About a year ago I reviewed the Tecware Phantom RGB TKL, and I really thought that it was,
and still is a great solid budget mechanical keyboard.
And Tecware gained more attention after showing off this board at Computex this year, the
Spectre Pro.
I say it over and over again.
While high end customs are amazing, I have a massive soft spot for budget mechs, as it
just makes it more accessible and means more people have the opportunity to get the mechanical
experience.
And the better the lower end gets, the better it is for everyone.
Also, keep in mind that this is an early batch unit, so changes will come which I’ll mention.
And here’s the keyboard.
Feels nice and solid, coming in at just over a kilogram.
And with the internal steel plate, there’s minimal flex.
But let’s get this plugged in because this is when it shines.
The included USB type C cable is nicely braided, and fits snugly into place.
But I always hate how these cables come folded, because they look terrible.
Fortunately the hole is big enough for my JUJU cable.
And I absolutely love the design of this board.
This is straight up the nicest looking enclosure on a budget mech, and possibly even all plastic
enclosure mechs in my opinion.
But yep, it has a plastic enclosure which is this sweet nearly matte finish.
Satin I guess.
The lines are clean and simplistic.
The top edge is quite sharp, but it is just plastic so it doesn’t cut you or anything.
We have rounded corners with a sizeable 1cm bezel.
The sides angle outwards slightly until it hits this stunning sideglow piece.
And they nailed it.
It’s somewhat thin at about 2mm thick, but it shows off the light perfectly.
The diffusion is on point, and hides the screw bosses really quite well, but at the same
time it’s bright and vibrant, and because the bottom plastic piece comes inwards, it
gives that aesthetic glow on the table.
We can change the lighting with FN plus pause, which also includes individual colours which
is nice to match a theme.
And the bottom is pretty plain.
Just a couple of rubber feet, and two flip up feet that are also nicely rubber tipped.
Back to the top.
The LED lock indicators are also on point.
They’re flush with the plastic, and use white LEDs.
Not everything is perfect though.
So the knob next to it.
Right now, it’s just a volume knob.
Personally, I find it really convenient and useful, but that’s all it is for now.
Whether you like how it looks is up to you.
It is quite big.
The top looks nice, but the sides are a bit cheapish.
It does have a ring of light around it, which we can also change the colour of which is
a nice touch.
The main thing is that it doesn’t really follow the rest of the keyboard design.
And on my particular unit, it’s quite difficult to turn.
It hits a spot where there’s too much resistance on each rotation, so that made it quite annoying
to use.
But that should be quite easy for them to fix.
And of course the font on these caps are pretty bad, and do detract from the overall sleek
aesthetic.
However, they did tell me that they will improve the keycap legends in future batches.
They’re made from 1mm thin ABS plastic, so not great, but they are doubleshot, so
the legends are another piece of plastic and won’t fade away.
In addition to the sideglow, we do have customisable RGB backlighting.
So there’s a bunch of effects and patterns that we can play around with.
And we can also individually customise the colour of each key.
We can also play with the lighting in the software that we can download from their website.
So we have our 3 profiles that we can edit.
In the LED editing mode, we have access to all our effects and patterns, as well as brightness.
And there’s also our sideglow and volume wheel colours.
We can also customise each key with another key.
There’s also a bunch of media functions that we can assign.
And then finally macros which we can record with delays and cycles, and such.
In the manual, I didn’t see a way to switch profile onboard.
So you have to do that through the software.
Fortunately, it is a full sized, so I guess you can sacrifice a few keys if you wanted
to assign stuff.
It’s a very basic piece of software, much like many other budget mechs.
But that’s fine, because it works.
Now to the other feature that Tecware have had in some of their other boards.
It has hotswappable Outemu keyswitches.
I have Outemu Brown switches in mine, so a light tactile switch with a mild bump halfway.
Don’t sleep on Outemu switches.
I mean, they’re obviously using them to keep the price down, and that’s absolutely
fair on a budget mech.
