[section_title title=”Performance”]
Performance
As with most keyboards, testing them can be somewhat subjective, mainly down to the fact that different people prefer different switch types. Now I’ve had a lot of experience with reviewing mech keyboards and have tried out pretty much every switch type going, but for the sake of this review I’ll focus on the Cherry MX browns and how potential users will perceive them. Â Cherry MX brown switches have a tactile feel to them, owing to a slight bump on the stem. When you feel the bump, this is the actuation point of the switch – so in theory, when you feel the bump you don’t need to continue to bottom out the key. These switches in particular are normally a good compromise between the click MX blue switches, which are ideal for typing, and the linear red switches, which are normally associated with gaming. Personally I prefer MX browns over the others, they don’t require as much force and generally feel great to press.
Gaming
For the gaming side of the performance testing, there wasn’t really a massive difference over the other mechanical keyboards I’ve put through the numerous different gaming tests. Since the TK Stealth features my favourite kind of switches, I had no problem getting used to them and found most games I threw at it a breeze. MMOs and RPGs however were a different story. Sometimes it’s nice to have additional macro keys, or at least the ability to remap some keys to act as macros, but the TK Stealth lacks these features, in fact it doesn’t have any software to customise the key bindings or anything else. I can’t really comment on whether the lack of a dedicated number pad affected the performance as I couldn’t actually think of any games that made use of it. I’ve never really had much of a need for the Win key lock, but it is a nice feature to have, especially if you’re one of those clumsy gamers who constantly hits the win key.
General Use
This is where I found the TK Stealth to really shine, the brown switches are ideal for typing and the ability to switch between the num pad and the home, end, delete etc keys meant you had the same features as the full size keyboard, but in a smaller foot print. The ability to switch between the function and the media keys is a decent feature – much better than having to hold down the Fn key call the time when instead you can just put the Fn lock on. It took a while to get used to the side printed keys – especially if you sit fairly close to the keyboard where the angle is too great to see the legends – although if you’re confident at touch typing this shouldn’t be much of a problem.
