I always love me some good solid budget mechanical keyboards, as mechs are expensive.
And I believe that these should get as much attention as the others, because they’re
a real viable option for a lot of people.
This one in particular is probably one of the cheapest mechs you can get locally in
Australia, so yeh, keep that in mind.
Thanks to Mwave.com.au for providing this keyboard for review, and for their continued
support.
Opening up the box, we have a quick start guide.
We then have 4 extra keyswitches, which tells us that this is hotswappable.
And then the keyboard itself.
And first impressions in the hands is great.
It’s packing some solid weight, coming in at about 950g, so just under a kilo.
And there’s minimal flex feeling quite solid and rigid.
And that’s because that it has a steel mounting plate.
Normally, if you were to have a floating key design such as this, which exposes the keyswitches
from the side, we would have an aluminium plate instead, which is a very common trait
of many budget mechs.
The steel has this smooth dark grey finish which doesn’t pick up fingerprints, and
I personally really like it.
The rest of the case is made from plastic, with a slightly aggressive design that won’t
be for everyone.
But the top stays relatively clean, with minimal branding as well.
On the bottom we have a couple of flat rubber feet, as well as two flip are feet that are
rubber tipped to keep it steady on the desk.
Unfortunately we have a non removable USB cable, so that’s annoying.
But it does have cable routing channels,and also has a strap and an attached cap.
And finally a plastic ring keycap puller on the bottom which is pretty cool.
And it sits in there quite nicely, so it shouldn’t fall out.
The keycaps actually look pretty decent for backlit keycaps.
The font or typeface itself is quite clean, but they are thickish and have some gaps and
whatnot, but they’re not the worst.
And they have a nice matte look to them as well, being slightly textured.
They’re made from pretty thin 1mm ABS plastic, but they are doubleshot, so the legends are
another piece of plastic and will never fade away.
The Phantom does have a completely standard ANSI layout though, so replacing the keycaps
is super easy.
The Phantom comes in both tenkeyless and full sized form factors.
So if you really need a numpad, then grab the full sized one.
But honestly, the TKL is a great size which gives us more space on our desk for a mouse,
and is just more comfortable to use.
Being a budget board, it’s pretty cool to have legit RGB backlighting.
One thing that you have to remember about RGB lighting is that it doesn’t need to
be always blazing all the different colours.
In my eyes, it gives you the flexibility to choose what colour you want your backlighting
to be.
So by pressing FN and this RGB key we can actually choose what colour we want.
So if you just want a simple white, then you can choose that.
Or if you want pink, you can do that as well.
And then of course we have all the other effects and patterns and all that, which are controlled
by the nav cluster keys, and the arrow keys.
But yeh, it is legit RGB lighting, rather than just limited colours, so the transitions
are nice and smooth.
We can also do that in the software that you can download from their website, which is
another impressive thing to have on a budget mech.
So first of all we have 3 different profiles that we can save stuff to.
So again, we have the lighting with all the effects and colours which works perfectly
well, and is all applied in real time which is nice.
The speed settings are a bit iffy, so I prefer to just do that on the keyboard itself.
And then we have the key customisability.
But to use this, we have to exit the LED lighting editing mode.
So we can press a key, and we can assign a new key to it.
Or a macro that you can record.
Or assign a secondary function to it.
So I can assign FN + Escape to be mute, and it will do just that.
It doesn’t have the greatest customisability, but this makes it very simple and easy to
use.
So not a bad piece of software, as it does exactly what it has to do.
The Phantom is available in Outemu keyswitches, however the Phantom Elite is available with
Gateron and Kailh Box keyswitches, of course at a higher price as well.
I have Outemu Brown’s in mine, which are just a clone of the Cherry MX Brown’s.
But they’re nice switches.
Honestly, you won’t find much of a difference between the two.
This is also available in Outemu Blue for clicky, and Red for linear.
The typing experience is solid.
The stabs aren’t too bad as well.
There is still some rattle, but they did lube the wire up a bit, so yeh, not bad, and above
average for budget boards.
But another big feature of this keyboard is that we can pull out the keyswitches with
the included keyswitch puller, because we have some hotswappable sockets in here.
We do have the extra 4 keyswitches included, but they’re still the same switch.
Last video I checked out the Drevo Tyrfing V2 keyboard, and a couple of people said that
it looked very similar to this.
And yeh, we have the same situation with the hotswap feature.
So basically it’s pretty much just for Outemu keyswitches.
This is mainly because of the pins being slightly thinner than others.
And you also need to have the gap for the SMD RGB LED, in which not all switches have.
So for the most part, Cherry MX, Gateron, Kailh, etc.
They won’t fit, unless you modify the pins somehow, just because the sockets are super
tight.
However, the Outemu ICE keyswitches, will make some great replacements.
So yeh, not the best, but it’s still much better than not having the option at all.
To open up the keyboard there’s a couple of Phillips head screws on the top plate,
and you can just pry it open.
The bottom plastic shell is very simple.
There’s not much reinforcement there, but when screwed onto the plate, it’s all good.
Said plate is made from 1.5mm steel.
This is what gives the keyboard it’s solid weight and rigidity.
Again, most boards like this will just have an aluminium plate which is lighter and not
as rigid, so it’s really nice to have steel here.
And the PCB is clean and all, but the main difference is that we have the sockets that
the switch pins go into.
So if you wanted to, you could desolder these sockets and put in other switches, but honestly,
there’s no real point.
Overall, I’m very very happy with this keyboard.
The price truly does play a big role in how I perceive this keyboard.
Like seriously, it has a good solid build with the steel plate, it has true RGB backlighting
which is customisable, with software as well.
It has hotswappable keyswitches, albeit, it’s limited to Outemu, but still great.
It has doubleshot keycaps, in a standard ANSI layout.
The design is not for me personally, but it’s relatively simple and should fit in most environments.
Many people may turn away from Outemu switches if they didn’t know better.
But honestly, they’re absolutely fine in regards to feel and durability.
And all this makes you question, how do all these other gaming keyboards get away with
being 2 or 3 times more expensive than this?
I know I’m sounding overwhelmingly positive, but I really am impressed at this price for
the package that you get.
This is like 50 bucks in the US.
And honestly, at this pricepoint, it’s a very difficult keyboard to beat, and is definitely
one beast of a budget board.
And don’t forget, this is also available in the full sized version if you need that
numpad.
Thanks again to Mwave.com.au for providing this keyboard for review.
And I’ll chuck the link in the description below.