In this day and age, working from home is more common than ever. While you may have a different work set-up than you might have in the office workplace, having the ideal PC accessories at home to help manage your working life is of the utmost importance, especially if you can do it without costing you a fortune. Thankfully, we can let you know three of the most ideal items to help your working day at home or in the office.
First up we have the Ducky One 3 Classic silent mechanical keyboard. Before having a desk working at home, I was working on the sofa with my laptop. Now that I have the comfort of a desk and an awesome Hero Resident Evil Umbrella Edition from Noblehairs, my home-at-work life has been made exponentially more practical. Yet, it would have been a hard sell to convince me that a new keyboard would have much of an impact in comparison to my standard laptop keyboard, thankfully I’ve been proven wrong in an instant.
Check out the Ducky One 3 Classics mini keyboard below!
The moment I took the Ducky One 3 Classic keyboard out of the box, the quality material made to produce this item was obvious. Everything about this keyboard feels premium and best of all, it’s super easy to use. At the time of writing, I don't own a tower PC, and my laptop is elevated on a stand, now essentially a monitor leaving plenty of room for my Ducky One 3 Classic keyboard. Once you plug in the keyboard to a laptop or tower with the detachable braided USB Type-C cable, it’s good to go. You’ll also be quickly wooed by the flashy lights underneath the keys which not only look cool, but it also makes it easier to pick out each key on the macro layout. There are 12 profiles to choose from with enough variety of colours, patterns and intensities, that it would make Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat jealous. If the lights are not your cup of tea, then you can turn them off.
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It’s hard to describe how good the keys feel, but if I were to describe them in a single word, it would be “therapeutic”. Each press of the key feels super sturdy thanks to its inner stabilisers, foam case dampener and silicone plate. The ease of navigating the keys results in a natural rhythm and eventually, you’ll be typing as fast as the well-known Kermit the Frog gif (you know the one). What’s more, if the default key layout isn't to your preference, you can swap all the keys easily with the tools provided in the box.
The exact Ducky One 3 Classic keyboard that I used for this review is the ‘full-size mechanical gaming keyboard’, Cherry Brown/Pure White. There are many variations of the Ducky One keyboards ranging in size, layout, colour, clickiness, silence and more. Give or take, you'll be looking at around £100+ for this range and while it might not be the most exciting purchase, it would be one that you won't regret whether you are working, gaming, streaming or everything else in between.
Next up we have the Streamplify CAM FHD Webcam which performs at 1080p with 2.0 megapixels, a super smooth 60fps and a 90° field of vision. Much like the Ducky One 3 Classic keyboard, before now I was using the built-in webcam and that was fine, and in my typically stubborn way, I saw no reason to use an external camera, that was until now. Working from home, it's not only important to keep in touch with my colleagues in chat form, but from time to time, conversations will take place over Zoom or MS Teams. While my built-in camera is 1080p, the picture quality was never as good as it could be. Sure, the Streamplify CAM FHD Webcam is never going to be the quality of a DSLR, but that device would cost you hundreds. However, the Streamplify CAM FHD Webcam has a very modest RRP of £52.99.
One of the main selling points of this webcam is how easy it is to set up and use. As soon as I plugged this camera into my laptop, I was good to go as it automatically replaced my built-in camera. Furthermore, setting up and using this camera was made even simpler thanks to its all-glass lens with autofocus. It even features integrated dual-stereo microphones for Realtek. It also comes packaged with a mini tripod and the camera and can be tilted 45° up or down with a full 360° adjustment. What’s more, you can close the lens with its privacy slider giving you peace of mind and convenience by having the camera still connected while you’re AFK. Streamplify CAM FHD Webcam is plug-in and play, making it the perfect camera for working and livestreaming on social media platforms such as YouTube and Twitch.
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Last but not least, we have the Streamplify Light 10 Ring. Not for a split second did I ever think I needed to use a ring light? After all, this is something that only content creators would use, right? Well, yes and no. Sure, this is the kind of item that a content creator might use, but at the budget RRP of just £19.99, this ring light is the perfect accessory for working at home too, should you rely on the likes of Zoom and MS Team to communicate with your colleagues. It also has a 5V USB port meaning that it will connect to a power bank without the worry of an overload, making the Streamplify Light 10 Ring a perfect device on the go.
All you need to do to use the Streamplify Light 10 Ring is plug it into any USB port or socket mains and you're off. This ring light is small and compact, easy to place anywhere on your desk, and comes with a camera mount, smartphone holder and foldable tripod. Everything that you need is straight out of the box. It has a total of three colour temperatures and 10 levels of brightness, making it ideal for the brightest and gloomiest of rooms. The Streamplify Light 10 Ring has a Colour Rendering Index (CRI) of 100 which is said to “replicate over 90% of the visible colour spectrum that is naturally produced by the sun. The result is rich, vibrant, and natural lighting, every time.”
Before using the Streamplify Light 10 Ring, my standard room lightbulb was my poor choice of source. Granted, you could see what you needed to see, but depending on the natural light in the room, that quality would differ mostly for the worst. The Streamplify Light 10 Ring improves the image quality of my streams massively. The best way to explain the improvement is that it's kind of like going from 1080p to glorious 4K. The Streamplify Light 10 Ring is the perfect accessory that I never knew I needed until now and at just £19.99, it’s an absolute bargain.
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The items featured in this article can be purchased from Overclockers.co.uk as well as other retailers. Review samples were provided by Gamersware.com.
Featured Image Credit: Ducky/Streamplify