Das Keyboard 4 Professional Clicky Keyboard Review and Parsing

I want to share with you my impressions of testing the mechanical keyboard Das Keyboard 4 Professional Clicky. I have to say that the keyboard showed itself from very different angles. On the one hand, the materials used, the appearance and the details speak of a high-quality product. On the other - their implementation hints at the internal problems of the organization and tightening the nuts in the budgets. My expectations of the keyboard did not meet.

Packing and packaging

It all started with the fact that the courier handed me a huge (relative to the keyboard) cardboard box of 60x40x20 centimeters. Inside was a small white and blue cardboard box from the keyboard, wrapped, for protection during transport, in a bubble film.

The keyboard itself was inside a polyethylene sealing film, in the form of a kind of cover. In a separate compartment was laid laid cable. There was also a stand designed to lift the keyboard, which in combination is - what would you think? Ruler! Also included is a brief instruction. I would even say very brief.
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Housing

When I removed the keyboard, it seemed very cold to me, although it was only -5 ° C outside. Based on this, I assumed that the keyboard was all made of metal, but until I disassembled it, there were still doubts. In part, my assumptions were justified: the upper cover of the keyboard is made of aluminum, the upper part of which, it seems, was sandblasted and then anodized. The solution is very practical: the surface has become dull and rough to the touch, there will be no prints on it and no dust will be visible. Now the coating is more like plastic than metal, but at the same time it is more durable. If on it during operation there will be small attritions, they will not be so noticeable. It remains a mystery why the manufacturer did not process all sides of the upper metal panel.

Also, a not very soft gasket is glued to the upper part of the case, which is located above and below the whole row of function (F #) keys and in the area between the navigation keys. It serves to ensure that the metal does not bend, if someone presses from above, because it is rather thin. If you remove all keys, you will see voids between blocks of keys. Together with the absence of walls around these blocks, this will allow dirt to freely get inside the keyboard case.













The lower part of the body is made of plastic: it is rougher from the bottom and smooth on the sides. But it is on the sides of all sorts of scratches will be most noticeable. In theory, of course, this part should be protected by the metal edge of the upper part of the body, but it is still not clear to me what was the problem with making this part as rough?



To the bottom of the case with the help of two small round magnets mounted stand / ruler. This mounting method seems doubtful to me for three reasons:

1. Magnets are not tight enough to attract the ruler and from the edges it seems to be moving away from the body.
2. Due to the fact that the first pair of magnets is on the ruler, and the second - from the inside of the lower part of the body, scuffs form at the points of contact of the magnets.
3. And the fact of the presence of magnets next to the electronics causes me to fear.

The magnets in this part of the case are glued very carelessly, and they can be glueed on.

Stand Holder

The ruler itself is made of plastic: its outer part is rough and more or less pleasant to the touch, but the inner part looks quite rough and unprocessed. On it bulge familiar circles with burrs that remain from the form in which this detail was cast. I sincerely do not understand why the manufacturer is so proud of this line, but it did not bother to bring it into proper form. The ruler also has magnets that are glued into the corresponding grooves, and again, unevenly. Marking on the ruler is made in two versions: the top in inches, the bottom in centimeters. The numerical values ​​and their risks can hardly be seen - they are only slightly convex and still of the same red color. It will be difficult to use the ruler because, having turned it upside down in centimeters, all figures will be turned over. In addition to this, the lower part of the ruler is not processed, and accordingly the sides with which they will be drawn have burrs. As the manufacturer mentioned on his website: “ you’ll thank us later”. "Well, thank you ...













The rubber bands on the bottom of the case are made of very soft rubber. To the touch, they seem to me not just soft, but I would even say gentle. This means you can expect reliable contact with the table even on very smooth surfaces. The lower gum standard rectangular, small size, but the top - a fancy shape. They seem to take a ruler / stand in brackets so that it does not hang out. But there are no rubber inserts on the ruler itself, which over time will affect not only its appearance, but also the stability of the keyboard itself.

Inner construction / assembly

The lower part of the body is attached to the top with 13 black hexagonal screws. In this version, they are not blocked by anything, so it would seem that cleaning the keyboard is easy. But it was not there - pay attention to the location of a thin cable:



It will not allow to move the upper part of the case so easily - you have to unscrew all the screws holding the board that does not let go of the cable.
Under the cover there are two boards connected by a thin cable: a printed circuit board for mounting switches and a board with control elements.





