Alongside mice, keyboards are without a doubt the most important peripheral for any PC user. A good or bad keyboard can make or break your day, from the way the keys click to the ergonomics of your wrist support to the fact of keys being backlit or not – having a good keyboard can be the difference between a pleasurable gaming experience and a carpal tunnel several years down the road.
Roccat’s Vulcan TKL is one of the good ones, but it fills a very specific niche. A compact wired mechanical keyboard, the Vulcan TKL’s 36 cm body is designed for people with a proper desk and chair setup, but who have no use for the numpad keys and rather have more space for moving the mouse around.
The actual keyboard has quite a premium feel to it, with a hard plastic base and a supposed aircraft-grade aluminum plate on top. The keys themselves are RGB-backlit and protrude quite a bit from the surface, which gives them quite a nice raised profile mean your hand won’t ever rest flush against the keys – an issue if you lack a good wrist support or a somewhat raised elbow rest setup (take care of your wrists, folks!)
That raised profile does mean there is quite a bit of travel on the keys, but they are nonetheless surprisingly sensitive – in fact, even too sensitive. While playing games and resting my fingers on the WASD keys, my characters would sometimes start strafing by accident; the keys are so sensitive that the weight of my fingers would be enough to register as an input. That’s down to the Titan Switch Mechanical below the keys, which Roccat claims is between 20% to 30% faster than standard keys depending on the variant.
Besides the Titan switches, you’ll also finding an RGB layer running beneath the keys. This quality lightning setup constantly moves as a slow and smooth gradient on the default setting, lighting up the keyboard like a rainbow in a surprisingly pleasing fashion. If this relaxing mode isn’t to your liking, you can customise it entirely with Roccat’s proprietary Swarm software.
One interesting differential of the Vulcan TKL is its mixer-style volume dial, similar to the ones found in stereos. Instead of two buttons you press like in most other keyboards, the Vulcan TKL lets you lower or raise your PCs volume by rotating a knob in its top right corner – a wonderfully tactile feeling.
All in all, the Vulcan TKL is a premium, solid built keyboard. It lacks a numpad and – contrary to marketing – has raised keys that do not lend themselves easily to use without a palm wrest, but the actual feel and travel time of its switches is quite good. It features one of the most beautiful and strong RGB LED systems I’ve ever seen on a peripheral, and its metal plate gives it a stability and weight that feel really good in your hands (and on your desks). If you want a compact RGB keyboard, the Roccat Vulcan TKL definitely warrants some serious consideration.
