Published: July 9, 2014 | Source: i-rocks | Author: Bryan Waters

i-rocks K10 Keyboard Review

Conclusion

So the burning question is, does the K10 provide enough to make that low price tag a bargain, or is it priced exactly where you would expect.

We have to say a little of both.

Like any early product from an emerging brand there are some good points and some flaws. The good points are, of course, the price. The K10 is also reasonably robust, with no creaking or flexing. There isn’t any spare plastic flash on the edges. The cable, although not braided, is thick and plenty long enough for most peoples demands. Features are slim. You have the ability to make the i-rocks logo light up if you so desire, the N-key rollover works well enough as long as you don’t lean on the entire keyboard and expect it to be accurate. Finally by pressing both Windows keys you can turn them off, for those of you who are inaccurate with your thumbs.

The typing experience is depends upon whether you’re hoping for something to replicate the joy of a Cherry MX equipped offering, or merely something better than a cheap membrane number. Certainly it isn’t a patch on a proper mechanical keyboard, but equally it hasn’t the unpleasant squidginess of a no-name membrane affair. There is just enough tactical feedback from the lurid green switches to be okay, even if it is still bettered by a high-end membrane keyboard such as the Roccat Isku.

There are, as one would expect from such a low-priced model, some areas that could be improved. The rubber feet are neither large enough to keep it in place under duress, nor sticky enough to justify their small size. The decision to theme the K10 keyboard around green and then provide a red stripe on it is baffling. The key caps themselves are thinner than we’d be comfortable using regularly. We’re not saying they’d break, but we wouldn’t want to take this to a LAN, or drop anything on it. The keys themselves are printed rather than etched, so heavy typers will lose some printing long before you reach the “20 million keystrokes” that the switches are rated too. Although knowing how quickly membrane keyboards become squidgy we definitely don’t believe that claim.

Nothing though comes close to that bizarre font choice. Rather than stick with Arial, or a similar sans-serif font, i-rocks have gone with something just barely above Comic Sans. With big changes there are usually some people who like it, but we can’t imagine anyone looking at these letters and liking them.

So it’s cheap and cheerful. Better than a lot of equally priced offerings, and there are enough ideas to hint at future promise, but there are also a lot of flaws and not all of them a side-effect of that price point. So it gets our OC3D VFM award.