Posted: 15 Mar 2013, 22:37
Here are my thoughts and the impressions of a few colleagues about the Realfore board. Thanks to 002 for making this tour possible.
Now for the review:
-The switches: sooooo smoooooooth! My beloved Cherrys all of a sudden feel very scratchy. Those Topres really are a joy to type on. I only miss some more resistance after the tactile bump.
-The variable weight feature is nice but the force needed for the pinky switches is too light IMO: these keys have almost lost their tactility.
-The space bar, however, could be lighter.
-With switches that silent (if you don't bottom out too hard), the noise of the stabilizers becomes somewhat annoying. Their metallic rattling sound really stands out.
-Ugly legends on back space and where a condensed font is used (Insert, Home, Delete). The legend of the letter "I" doesn't have the same left-flush alignment as the other keys. It's probably intentionally but it looks weird.
What some selected colleagues thought of it. All of them touch typists.
Colleague A:
-Nice keyboard to type on but certainly not overwhelmingly better than a "normal" (rubber dome) board.
-Pinky keys too light, lots of unintentional A's and ;'s
-Backspace felt like not registering correctly on some occasions. Maybe too heavy for a pinky key? Or maybe the fact that there's a stabilizer under this key that changes its characteristics too much?
Colleague B:
-Did not feel a large effect of the weighted keys.
-Keyboard too noisy in her opinion (probably related to bottoming out and being used to normal rubber domes).
-Needed to get used to the sculpted key profile (as opposed to the uniformly flat Hewlett-Packard boards of our office computers).
-Old school looks (meant in a negative sense).
Colleague C:
-Generally nice feel, but not spectacularly better than HP RD.
-Quite noisy (bottoming out?)
-Did hardly feel the effect of the variable force feature.
-Old school looks (meant in a positive sense).
So, would I buy a Realforce for myself? Probably not but that is mainly due to the layout constraints: I usually type on non-staggered keyboards, a Kinesis Advantage and a TypeMatrix 2030 being my daily drivers. I must say that I liked Topre switches more than I expected. Much more. If only they were available as discrete key modules - we could build our own Topre boards. Right now, the board that comes closest to my ideal Topre keyboard is the µTron. We need to have one of those on tour!
Now for the review:
-The switches: sooooo smoooooooth! My beloved Cherrys all of a sudden feel very scratchy. Those Topres really are a joy to type on. I only miss some more resistance after the tactile bump.
-The variable weight feature is nice but the force needed for the pinky switches is too light IMO: these keys have almost lost their tactility.
-The space bar, however, could be lighter.
-With switches that silent (if you don't bottom out too hard), the noise of the stabilizers becomes somewhat annoying. Their metallic rattling sound really stands out.
-Ugly legends on back space and where a condensed font is used (Insert, Home, Delete). The legend of the letter "I" doesn't have the same left-flush alignment as the other keys. It's probably intentionally but it looks weird.
What some selected colleagues thought of it. All of them touch typists.
Colleague A:
-Nice keyboard to type on but certainly not overwhelmingly better than a "normal" (rubber dome) board.
-Pinky keys too light, lots of unintentional A's and ;'s
-Backspace felt like not registering correctly on some occasions. Maybe too heavy for a pinky key? Or maybe the fact that there's a stabilizer under this key that changes its characteristics too much?
Colleague B:
-Did not feel a large effect of the weighted keys.
-Keyboard too noisy in her opinion (probably related to bottoming out and being used to normal rubber domes).
-Needed to get used to the sculpted key profile (as opposed to the uniformly flat Hewlett-Packard boards of our office computers).
-Old school looks (meant in a negative sense).
Colleague C:
-Generally nice feel, but not spectacularly better than HP RD.
-Quite noisy (bottoming out?)
-Did hardly feel the effect of the variable force feature.
-Old school looks (meant in a positive sense).
So, would I buy a Realforce for myself? Probably not but that is mainly due to the layout constraints: I usually type on non-staggered keyboards, a Kinesis Advantage and a TypeMatrix 2030 being my daily drivers. I must say that I liked Topre switches more than I expected. Much more. If only they were available as discrete key modules - we could build our own Topre boards. Right now, the board that comes closest to my ideal Topre keyboard is the µTron. We need to have one of those on tour!