Royal Kludge L75 Mechanical Keyboard Review
Compact and Capable
I recently reviewed the Royal Kludge M75 and really liked it, so I was looking forward to trying out the L75 model in this review. It’s very similar to the M75, but it has a couple of slightly different features. Mainly, extra macro keys and a touchpad. Will I like the L75 as much as the last Royal Kludge keyboard I tested? Let’s find out!
Retail Price: $89.99
Disclaimer: Royal Kludge sent us a unit of the L75 free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.
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Wired and wireless connectivity (Bluetooth and 2.4Ghz)
USB-passthrough
Volume knob
Macro keys
Programmable touch plate
RGB lights
Hot-swappable
As you can see, this board is packed with useful features – I’m always fond of boards that include different connectivity options and USB passthrough. However, the most unique feature of this board is probably the programmable touch plate. It’s defaulted to take you to a Royal Kludge website, but I’ve reprogrammed mine to “print screen” so that I can easily take screenshots while gaming (there is an FN shortcut for print screen, but this is much more efficient). You’re a bit limited in what you can program it to do, though. I wish I could use it as a multimedia button – for example, one tap to pause, two taps to skip to the next song, and three to go back to the previous song. Unfortunately, it can’t do that, and can mostly only be used for keyboard shortcuts.
RGB and Software
This keyboard does have fully customizable RGB backlights, for which you need the appropriate software from Royal Kludge’s website. The software isn’t the best and there are some features of it that I don’t really understand, but overall it’s not too hard to figure out. The RGB customization on this keyboard is better than most budget brands. You can drag your mouse over a section of keys and give it one color or effect, but then give a different section of the board a different effect. It’s not as in-depth as Razer or Corsair, so you can’t do any layering, but it’s decent for what it is. There are also several nice presets, which are what I usually use.
One big con for the RGB on this board is the quality of the lights. You can always tell when lights are of great quality because they are better at displaying pastel colors and they are true to the color you see on your monitor in the software. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case for the RK L75. If you pick a pastel color, the lights basically just turn white. Some of the colors aren’t especially true to color, either. For example, a bright, medium magenta shows up quite a bit lighter on the actual board, and slightly more purple. If you value really good RGB, then this board likely isn’t going to suit your tastes.
One thing that bugs me a bit about Royal Kludge is that they don’t have a single software program that works for all of their keyboards. I recently reviewed the RK M75, and when I got this one, I hoped I would be able to use the software I already had installed. Unfortunately, that was not the case. I had to download a different program (that looks and functions the same!) to use with this new board. It would be nice if Royal Kludge could make one single software program to serve all of their different keyboards and peripherals.
How Does It Sound?
The listing for this keyboard on the Royal Kludge website includes a lot of detail about the structure of the keyboard. It mentions that the board is gasket-mounted and has five sound-dampening layers along with spacebar silencing foam. It also claims that the overall build of this board will lead to quiet typing.
I feel like this is a bit of false advertising. Maybe it’s because of the switches I chose (tactile beige as opposed to linear cream), but I don’t find this keyboard to be especially quiet. I wouldn’t say it’s super loud like some blue switch keyboards are, but it has some presence.
It doesn’t bother me at all that this keyboard isn’t quiet, but I thought it was worth mentioning since the webpage and marketing suggest that it is. I quite like the way this keyboard sounds and how it feels to type on. The tactile switches are very bouncy, which does take some getting used to, but they are rather enjoyable to type on once you do. As for the way the keys sound, we will have an audio clip for you, but I would describe them as clacky. If you’re looking for more of a deep, thocky sound, then this board may not be the right choice, at least not with the tactile switches. Something to note is that you can swap the switches out for any other 3-pin or 5-pin switches, so you can somewhat customize the experience.
Gaming
I mostly use this board wired, but I couldn’t tell a difference between its performance when connected with Bluetooth versus being plugged in. I typically play MMOs, which don’t require a super quick or precise response time the way some competitive shooter games might, so this board’s performance was great for me. I didn’t notice any lag, overfiring, ghosting, or any issues at all when gaming.
I really appreciate that the board has a row of F keys, and even the extra side keys could be useful for an MMO player since MMOs tend to have tons of skills. Though I will be getting some use out of the F keys, I personally don’t find myself reaching for the extra M keys off to the left-hand side. If I went keyboard shopping rather than being given a board to review, I probably wouldn’t pick a keyboard with extra keys on the left like this one; however, I can definitely understand why people like this feature. Royal Kludge refers to these extra keys as macro keys, but they don’t have to be macros. You can program them to function as any hotkey you would like them to be, so they’re nice to have if you’re looking for a few extra hotkeys on a compact.
Tactile Beige Switches
Battery Life
Since this board can be used wirelessly, I thought I’d test the battery life. I was pretty impressed because the board ran for a good five days before it died. For reference, I use my PC a lot, probably eight hours or more every day. When not in use, the keyboard automatically shuts off the lights and eventually goes to sleep, which helps conserve the battery life. I found that when waking my PC up from sleep, I usually had to use my mouse to do so because the keyboard definitely had a bit of a delay upon waking up. However, if the keyboard wasn’t fully asleep but just the lights were out, it still responded immediately and whatever I typed would appear right away — there was no delay. I will say I had no idea when this keyboard was on low battery – I neglected to check both the charging indicator on the board itself and the Windows Bluetooth menu. In this respect, I prefer the Royal Kludge M75 that I recently tried because it had a small screen that would tell you what percent the battery was at.
final thoughts
Overall, I think the RK L75 is a solid keyboard with a lot of great features. I appreciate that it has different connectivity options, USB-passthrough, and a volume wheel (if a keyboard doesn’t have a volume wheel, why even buy it?). Though I don’t personally value them, the extra macro keys are a nice option for someone looking for a few more hotkeys on a compact board. The touch plate is a unique feature, and I like that it can be programmed to do almost anything. This board’s MSRP is $90, which feels a tad overpriced to me, especially for Royal Kludge, but the company seems to run sales often enough. As of writing this, the board is 30% off, making it roughly $63. If you grab it during a sale, then it’s definitely worth it!
To answer the question I posed in the intro, I think this board is just as good as the M75. However, I prefer the M75 because I don’t have much use for the extra macro keys on the L75. I also like the screen on the M75 because it shows the battery life. However, I think I like the tactile switches on this L75 a bit better than the switches I had on the M75. Overall, both keyboards are great; it’s just a matter of what features you’d rather have!
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