But these Brown’s in particular are more tactile than Cherry MX Browns.
That’s not saying much, but that goes to show, that these aren’t bad at all.
They also said that they’re going to change to the dustproof variant of the Outemu keyswitches
in the future.
Anyway, they are using the Outemu hotswap sockets, meaning that we can pull out the
keyswitches without desoldering.
However, these are super tight as always.
And I’ve never liked the keyswitch pullers that come with these boards, and yeh, you
can see for yourself.
But that’s not the worst part.
Because they’re so tight, pretty much they’re compatible with just Outemu switches.
So that means, Cherry MX, Gateron, Kailh, Durock, whatever keyswitch, are not fully
compatible.
So first of all, you need to have a gap for the SMD LED, as it does protrude from the
PCB.
And if you have 5 pin switches, you gotta cut off those prongs.
But basically the pins just don’t fit properly.
Apparently you can file down the pins, but I’ve never bothered.
And you can make them work if there is enough contact, even though the pins will be bent.
But really, it’s just Outemu that will fit properly.
With all that being said though, it’s better than not having hotswap at all.
So it’s still easy to replace your keyswitch for whatever reason.
But with Outemu only.
Anyway, here’s how it sounds.
Now this was the bit that killed me.
The switches sound fine, the stabilisers aren’t great, with a bit of rattle, which is to be
expected.
But it’s the metallic ping.
It’s crazy on here.
I’m pretty sure it’s the worst ping I’ve experienced on a modern mechanical keyboard.
So this is that ping sound that lingers after each key press.
This is something that I’m quite sensitive with, and I do specifically look out for it
with every keyboard I test.
So it may not be much of a concern to you.
But it is pretty bad.
I did try and put some foam inside, but it didn’t really help.
Hopefully they can get this fixed, and I did tell them about, so maybe there is a chance.
But please, fix this.
To open up the keyboard, there’s a bunch of Philips head screws on the bottom, as well
as under the feet.
Here’s the bottom plastic piece.
Very simple with a bit of ribbing on the bottom surface.
It’s pretty low profile, so there’s not much room in here, so I’m not sure what’s
making that noise.
I couldn’t take off the sideglow plastic piece as mine had 2 stripped screws.
But we can see why the sideglow is so bright and even, and that’s because there is a
bucketload of sideblasting RGB LEDs all around the edge.
We can also see that the RGB SMD LEDs for the keyswitches are completely on the otherside,
and therefore protrude from the top which is annoying for keyswitch compatibility, but
that doesn’t matter anyway with these Outemu sockets which are soldered in.
The plate is made from steel, and is probably the standard 1.5mm, so nothing too out of
the ordinary from what I can see.
So yeh, not sure what’s going on with the ping.
By the way, the keycaps do look pretty nice with the backlighting off.
But, it’ll look even better with some new keycaps.
Ok, so this keyboard is an absolute looker.
I think the enclosure design is as good as it gets for prebuilt plastic case mechs.
It’s clean, sleek, and the sideglow is just perfect, again, as good as I’ve seen.
The volume wheel is useful, but I understand that it may not be for everyone, and it could
have been nicer.
And that brings up the idea of having a tenkeyless version of this.
How good would that be.
Just chop off the numpad and I think we’ll have an absolute winner there.
Anyway, the big disappointment for me with this at the moment is the horrible ping sound
when typing.
Again, this is from an early batch, and I really do hope they fix that, because sound
is such a huge part of a mech.
And it does fail here.
And as mentioned before, they’ll improve on the keycaps.
Also, blank keycaps would look amazing on this.
Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to have a stealth version.
And thinking about it, imagine a stealth TKL version, how good.
But I digress.
One of the biggest features of this mech as with many of their others, is the budget price.
The recommended retail is only $65.
It may even be cheaper at some stores.
And that’s just awesome.
You get a really nice looking mech at a budget price, with all the features I’ve discussed.
But to Tecware, just take on my advice, and get this stuff fixed, and you have a winner.