Once the settings are properly adjusted, though, this keyboard performs incredibly well. The actuation distance of each switch can be manually adjusted, meaning it can register a key-press anywhere from the very top of the key-press to the very bottom, and multiple inputs can even be mapped at different distances. The keyboard is responsive, with an 8,000-Hz polling rate, and the low latency barely produces any significant input lag.
This keyboard is wired-only, which might be a dealbreaker for some. It’s a fairly dense, all-metal keyboard that has a significant focus on high-speed use, none of which is necessary for a portable keyboard. While wireless would be nice, it would increase the price of this keyboard and its complexity.
The RGB lighting has over 20 built-in presets, and all of them work well, but the color isn’t perfect. When adjusting the lighting settings, nearly all of them seem to skew heavily toward a cyan/blue tint. This is presumably because of the Magnetic Jade switches’ light blue housing, which is unavoidable without using different switches, but even without switches, the LED diodes seem to be slightly cooler than a true neutral white.
These effects combine to make a keyboard that struggles to have a pure white color even with serious tweaking, especially since the RGB adjustments easily get overwhelmed and start to lag when moving your cursor around on the color wheel. The closest I could get to a pure white was with an RGB setting of [255, 60, 90], which still had a slightly cool tint to it. When set to the “breathe” setting at a low speed with this color, the lighting was choppy as it faded out, and slowly shifted to be red as it became darker instead of maintaining the preset color. When set to a faster speed and using a more standard color setting (like solid blue or green), these quirks disappeared.
Internal Assembly
Photograph: Henri Robbins
The internal assembly is rather simple: The printed circuit board (PCB) and switch plate are screwed together, sandwiching a sheet of silicone between them. This silicone fills the empty space between the plate and PCB, and extends past on the outside edge to create gaskets that the two halves of the case hold in place. With this, the internal assembly is held in place without making direct contact with the outside case, reducing vibration and excess noise.
