Front

Tesoro has sent us a Colada with standard layout. Their latest and also most expensive gaming keyboard makes use of mechanical switches. Obviously these are CherryMX ones and you can choose between, brown, red, black and blue switches. In case of our sample there were CherryMX red switches. 
The Colada can be categorized as an FPS gaming keyboard, since there are no extra macro keys or a hole lot of other different buttons. It's only right below the space bar, that you find three M-keys, which, when programmed, set certain key-configurations. A closer look at the upper right corner, reveals different indicators for "Caps Lock", "Num Lock" and "Scroll Lock". Other than that, there is a "G" and "R" indicator light, which lets gamers activate macros (G) and shows if macros are being recorded (R). You might have noticed, the purple bezel with the Tesoro logo. In our opinion this ruins the looks.
Tesoro made sure, that the Colada is very well built and the keyboards body has been made from Aluminium and the keycaps are made from ABS plastic.



To add more functionality to the Colada, Tesoro equipped the it with a FN button located right next to ALT GR. In this context the F keys also feature multimedia function (F1 to F6) and gamer from F8 to F12 you get additional gaming functions. With the first set of buttons you can adjust volume and skip through your playlist, with the second you can switch between up to five gaming profiles. The keys are laser-etched and there is a blue backlight. The brightness can be adjusted using the numeric keypad (fn + button 2 and 8), there are six levels of backlight. From level 1-4 the entire keyboard is lightning up and only the intensity varies, while levels five and six illuminate only the gamer zone (WASD, arrows, profile buttons, numbers, shift, control, alt and space). Last but not least, on the the left and the right side of the keyboard you can find RGB LEDs, which can make the keyboard shine in all colors.

Back

Flipping the Colada will make you feel how heavy this thing actually is: in fact, it weights 1.5 Kg! The weight is certainly not a problem, it's actually the opposite. Thanks to the immense weight as well as huge rubber coated areas, the Colada doesn't move about on your desk even during the most intense gaming sessions. On the rear profile, there are two USB 2.0 ports, an auxiliary power supply and a small panel audio. The plastic around the connectors are too thick, in fact we found it difficult to insert certain 3.5mm jacks. On the bottom side there are the adjustable feet, which can be set to two different levels. Also on this side the build quality is excellent and we like the sleeved cables and the gold plated connectors.

---

Page 1 - Introduction

Page 2 - Preview

Page 3 - Features

Page 4 - Front/Back

Page 5 - Software

Page 6 - Conclusion