Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Steve from gamers Nexus tonight and today we're talking about yet another mechanical keyboard there are quite a lot of them these days today we're looking at thermal takes Poseidon's II blue switch mechanical keyboard you will notice I did not say cherry blue that's probably a first for our mechanical keyboard reviews this is in fact a kale switch keyboard and we'll talk about that more in a moment so this was first demoed at CES we saw it there we have some footage I will be showing actually of a pax competition that happened a few weeks ago where users were typing on the keyboard four words per minute one guy did like 150 no big deal except it sounded like a stampede of clickety clacks so such is the nature of mechanical keyboards this is the blue switch keyboard there's also a brown switch Poseidon's II as for the specifications what you need to know is that it is a full 10 key keyboard that means it does include a numpad it doesn't include a wrist rest which I'll it kind of annoys me but it's not a big deal because you can go pick one up at a department store if you really need one so no wrist rest it has function keys from F 1 through F 7 that control media operations like through windows media player play stop pause stuff like that volume control f11 and f12 control brightness I believe there are let's see one two three four I think there are four levels of brightness plus off it might be it's like four ish and then we've also got a button in the very top right that will toggle your Windows key if you accidentally hit that while gaming beyond that everything is pretty standard it is a mechanical keyboard we have some stabilizers on the spacebar and other large keys but other than that everything is using a kale switch so here's the thing with switches under your key is what's called the switch a lot of you already know this the switch is what determines that the tactility of the key presses determines if it's linear it determines the actuation depth how far you need to pass it before registers it determines how much weight is required to press it down and hit that registration point and other things of that nature that ultimately determine how loud and how responsive a mechanical keyboard is so cherry is the ubiquitous option right now cherry is German based and they manufacture all their switches in Germany but there's also kale and kale is in China they make what are effectively replica cherry switches as you can see in this photo by rip stir from the mechanical keyboard subreddit they are pretty damn close to what cherry makes the primary differences between the switches are in the cross points cherry uses gold-plated cross points which theoretically might have better durability and potentially better conductivity for transferring the actual key press to the system as for if that will ever be noticed in your use I am not really in a position to say because I haven't tested these things for years on end so that's really something you won't find out until it's got heavy wear and tear on it the other major difference is the cherry switches use slightly thicker molding but really everything else is about the same it has the same center-based the same central return spring that has the same plus sign even on the actual switch it's got the same colors so blue and kale is effectively blue in cherry they're a little bit different in the spec but ultimately they can be thought of as equivalents the same for brown and red and everything else so that's the deal with the switches you can read the full article in the link below if you want to learn more about the switches and see some more images of the differences as for the Poseidon Z well once we get past the switches it's got a five year warranty which does bolster my confidence in recommending it given the different switch type I normally don't feel too confident recommending something made in China that's a replica of something made in the West that's been around for a while but it's a pretty close replica the reason they can get away with this is because the patent has expired so it's all completely clean and a five-year warranty does give you that bit of confidence that hey if this thing falters miserably hopefully Thermaltake will honor the warranty and replace it so so that's kind of what we've got going for us here on the confident side on the specs side there's a normal six to eight n key rollover when testing the rollover I was ever able to press keys that did not register so I don't think that will be a concern for you there's no special USB or 3.5 millimeter sockets on the board it's pretty straightforward it's just a keyboard no special features no volume roller none of that stuff just a keyboard and the reason they're doing that is because they want to come in at the 60 to $80 price point which they do pretty well I've seen it at 60 to 80 everywhere and there's really not a lot of competition in that price range for a keyboard with this relatively high quality build and moderate quality switches in my testing so the blue switches are very clack e if you if you like I don't know if you can hear that but if you like the clack enos and and you want to feel like you're in a press room from the 50s then you'll like the blue switches if you want something more damped and something that's more favored by for example Starcraft 2 pros you should look into the brown switches they're going to be very close to cherries Brown switches beyond that the look and feel are pretty important here so in terms of the feel when I was using it it's using the normal sort of sloped cylindrical caps so pretty standard key caps everything feels fine the keys aren't spaced weirdly they're the keys aren't sized weirdly so you don't have to relearn the keyboard the tactility is good it's pretty tactile there's a lot of kick when you push it down it kicks back kind of hard so that's really nice if you're doing a lot of typing if you are a typist in any measure of the word or a journalist or something like that you might enjoy the speed with which the keys rebound because that that rebound sort of helps you jump from one key to the next as for whether that increases words per minute I have no idea but it feels pretty good so who cares and in terms of gaming if you know it's you push WASD and it works so there's really not for APM type stuff I guess you might benefit from the tactility if you are good enough to notice but as for how good you need to be to notice that I am not qualified to answer because I was only in Dimond and Starcraft so my thoughts on the keyboard it's I'm okay with it I I think if I were spending sixty to eighty dollars I would buy this pretty actually pretty definitively I would buy this because there's not a lot of good competition in this price range the closest keyboard that I liked that was nearby was Corsairs kay 65 compact keyboard it has no 10 key hence compact and I can't use that cuz I need 10 key if you can get away without it or you don't even want it then perhaps consider the k60 5 versus the poseidon sea for the same price if you increase your budget a bit to 90 bucks you can start looking at Coolermaster storm quickfire TK which is an MX brown switch so if you really want cherry you don't feel comfortable with kale then you know you got to spend more money that's that's the deal when you're going with the known brand competition is a good thing though so I'm okay with kale entering the market Corsair has a case 70 which I recommend pretty regularly in the 113 dollar price range links in the article if you want links for these keyboards and then Das Keyboard is one of the higher or highest quality mechanical keyboard manufacturers they've been at it for a while they have their Das Keyboard Pro at 130 bucks and ducky has their shine three in the same price range so you can see that the scale here is pretty large or it's a pretty wide spectrum of pricing if we pull it back to reality 60 to 80 bucks I'd buy the Poseidon Zi going to 90 bucks heavily consider the Quickfire and then once you're above 90 you've got the whole world open to you in terms of options so I don't really have any serious complaints here I really wish it had a wrist rest I know you can go to a department store and buy a cheap wrist rest but it just doesn't work for me I have concerns with my wrists where I actually need to get a good keyboard for that so if you have similar concerns than perhaps you should evaluate what your needs are in that regard for most people I don't think it's relevant it doesn't have any frills it is completely no-frills so you're paying for a keyboard you get a keyboard the tactility is good I like the feel and there's a warranty that will hopefully back it up if something goes wrong given that these are kale switches which for a lot of us are untested so those are my thoughts link in the description below if you want the full article view which contains more information on all this stuff and let me know what you think I will see you all next time pee