The Poker line from Vortex.
Such an iconic line in mechanical keyboards, as they kind of brought 60% and compact keyboards
to the forefront.
But since then, there's been a heap of entrants into the market, and of course the whole custom
game is huge now.
I saw at Computex that the Vortex 4 is on the way, but today we check out the Poker
3 V2.
And this is an engineering sample, so things are subject to change.
And as we can see straight away.
The V2 is a low profile version of the standard Poker 3.
Even though it's slimmer, so there's not as much there, it still feels great, with no
flex as it has the aluminium base.
And it has decent weight coming in at just under 500g, which isn’t all that different
to a typical 60%.
And yeh, the actual case itself is as thin as you can get for a closed design pretty
much.
The grey anodised finish on the aluminium looks great.
It's even, and there's no blemishes or streaking.
And it's super simple, and is as basic as you can get, pretty much following the design
language of the Race 3, Vibe, and Core, except with rounded corners.
But because of this, there's no mounting plate, which is usually made from steel.
So as we can see, we have a floating key design, so the keyswitches are exposed from the sides,
but it's mounted straight to the PCB, to keep the case slimmer.
Removing the plate and having the floating key design doesn't actually make the keyboard
as whole slimmer, as you're restricted by the keyswitch itself, and the keycaps.
But doing this keeps it lighter, and makes it appear slimmer, which contributes more
than you think in making a product feel thin.
That being said, it’s a good 5mm shorter than the Core, and Race 3.
And yep, these are the Cherry MX low profile switches.
Unfortuntaely there's only two variants of the switch from Cherry, which are the reds
and silvers, and just like the standard Reds, these are linear, meaning that there's no
tactile bump or click, and just go straight down.
I've expressed in the past that I'm not the biggest fan of these switches.
And to be clear, this is just a personal preference, and there will be, and there are people who
do like this sort of keyswitch.
But I feel that for a linear keyswitch, you do need that distance to further appreciate
the linear action.
That being said, purely on numbers, it isn’t too different.
So it actuates at 45g, which is the same.
But has a 1.2mm pre travel, and then 3.2mm total travel.
And then the silvers are just even shallower.
Like the MX Reds, they’re not particularly smooth or anything, and are quite scratchy
to be honest.
But burying it in snow might have had an affect on it.
Maybe.
I don’t know.
But there is some lube on the stem, so that’s why I thought that.
Obviously Vortex have a long standing relationship with Cherry, so I guess that’s why they
haven’t used the Kailh Low Profile keyswitches.
But yeh, I would love a clicky version of this, as I think the clickies are the best
in the low range, for me personally.
There is some rattle to the stabs.
Not too bad, but it's quite noticeable on the space bar.
The keycaps are Vortex's own VSA profile, in this carbon-ish colourway with the dark
grey mods, and off white and black alphas.
Classic colourway which has always looked good.
They're made from about 1.2mm PBT plastic, and are double shot, so the legends are another
piece of plastic and will never fade away.
And this is pretty cool, because with their other recent boards, they've been dye subbed.
But looking at them, you can quite clearly see that yeh, they're quite inconsistent.
The legend thicknesses differ.
The numbers are all pretty thick, while some of the letters are pretty thin.
Like the J legend is super thin.
So that's unfortunate, but the font or typeface is really nice, so yeh, there’s that.
The VSA keycap profile is quite similar to the DSA profile, being quite short and uniform.
But the tops are much wider with less of a scoop.
I don’t have any XDA keycaps, but they do look pretty much the same as those.
They said that there will be other keycap colourways available.
But the case will remain the same colour.
Unlike the Poker 3 RGB, this does not have backlit keycaps, but it still has RGB backlighting.
There’s a bunch of patterns on PN plus 4 or 5.
And you can change colours and stuff with PN plus 1, 2, and 3, being the RGB colours.
And PN plus escape, shows the colour pallete that you can choose from.
Furthermore, we can have custom lighting layouts, in which there are 3 of.
