Yes, but it may not affect you.
In our wireless world, with Bluetooth available on almost every device, it’s easy to wonder why USB wired keyboards still exist. Not only can you find many wired keyboards today, but you’ll even find high-end options without a wireless protocol available. Performance-focused gaming keyboards are the least likely to have a wireless option, a fact that highlights the main problem that wired devices avoid: performance issues.
Bluetooth is well known for its latency. If you’ve ever connected a Bluetooth speaker or pair of headphones to watch a video and noticed that the audio was out of sync, you’ve experienced this latency. But it’s not just about audio. Mouse clicks and key presses sent over Bluetooth may take a few extra milliseconds to reach your computer. In everyday tasks like writing or editing spreadsheets, you will almost never notice the delay. But in tasks like gaming, where reaction time is essential, Bluetooth latency can quickly lead to a lost game or character death. Musicians using keyboards for input with a digital audio workstation (DAW) may also need lower latency for precise timing.
But Bluetooth isn’t the only wireless game in town. Many keyboards also include a 2.4GHz connection, which usually requires plugging a small dongle into your computer’s USB port. 2.4 GHz is much faster than Bluetooth and often acceptable for gaming and other low-latency tasks.
If you’re not gaming, you can safely ignore this whole topic and use whatever type of keyboard connection you prefer. But if you play games and want to optimize your setup, it’s worth finding out how the two most common types of wireless connection found on keyboards can work compared to a wired keyboard.
Bluetooth is convenient but slow, which isn’t ideal for gaming
Max Miller for Woozad
When we talk about keyboard performance, we’re not just talking about connection type. Actuation speed measures how quickly a key activates when pressed, bounce rate measures how well the keyboard filters out accidental repeat presses and other chatter, and polling rate measures how often the keyboard bounces back to the host device. All of these and more can affect overall latency. But while today’s mid-range and pro-grade keyboards have addressed these issues — for example, using Hall effect switches to allow customizable actuation points and high polling rates to avoid bottlenecks — there’s no getting around Bluetooth’s limitations. This is why you won’t even find a Bluetooth option on a lot of gaming keyboards, and it’s even absent on many non-gaming mechanical keyboards.
If you’re choosing between a wired and Bluetooth connection, the wired option will invariably be the better option in terms of performance. The same goes for everything we use Bluetooth for. For example, listening to music through AirPods will never be as good as plugging in a pair of wired headphones, and gaming mice and headsets are subject to the same latency issues as keyboards. In terms of keyboards, a Bluetooth connection can introduce as little as 8 milliseconds of latency – practically nothing compared to a human reaction speed of 150 to 250 milliseconds – but can easily reach over 200 milliseconds, which is enough to render many games unplayable.
Why keep Bluetooth if it sucks so bad? Because most people are willing to trade a lot of performance for convenience. I listen to my music with wireless headphones because I don’t want wires hanging down my body as I walk to the train. I type articles like these on a Bluetooth keyboard because I would need to type faster than humanly possible noticing the drop in performance. Gaming is a specialized case in which convenience becomes a burden. If I miss a headshot in a competitive shooter because my keyboard added just enough latency to disrupt my aim, I’ll die when they return fire and fall in the seasonal leaderboard as a result. But Bluetooth can be perfectly adequate in turn-based games, RPGs, and other titles where lightning-fast reaction speeds matter less.
2.4 GHz connections are fast, but not a silver bullet
Max Miller for Woozad
This brings us to 2.4 GHz, the goldilocks of keyboard and mouse connections. If you’ve ever seen a keyboard that has a small USB dongle that plugs into a computer to create a wireless connection, you already know what 2.4 GHz looks like.
Unlike Bluetooth, there is no single, unified standard for 2.4 GHz. This is simply the part of the radio spectrum occupied by these devices. Each manufacturer implements its own 2.4 GHz connection. For example, you can’t mix a Logitech keyboard with a Keychron 2.4GHz dongle. Bluetooth itself technically relies on the 2.4 GHz radio band, but it is a proprietary technology licensed to device manufacturers.
While Bluetooth focuses on maintaining a robust connection with compressed data at the cost of performance, and since it also has to accommodate all different types of devices from headphones to wireless hotspots, a keyboard maker can implement 2.4 GHz with higher bandwidth and lower latency – often as low as 1 or even 0.5 milliseconds, which is within spitting distance of a wired connection of around 0.3 to 1 millisecond.
2.4 GHz connections are often perfectly adequate for gaming. It’s the best of both worlds that offers the convenience and freedom of wireless connectivity with most of the performance you’d get from a wired connection. However, it is not a panacea. You’ll most often need a separate 2.4GHz dongle for each device you connect, which can eat up your computer’s I/O. Signal interference is another major problem. Simply using a USB 3.0 port on your computer (identified by a blue insert) can create noise causing signal loss. And if you’re in a noisy radio environment like a coffee shop or a busy airport, similar interference may start to occur, forcing you to interrupt keystrokes or introduce more latency.
Additionally, some 2.4GHz accessories work best with a direct line of sight between the dongle and the device, which can be a problem with desktops with USB ports on the back. In the worst case, even plugging a dongle into the left side of a laptop when the radio receiver is on the right side of the keyboard can cause a drop in performance.
If you really want to avoid a wired connection, it’s worth testing the 2.4GHz option on your keyboard. But to get the strongest performance in all circumstances, there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned wire.
