> Kinesis Freestyle Pro has Cherry mx brown or silent red and shaves a little money compared to the RGB version

I actually have both keyboards and they're pretty similar.

A trick here though, the RGB aka "gaming" version of the Freestyle includes wrist rests, which are $15 extra in the "Freestyle Pro," so the cost difference isn't as much as it seems. Neither includes the nifty tenting stands. You probably will want both of those accessories, so keep that in mind when pricing.

The Freestyle Pro also puts the ESC and FN keys in weird spots. You can remap them, but it's kind of annoying to move the caps around (there's also no "normal" size esc key cap to use...).

All in all, it's probably worth just getting the RGB, even if you don't care about the RGB feature.

Does it have backlighting? (frankly, I didn't need or use all of the "RGB" features, so that was overkill - not a gamer)