[section_title title=”Impressions”]Impressions
There are a few criteria I feel mechanical keyboards need to meet as a luxury item so to keep things relatively concise I will split this page up into the following sections: build quality, feature set and performance.
Build Quality:
Build quality has got to be my main interest with mechanical keyboards as to me they are a luxury item where using them and looking at them needs to be rewarding due to the high outlay on what is a non essential item.
The Tactic Pro does well here, the first thing I like to do is to grab a keyboard by either end and give it a good twist and there is very little flex in structure of the Tactic Pro, any flex there is feels reasonable in that the plastic isn’t too brittle.
In terms of fit there are no large gaps on the keyboard with the whole top shell pressing into the base rather than there being a panel gap around the side edges anywhere which gives the keyboard a nice one piece look.
The feet are also nice and solid, with a good thick plastic used and they have a nice solid snap to them when extended. They also have slightly rubberised tips which combined with no less than eight grip pads makes the keyboard grip very well on to a wooden desk.
Finally something which I feel contributes very well to the overall quality feel of this keyboard is that ASUS have used nice clicky switches behind the M11, M12, M13 and media keys which is great because there is nothing worse than going from a mechanical key to a rubbery one to break the user experience of a mechanical keyboard.
Feature Set
The headline feature of the Tactic Pro is of course the massive amount of macro buttons it has, no less than thirteen dedicated hardware keys and another eight dual purpose function keys; that’s a pretty epic amount of macro action and I’m sure it is going to be the main selling point for a lot of buyers.
Another feature that is nice to see is an n key rollover functionality which is bound to be handy for those playing RTS games for example who need to spam a lot of keys at once and need to be sure no inputs are missed. Equally nice though I think is that you can also disable it if you have any compatibility issues or you just don’t want it which is good foresight on ASUS’ part.
Finally the other main feature we have is the media keys where we have a play/pause button, a mute button, forward/back buttons and a nice big volume wheel. It’s always nice to see good hardware media keys as if you are using speakers or headphones that don’t have an inline remote its nice to be able to adjust the volume of applications of the fly without reaching for a volume dial or tabbing out of a game for example.
The one thing I would personally consider to be missing is some kind of USB hub, but then again I’m always in two minds on those because on the one hand its good extra functionality but on the other hand it often leaves you with a really thick inflexible and heavy cable so I’m hard pressed to say it’s a missing feature as opposed to just a design choice that people need to consider if it is a feature they are looking for.
Performance:
Now performance is going to be a tricky one, because sparing and implementation errors (none of which are present here) it really comes down to the switch choice more than anything else which is always a user preference. The nice thing about the Tactic pro though is that ASUS have got pretty much everyone covered when it comes to switch choice as you can have your choice of MX reds, blues, blacks and browns.
In gaming I found the Tactic pro to be a pretty solid performer as the key spacing is pretty good for someone with large hands, in particular ASUS have done well to have a sensible gap between the bank of macro keys and the keyboard itself to help prevent users from accidentally hitting them instead of the intended tilde/tab ect.
As I said in a good quality implementation like this it really comes down more to the switches used and the preference therein of the individual. If I could make one objective complaint though it would probably be that in my opinion the coating on the keycaps isn’t as grippy as I would personally like it to be and that is something that would only get worse with age. That said though we do of course have in the box the four orange replacement keycaps which are a bit more tactile for WASD usage.
As you can imagine being a reviewer I do a fair bit of typing so for me typing performance is really one of my main interests with a keyboard and it was the main point in testing in which I began to miss my usual MX blues. For me the linear actuation of the reds just doesn’t provide the response I look for in a switch and as a result I did notice a notable drop in words per minute with the red switches.
Again its tricky for me to tell you how well it performs because everyone has their own tastes with mechanical switches, for me I actually like the noise of a blue switch and the feel is just unmatched in my books.
That is the nice thing about the Tactic Pro though, it has a good range of switch choices and from my experience I can be pretty sure that whatever switch you do choose this keyboard should be a good performer thanks to the solid build quality and nicely rounded feature set.
