You guys know I have a thing for keyboards. Especially mechanical keyboards. And today is no different. Today we are going to take a look at a keyboard I picked up from Amazon during a Black Friday lightning deal. I had been eyeing this keyboard for a long time and finally Amazon said it was up for a deal. This keyboard usually retails on Amazon for about $60 CAD and on the sale date it was cut down to $45 CAD. And, I bought one.
I just recently set hooked it up to my computer and have been toying around with it.
It is nice and small where essentially this is a ten-keyless keyboard but in a much smaller and compact footprint than a standard ten-keyless.
The keyboard is very strong even with it’s outward appearance of all plastic. There must be some metal reinforcement in play here but I did not take the keyboard a part to check. The plastic is very nice in a matte smooth finish on the top bezel and a rougher matte finish on the bottom where the rubber tipped feet are. It also has some rubber tipped risers which lift the keyboard up about another centimetre and a half toward the back.
The keycaps are doubleshot ABS which is something you sometimes don’t even see on the more expensive keyboards. The keyboard is also nicely backlit in white and the brightness can be adjusted.
The switches I chose are either imitations of the Cherry MX Browns or are actually Cherry MX Browns. The website is not clear on whether they actually use authentic Cherry switches or not. Either way the brown switches included with my keyboard are fantastic. After having a lot of fun playing around with Cherry Blues for a while it is nice to have a quieter keyboard. I also just like the tactile feel of the Brown.
The keyboard itself is laid out pretty standard until you get to the function keys. All the F keys are squished togetherso they can fit the buttons that would usually be to the right of them like the Page Up and Page Down and so on. The only place where one may notice this compacting of the keyboard is where the arrow buttons are put makes the right side shift button a little shorter. Haven’t had an issues myself. And to be honest I don’t use the arrow keys much at all so I may want to try a 60% keyboard in the future.
Anyways, almost everything is perfect about this keyboard except the font used for the backlit keys. While the font is a sort of nifty futuristic looking font it can be distracting when trying to find the correct button. I mean I am a touch typist but when I make a mistake or something I often have to reset my brain my glancing at my keyboard and then continuing. The font on this keyboard is not a quick easy thing to decrypt. I will be looking for new keycaps in the near future.
Besides that I have absolutely no issues with this keyboard. If you are looking for a compact keyboard replacement for your standard ten-keyless but still want access to all the functionality of a ten-keyless you may just want to check this keyboard out. It comes in black and is available in black, brown, red and blue switches.
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