[section_title title=”Performance and Testing”]
Performance and Testing
The keyboard is rock solid in terms build quality there’s no flex at all when trying fairly hard to twist it. Also, it’s solid in terms of stability due to those large rubber feet and in performance. The Kailh keys perform exactly as you would expect, that is to say they’re not quite as good as Cherry MX switches but much better than membrane. Now I’m not a keyboard guru, but I know what my fingers like and what they don’t… and sadly I really didn’t like the keycaps. They did their job as far as looks and lighting goes, giving a crystal clear image of the letter or number, but as soon as you touch them you notice the sharp edges and your fingers almost feel bruised and battered after a long session. I’m sure there are better ways of doing the job, and I know that you can of course get a new set of caps, but that defeats the purpose of buying a cheap board in a sense.
Something else I really couldn’t get to grips with was the damn click, click, click… it was so much louder than that though when typing, more like SNAP, SNAP, SNAP! It wasn’t the switch making the click, though there was one that goes along with the tactile feel of the blue Kailh switch, it was bottoming out incredibly hard and it was so close to the activation point that I just couldn’t find any way to avoid it. Again, I know I could have got hold of some O-rings which would not only have stopped the bottoming out sound but also softened the impact making typing more of a joy but we are brought back to the issue of extra expense. Although I certainly will be buying some O-rings if I continue to use the keyboard, I couldn’t afford myself that luxury while testing the board and looking for all it’s merits and flaws.
You might be thinking that it’s all bad news, but from here things definitely improve. The magical light that bounces around the board as you click the keys is mesmerising in some of the lighting profiles and gives a reason to look at the board again while typing – or just use it as an excuse if you look at the keyboard when typing anyway. It’s incredible the amount of versatility that they have included in the lighting effects and it’s so much more than a simple gimmick. As I mentioned there is a clarity to the keycaps that is rare to find in budget keyboards as often the letters are slightly off in terms of centering over the LED or the LED simply isn’t strong enough to cope with passing the light through the opaque keys; none of that here though, strong light with great clarity means that it’s just as good in strong daylight as it is at night. Even without the LEDs turned on it’s easy to see the different lettering whether in strong or poor light.
I’m not a fan of recording macros on the keyboard and though you can do everything with the touch of the FN key it’s pleasing that Tesoro has provided some pretty nifty software to help with the task of things like macros, changing hotkeys to load programs as well as playing with the lighting and monitoring which profile does what. The software looks good and does everything it needs to, no money saving measures here, at least nothing that I could find.
Some other niggles like the tiny windows key are balanced by the benefits such as full audio hotkeys and an AFK keyboard lock function so no more annoying interruptions to your skype messages when the cat walks across the board. But overall did I like it? Well, you’ll have to read on for my conclusion to find that out.
