You can toy around with the type of gripe you use thanks to the size and weight of this mouse, but I can’t help but find it a bit awkward to use at times.
The mouse is super lightweight
The max DPI is 26000, and it can be toggled through 5 levels. I found the clicks to be solid and rather quiet. It doesn’t take much input to register a left click. It isn’t going to be a satisfying feeling or sound, but I do think it works quite nicely. There are 5 macro buttons that are supported through Redragon’s software. Two side buttons flank to the left side of the body, one of them textured. Like the left and right click, they feel muted and somewhat lackluster to press into. The scroll wheel is also just about average for what it is. It’s a little looser than I normally would like to use, but also nothing drastically deterring to the overall experience of gaming with it.
There aren’t any RGB effects to be found on this mouse, but Eisa does make an appearance printed on the base of the product. Similar to how I felt about the clickiness of the buttons, I don’t want to necessarily use the word cheap, but these attributes leave a little to be desired. Eisa’s print on this mouse is a bit strange. The aspect ratio seems narrowed and then stretched on the vertical base. The color is also slightly less saturated than the keyboard Eisa when placed next to one another.
Waifu Hunters
So ultimately this gaming set is easily targeted at anime fans. Eisa is not a licensed character from any game or show, but the general anime theme with a hint of RPG traits sprinkled around the designs will most likely attract a certain crowd of buyers to these products. While they’re both quite affordably priced in their own right, I was more impressed with the K686 Pro SE keyboard for overperforming what I initially expected to see. Regardless of how I feel about having a dragon waifu plastered on my setup, I do appreciate seeing a variety of genres represented. There’s way more Tron-looking keyboards and mice than there are Arifureta-like themes out there.
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