A keyboard that would probably draw an envious glance from King Arthur himself
We reviewed the core Tesoro Excalibur some months back and found it to be an excellent, competitively priced, mechanical gaming keyboard. Indeed, there didn’t seem much else that could be added to enhance it, but Tesoro have tried to do just that – and now we have the Excalibur RGB Edition.
As with the previously reviewed Excalibur, the RGB Edition is still named after King Arthur’s legendary sword, and still offers full N-Key Rollover and antighosting, with a six-key Rollover for the USB version. The Tesoro preferred Kailh switches this time though come in a choice of four colours: Blue, Brown, Black or Red, with each having a slightly different feel, be that clickly or non-clicky tactile, silent or low actuation force.
We’ve stated before that one of the advantages of using Kailh switches over a competitor mechanical switch, such as Cherry, is the overall improvement in the number of key actuations, up to 60 million over the official Cherry standard of 50 million. In addition they also tend to be slightly cheaper to implement without any perceivable loss in quality or functionality. In essence, the user will hardly notice the difference between Kailh or Cherry; even the most enthusiastic of keyboard connoisseurs would be probably be hard pushed to readily identify the switch types in some kind of blindfold test. In short: don’t worry too much about the protestations of the ‘switch snobs’, just enjoy the mechanical feel at a reasonable price instead.
The Excalibur is capable of having every single key programmed across five different profiles, with 300 macro keys, and 2000 macro key presses per profile. To add to that there’s 512KB of on-board memory, an incredibly fast 1000Hz polling rate, and an instant game mode function key combination by pressing FN and Pause.
The RGB element involves an intricate backlighting system, which as you can no doubt guess is based on Red, Green and Blue LEDs under each of the key caps. The backlight setup can be configured to a number of different effects, such as a high brightness, a pulse effect, a colour loop and having only certain keys – like the gaming keys for example – lit up while the rest remain dark. With 16.8 million colours to choose from, we’re fairly sure you’ll be able to find a pleasing mix between the profiles, animations and illumination choices.
We like the Excalibur. It’s a standard setup and a classic looking design that’s comfortable, sturdy, tough, easy to setup and a joy to use. Plus it’s considerably less expensive than the competition rival multibacklit mechanical keyboards.
There’s a lot to be had from the Excalibur, and the RGB element is certainly a standout feature that will enamour it to a wider audience. On the whole though, and taking the backlighting feature out of the equation for the moment, it’s actually quite hard to fathom that you can buy a mechanical keyboard of this quality for just £85. With the RGB feature included then, this is certainly a keyboard worth looking in to. David Hayward
A great keyboard with added illumination effects to brighten your lightsdown gaming sessions.