Closer Look

Having a look at the exterior of the Excalibur SE Spectrum, this keyboard has been made from high-quality plastic and weighs in at a whopping 1.3 kilogram, which leads to a secure stand on any desk. A quick look around reveals a standard layout without any additional makro keys. This helps saving space, which is a neat thing if you should take the keyboard with you every once in a while to attend for example a LAN party. Nevertheless there is still the possibility to record makro’s and for that purpose not even an additional software is necessary.

The most important feature about this particular keyboard is the actuation technology used in the case of the switches. Therefore it’s worth having a closer look at those. At a first glance the switches look very similar to the Cherry MX ones. Especially the case looks almost identical. In the case of our sample there are switches from Gateron, which basically mimic the behavior of Cherry MX Blue’s. At this point the only difference is the transparent chassis, which allows for illuminating the casing of each and every key and therefore realize nice RGB lighting effects.

Taking the switch apart even further reveals that even the internals are basically the same as with Cherry MX switches. There is for instance the metal spring, which is used to create the typical clicking noise and feel. Nevertheless there is one key aspect that is different. Gateron/Tesoro is using an infrared barrier to register the command. As soon as the key stem passes the barrier a key stroke is registered. In case of the Excalibur SE Spectrum the actuation point comes after 2mm, while the keys have 4mm of travel. An infrared barrier brings additional possibilities such as individually setting the response time to as low as 0.1ms. Apart from that the endurance of those switches is higher since they’re spilling liquids over the keyboard almost can’t damage them. If you for example flood the keyboard with Coca Cola you can take it and clean it using tap water. After that you let it dry and it works again. Below we’ve added Tesoro’s marketing video, which visually explains the benefits one gets from those switches.

Back

The back of this particular keyboard isn't special. There is the usual label showing the serial of the product and there are four rubber feet, on in each corner. Obviously there are two small feet, also with rubber ends, which allow for tilting the keyboard to a certain angle.

Page 1 - Introduction

Page 2 - Photo Gallery / Delivery

Page 3 - Features

Page 4 - Closer Look

Page 5 - Conclusion