The switchboard has a painted metal mounting plate over the circuit board. The entire board along with the plate is attached to the bottom of the case with 9 black screws with a cross-shaped slot. Under one of the screws passes the aforementioned short wiring with a washer from the other board with all the controls. Obviously, this is done for grounding purposes.

Switches and stabilizers

Switches in this version of the keyboard - Cherry MX Blue. In all slots they are fixed by diodes down, and there is not a single indicator for LOCK keys, since they are located on the control board. Costar stabilizers are used on all large keys, except for the SPACE key - there are Cherry-like stabilizers on it. This surprised me somewhat: manufacturers usually make the same grooves on a metal plate for adherents of a certain type of stabilizers. To the delight of Costar fans, it is possible to replace Cherry-like stabilizers. But lovers of Cherry-like stabilizers will not be happy that in all places where Costar are located, it is impossible to insert another type of stabilizers. And again, a reasonable question arises, why the manufacturer, who has worked for so many years in this industry, could not take care of its customers? What prevented making grooves for both types of stabilizers, as enthusiasts do for their keyboards? This is not so difficult. Riddles, riddles ...

Main PCB

The printed circuit board on which the switches are located is one-sided with a standard green solder mask on the bottom side and brown in color without a mask on the side of the metal plate. The board is homogeneous, on the edges you can see the delamination, but I did not notice anything similar to the fabric. This means that the board is made from anything, but certainly not from a PCB. I'm afraid to assume that this is a getaxi, because in this case, the keyboard becomes very fragile and falling even from a small height will cause irreparable damage. On the underside of the switches there is not a single identification mark (there are some signs on the side of the metal mounting plate). But in previous versions, the manufacturer was not too lazy to do it. Moreover, all electronic components are under the metal plate, which is why it will not be possible to make minor repairs on their own without disassembling the entire keyboard. For this reason, the repair of the keyboard becomes catastrophically costly, both in terms of repair and finance. After all, if the user does not have soldering skills, he will give it to the one who has, and in this case Time = Money. What did not allow the manufacturer to think about the users and this time remains a mystery.

Board with control elements

On the small board are all the controls. It connects to the keyboard board with a thin cable (you could see similar ones in laptops or phones). Of course, modularity is very good, but why it was necessary to solder the cable and where to find it in case of a breakdown? By the way, the reviewed keyboard just had a factory defect in this loop - 2 tracks broke, and so the ESC, TAB, ~, 1, Q, A, Z keys stopped working. In previous versions of the Das Keyboard, this loop was used:



It could easily be found and replaced, and the control board could be easily disconnected / attached without danger of bending the wiring. Now bend the cable is not difficult due to the fact that this panel is attached to the top cover of the case with the help of 3 gray screws with a cross-shaped slot, and the cable is located in the case almost bent in half.







Between the board and the top cover there is a small plastic part with multimedia keys.





The board has two USB 3.0 Type A connectors for connecting peripherals and one USB 3.0 Type B for connecting the keyboard cable. LED indicators use three bright blue LEDs, but they shine through very small holes in the metal part of the body. This is absolutely not annoying, except that on the ceiling at night there will be blue stains.
On the same board, there are 5 tactile switches (tactile switch) responsible for turning on the sleep mode, turning on / off the sound, pause, switch tracks back and forth. Here is the volume control wheel, which is worthy of special attention. It makes silent but distinct clicks and it has tactile feedback. It is very pleasant and convenient to use it, but there are some interesting points. Firstly, it does not spin very evenly relative to the center. And secondly, for a mysterious reason, there are no ribs on this wheel that are present on the images from the official site. Take a look:







I remember a similar solution for controlling the volume in a fairly cheap membrane keyboard. There I liked that the sound can be turned off by pressing directly on top of the wheel itself. Obviously, in this case, such a venture was abandoned for the sake of greater reliability, because the wheel is on the edge of the board and, if you press on it from above, you can damage something. Unfortunately, this video cannot be used for other tasks (for example, like a mouse wheel).
Thus, they completely abandoned various keyboard shortcuts and brought everything to a separate panel. This is very convenient: you do not need to twist your fingers terribly, trying to press one or another keyboard shortcut, as well as remember these key combinations.

Cable

The keyboard cable was thick and not very soft. It looks more like a power than a USB cable. However, this is the standard thickness for USB 3.0 cable, especially since there are two USB 3.0 connectors at once. Inside the cable is connected to the control board using micro USB 3.0 Type B. Next, it is laid to the hole in the lower part of the case, where it is inserted into a special groove for fastening a rigid protective tip. After that, there are still about 2 meters of cable. This should be enough to reach it to a far-standing computer.

