There plethora of keyboards out there on the market all claiming to be the best of the best of the best sir! With honours! OK, Men in Black quotes aside there are a lot of off brand mechanical keyboards out there that claim they are just as good as their big brand brethren. Well Turbot claims that they have one of the best keyboards out there for a relatively cheap price. Let’s take a look.
As many of you know I am a pretty big fan of the Cooler Master CM Storm Quickfire TK+ with CherryMX brown switches. In fact that is the keyboard I compare all other keyboards out there to. The Turbot has a long hill to climb indeed.
Normally I’d start with the box but in this case I actually can’t remember the box that it came in as I bought this quite some time ago and never had a chance to review it. So moving on…
At first glance the Turbot keyboard actually looks pretty good. It’s a floating key design which I actually do really like. It doesn’t look a lot different from the other tenkeyless keyboards out there though in all honesty. The keyboard has everything but a num pad which is standard for an 87 key keyboard.
The keycaps are nice single-shot ABS that should last a good deal of time and thanks to the keys not being painted the colour of the keys themselves should at least stay black and not wear. The heavy metal frame wont flex at all when I try to bend it which is also great. There are stands to help lift the keyboard at the front which I appreciate. Some keyboards in this class are starting to ditch those which I think is a bad idea.
The USB cord is a simple rubber covered affair and cannot be removed like many keyboards nowadays in the gaming/mechanical keyboard environment. This doesn’t kill it for me though I never realized how handy that could be until I didn’t have it.
The key switches themselves are some off brand blue mechanicals that Turbot claims are good for 50000 keystrokes. I can’t obviously substantiate the 50000 stroke claim but the switches themselves claim to be from a company called “Switch Master”. Yep, never heard of ’em. They do feel like blues though with the clickiness and so on. These ones perhaps aren’t quite as loud as CherryMX blues but that’s OK in my book.
One thing I wish was that the keyboard would have it’s it’s default setting on the function keys set to the media keys rather than the actual function keys. I rarely use F1 through F12 for their original intended uses or in many games (other than World of Warships). Oh and back-lighting would be nice but is rarely found at this price point or if it is it’s that annoying non RGB rainbow setup I can’t stand.
Overall for a relatively cheap keyboard this is a pretty good option for those trying to get a relatively cheap mechanical keyboard on a budget. I haven’t had any real issues to speak of. It has a price tag right now of $66.99 CAD on Amazon.
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