Question 1

is the face plate brushed aluminum? or is it just a plastic keyboard?

Accepted Answer

It is a plastic keyboard. It also makes a metallic sound when you type. The backlight is nice, but only the top portion of the keys is lit the best. I think for the price I got a good deal. I use it to type out many e-mails and use Power Point and Excel with no issues. I hope this helps you.

Question 2

Can I turn the back lights off completely?  Is the brightness adjustable?

Accepted Answer

Yeah you can turn it off completely and it's adjustable

Question 3

Is this the brown switch edition like the page says, or the blue switch edition like the item description says?

Accepted Answer

I just bought this a few days ago, this is indeed the Cherry MX Blue switches version with blue backlighting and it is fantastic!

Question 4

Does it have Cherry MX switches or are they being sneaky making it look like it does when they are imitation switches? When I filter keyboards to show Brown MX this keyboard doesn't show up.

Accepted Answer

They are genuine Cherry MX switches. I've pulled the keyboard apart and inspected them myself.

I've had it for 2 years. Still going strong. It's a good buy.

Question 5

Are you able to change the backlight colors?

Accepted Answer

No you can't change to different colors you can simply adjust the brightness of the blue backlight.

Question 6

Is there any Linux driver for this keyboard? I purchased it for use on arch linux workstation, and can't figure out a way to turn backlight off.

Accepted Answer

I haven't actually checked driver wise for the keyboard. It reads it as a USB device as any other. Does it do the same in Windows? Not sure what Linux driver would do to keep the back light on. You are doing the "Fn" key and F11 or F12 to turn the back light up and down?

Question 7

Is the "Certified TT Blue Mechanical Switch" the same as the Cherry Blue MX switch? If it isn't I will wait for the Brown Cherry MX to come back in stock or get another product instead....

Accepted Answer

They are Kaihl switches, Which happen to be clones of the Cherry switch line. Their patent ran out.
Anyway Kaihl makes switches for quite a few keyboard manufactures including "RAZER" switches and while a teardown reveals the contacts aren't gold plated and a tiny bit smaller they are functionally identical apart from that. Theres a lot of people that bash on them as being less X or less Y but its generally without merit so far. I've used Kaihl and Cherry switches and for clones they aren't bad at all I doubt the average person could even tell the difference.

So It's pretty much just an cherry MX blue minus being made by Cherry

Question 8

What's the response time of this keyboard?

Accepted Answer

I like that you can press a jumble of keys at the same time. Not sure on the actual technical specs on the response time, but I 'feel' no lag time when playing a game.

Question 9

Is this keyboard Mac OS compatible?

Accepted Answer

You should be able to if you have boot-camp or another software that is a windows "emulator" or if you are dual booting a OS. As for the Mac OS itself it will run your keyboard but it won't have a use for the num-lock button since apple doesn't have a num-lock button (it's overly bright on this keyboard anyways so won't have to worry about it since you won't have to use it). You might have to reassign the "function" keys as well (F1, F2, F3, and so on...). You will also be missing some buttons that a apple keyboard has, an example being the "expose" key. Other than that, it should work fine.

Hope this helps!

Question 10

From what Ive read it seems to be a kailh switch (clone cherrys) I was wondering if anyone who bought this can tell me how it compares to the cherry MX blues.?

Accepted Answer

I was initially concerned about them being clones as well but the switches are excellent.

They are certified up to 50 million strokes, and also are covered by a 5 year warranty.

As far as typing feel and sound, it's really indistinguishable from the Cherry Blues.

Questions & Answers