The cable comes out of the center of the keyboard and has a fairly solid protective tip that prevents the cable from bending. Plus in the form of protection goes sticking out on the right side of the case with the inscription Das Keyboard. Buried in a wall, she can stand a certain distance so that the cable can go in any direction and not bend. But the manufacturer did not think about a more convenient cable output: such a thick cable is difficult to bend, and its laying under the keyboard will increase its height, which will not allow the manufacturer to be proud that their keyboard is the thinnest among mechanical ...

Keys

The keys are made of ABS plastic in dark gray. The surface is matte, there are no prints on it, and it only slightly reflects the lighting. I was struck by how uneven the row of QWERTY keys was: the first half was simply rotated a few degrees. This I could not expect from a famous brand. The problem is in the keys, since the switches themselves are soldered exactly. The backs on the keys can be seen burrs and chips at the place of separation from the molded form. On the inner surface you can see the markings of the series and size.

The keys hold the switch cross securely - they won't drop out even with strong and fast clacks. The sound during printing is quite loud and sonorous. I would even say, strumming. Obviously, this is due to the abundance of metal and the lack of sound-absorbing and vibration-absorbing surfaces between the keyboard board and the bottom cover of the case. By the way, among manufacturers of mechanical keyboards there is a tendency to install such surfaces. But why Das Keyboard and this time is not ahead of the rest, as always a mystery.

The inscriptions on the keys are applied in white and rather thin font. Type of application is similar to foaming by laser. I can not say more precisely. If this is the case, it will be fairly easy to blur them over time. There are no Cyrillic characters in the copy provided, and Latin characters are located in the upper left corner. It looks strange that on some numeric keys the characters are located in the center. To be exact, then on 1, 5, 8, 9, 0, - and =. There are no signs on the Russian layout. Personally, it seems to me that such a situation will stand out from the general view, but, as they say, the taste and color ...

N-key rollover

When the keyboard is connected, the “Full N-Key Rollover” mode is disabled, which means you can hold only 6 keys + several modifiers. You can enable the mode by pressing the SHIFT + MUTE key combination. The indicators at this moment will blink three single times. And you can disable the mode with the same key combination, only the indicators blink three triple times. “Full N-Key Rollover” works perfectly with both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 connections. That's just when you turn off the keyboard does not remember which mode was used last, and you have to turn it on yourself, which again does not please.

Delayed Response

When measuring the minimum delays between pressing and pushing the key, it was possible to fix the difference of 10 ms. The vast majority of values ​​were 11 ms, regardless of the USB version or the N-Key Rollover mode. But when checking the delay on the volume wheel, it was possible to repeatedly fix the values ​​at 1 ms, although the most frequent value was 8 ms. This may indicate that the keyboard is a fairly fast controller, and rather high values ​​on the switches are associated only with the device of the Cherry MX Blue switches themselves. The fact is that the mechanisms that are responsible for tactile sensations are subject to the phenomenon of inertia along the forward movement of the key and the force of resistance during the reverse movement. Because of this, they need more time to return to their original position. Take a look for yourself:



If there were linear switches on this keyboard, perhaps it would have been possible to get smaller values. But the company does not release the latest version of the Cherry MX Black or MX Red linear switch keyboards.

Conclusion

The keyboard turned out to be extremely mysterious, but this does not speak in its favor at all - the manufacturer paid too little attention to the interests of users. During the review, I was able to detect stupid, and sometimes even ridiculous problems. Also failed to find anything new and really worthy of attention. And this is despite the fact that the company itself repeatedly mentions the following theses on its website:

• “An Experience Like No Other ...” (Feelings like nowhere else ...)
• “From the initial idea to every machine ...” (From the initial idea to every small detail when making this keyboard ...)

Well, except that the rubber feet they turned out just canceled. I wish all manufacturers of keyboards have such soft and gentle legs!

In conclusion, I note that lovers of mechanical keyboards are special people. They are used to getting a quality product, which is not just a keyboard, but a thought-out tool for work and creativity. It should not only be reliable, but also strive for perfection in all its details, be it circuitry or aesthetic aspects. This is what the user expects to receive for his money, and, in my opinion, Das Keyboard did not cope with this task.

PS: I would like to thank Roman Guliyev, Nikita Golubov, as well as fake and .lex for helping to write this review.