So first pick your backlighting profile with PN plus one of these 3 keys.
And then press PN plus either 9 or 0, and go ahead and do whatever you want.
The whole lighting thing is pretty confusing, and it always has been with Vortex keyboards,
but as you can see, there’s not much space for that stuff since it is a 60% keyboard.
And being a 60% keyboard, we’re missing a lot of primary access to keys, and are just
left with the main area.
60% is a bit small for me.
I personally prefer at least 65%, especially with the dedicated arrow keys, but a heap
of people love this layout, and it’s compact, saves a good amount of space, and allows for
more freedom with your mouse, which is also ergonomically better.
Usually Vortex have symbols and other stuff on the front of their keycaps to show the
secondary functions, because there are a lot of them, as you gotta put the other keys somewhere,
so you put them on layers.
So it’s pretty confusing as the fronts are blank, so you have to take the time to put
this all in your head.
And just like all the other Vortex keyboards, this does support onboard programming.
And it’s exactly the same.
You have your default layer, and then 3 additional layers that you can customise, which are accessible
via the FN key, plus one of these 3 keys.
So pick your layer, I’ll pick layer 1.
Then press PN plus left control to enter the macro mode, which will illuminate the caps
lock key in green.
Then select the key you want to program, and the caps lock will start flashing.
And then do whatever key sequence you want up to 32 keystrokes, and press PN once that’s
done.
You can do that for other keys as well, but if you’re done, press PN plus left control
to exit the programming mode.
So yeh, we still have that classic onboard programming, which is pretty limited, but
it’s just onboard, so it’s okay.
This doesn’t have the MPC support yet, but I imagine it will after this keyboard is released.
And it’s much easier to configure the keyboard with an actual web graphical interface.
Opening up the keyboard is super simple with just a couple of Philips head screws under
some keycaps.
And as you can imagine, it’s a very basic construction.
The case is made from aluminium as said, and there’s a thin plastic sheet just to ensure
the pins don’t short on the case, as they are trying to keep it as thin as possible.
The case is about 7.5mm tall.
Making the base about 2mm thick.
Again, this is only an engineering sample, but we have all the machining marks still
here.
Not that it really matters because you’ll never see it when using it.
And yeh, there’s no plate, so the switches are just mounted straight to the PCB.
Using the low profile switches, this of course can’t fit standard MX keyswitches, as they
have a different footprint, and you don’t really have an option to replace them with
any other, besides the low profile silvers.
So all up, it’s pretty much exactly what I expected, and probably what you expected.
It is, a low profile Poker 60% keyboard.
But that’s not a bad thing at all, because it does everything that it sets out to do,
and delivers it.
The design overall is simple, clean, and nice to look at, with that super slim case.
The keycaps feel good, they have that nice VSA profile, which is pretty much XDA, and
they look nice, but from a distance, because the lettering is pretty dodgy which is unfortunate.
But it’s all about the slimness and making a keyboard around Cherry’s low profile keyswitches.
The good thing about them is that they accept normal keycaps.
However, they are only available in linear form, and that’s where the Kailh low profiles
shine in having much better variety.
Mechanical keyboards for me is mainly to do with the feel and typing experience.
With these switches, they’re not really smooth, the travel is reduced which feels
a little odd with linears, but there is still 3.2mm of travel.
But they just don’t really feel great.
And even with everything around it being good, the typing experience isn’t there for me.
I’m fully aware that switch preference is very personal, and just because I don’t
like it, that doesn’t mean it’s bad.
But I feel that the keyswitch won’t be as appealing to many, as it has some characteristics
that most people don’t prefer.
But disregarding that, it’s a solid keyboard, and one of the nicer low profile boards I’ve
ever come across.
I think adding Bluetooth to this would suit it really nicely, and make it into a perfect
travel keyboard, since it’s so compact and slim.
It feels great in the hands, the RGB backlighting is always welcome, and with a bit of cleaning
up with the keycaps and stabilisers, it makes for a rock solid low pro 60%.