Royal Kludge Typewriter Keyboard Review: Aesthetic Over Function

POSITIVES

✓ Snazzy Appearance

The circular typewriter keys and RGB lights make this keyboard look cool

✓ Foldable Wrist Rest

The wrist rest provides extra comfort and folds away underneath the board when not in use

✓ RGB Controls and Presets

You can easily switch between numerous RGB presets using shortcuts on the keyboard

NEGATIVES

✘ Mushy Keys

Keys push down without much resistance or tactile feedback

✘ Awkward Travel Distance

Travel distance between keys doesn’t feel the same as most other keyboards, leading to more typing mistakes

✘ No Software

Lack of software makes it difficult to customize RGB lights and impossible to create macros

Purchase Price: $66.99

Buy on Amazon

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees and support our channel by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

---

I have quite the pile of keyboards in my closet. Nonetheless, I’m always excited to receive more from Sypnotix as they are one of my favorite things to test out. The box for this Royal Kludge Typewriter keyboard was deceiving — the picture displayed normal, square-shaped keys. So, when I opened it and saw a typewriter style, I was pretty hyped. Unfortunately, the board itself didn’t really live up to that hype. Let’s talk about why. 

The Aesthetic

As I mentioned, I was pretty excited to receive a typewriter-style keyboard to review.  I’ve seen these online before and always thought they looked cool. While this one does look pretty neat, its appearance is not without flaws. 

First of all, the key legends are not great. While I’m not a huge fan of the font they chose, the bigger issue is the clarity. The RGB lights shine very dimly through the key legend. Instead, the way you experience the RGB here is from where it shines out underneath the keys. Many people refer to that as bleeding, and some see it as a bad thing. It doesn’t bother me and I like how the lights reflect off the silver plastic around the edges of the keycaps. However, I do think these keys would look so much better if the RGB showed more clearly through the key legends. 

Speaking of RGB, there are a number of presets that can be easily accessed by using shortcuts on the keyboard itself. Unfortunately, I could not find any functioning software for this board, so RGB lighting customization is inconvenient. The manual does give a short description of how to edit each key, but it doesn’t offer a lot of insight and feels a bit confusing. If you’re not into RGB customization and just want a fun rainbow or breathing effect, then I think you’d be happy with the presets, but if you are into RGB customization, you’ll definitely find this board lacking. The lights on the sides of the keyboard honestly look really cool; unfortunately, you can’t see them at all from your position in front of the monitor. They’ll look great in photos of your setup, but you can’t really enjoy them in real time. 

One last thing I’ll say about this keyboard is that the shape of the keys and the distance between them means you can always see when it is dirty. I’m not perfect, so I do eat at my desk from time to time, and I have dogs. No matter what keyboard I use, there will always be dog hair in it. Unfortunately, this one shows the dog hair (and crumbs) more clearly than others, which I am not a fan of.

User Experience

So, I’ve just covered design in terms of how the product looks, but how about in terms of the actual typing experience? Unfortunately, I don’t love it. I wouldn’t say this board is necessarily bad, but I don’t find it to be good, either, and I think you can get a better experience for the $60 price tag. 

There are two reasons for this. The first is that typing on this keyboard is awkward. Yes, you will get used to it with time just as I did, but I still find myself making more mistakes than I ever did on other keyboards, and I am pretty skilled at typing (I’ve been doing it my whole life!).

I also feel like the keys push down quite easily without a lot of resistance. This may seem like a good thing, but for me it almost made the board feel cheap or flimsy. The keys feel almost mushy and I’m just not into it. Most of the boards I’ve tried, even if they feel like “dancing on clouds” to type on, still have a level of resistance that helps you gauge when you’ve fully actuated the key. The other nice thing about this is that you don’t have to feel like you’re pressing the key down all the way to the bottom of the board. Unfortunately, this typewriter keyboard does feel a bit like I'm pushing the keys down really far. This is not my personal preference, but if you want to experience a keyboard that feels like a legit typewriter, then maybe you’d actually like that it feels like keys get pressed down farther than usual. Again, I wouldn’t say that this makes the board feel bad or unusable, it just doesn’t feel as nice as other boards I’ve tried within the same price range. 

Another thing that irritates me is the setup of the volume keys. The volume down is in the middle with the volume up to the left and the mute button to the right. I can’t tell you how many times I muted my sound trying to turn the volume up. It feels like the setup here is completely backward. Even after using this for a month, I kept making this mistake. It’s a small gripe, but a gripe nonetheless. 

I will say that I do enjoy the inclusion of the wrist rest. I’ve always liked having wrist rests come with boards because they make the typing experience more comfortable overall. What I especially like about this board’s wrist rest is that it can be folded underneath the board. This is super convenient as you’ll never lose it nor have to worry about it floating around and taking up extra space when you’re not using it. 

Gaming Performance

If you’re a serious gamer who is looking for macro capabilities or onboard memory, then this isn’t the board for you. If you just want a cool-looking plug-and-play mechanical keyboard, then you might like this. This board does claim to have features such as anti-ghosting, but it doesn’t say much else. There also doesn’t seem to be any software available for it. 

I was able to find a link in Amazon’s Q&A section to some software, but it did not work properly. Every time I tried to do something, whether it be changing the lighting on the board or creating a macro, I was given an error message. As such, we can’t really expect this board to do anything more than plug and play. I’m okay with that as I don’t really use macros, but I do think it is disappointing for the price. Many budget keyboards on the market have all the bells and whistles of high-end brands but at an affordable price. This board has no special features but still costs as much as boards that do, and I just don’t think that’s worth it. 

Despite all this, it doesn’t seem to perform too much worse when I’m actually gaming. I do still feel like the travel distance is awkward, but I’m mostly pressing the correct hotkeys. However, I have noticed that I’ve had more trouble using some skills in FFXIV. It’s hard to tell if it’s my fault or the keyboard’s as it is rather inconsistent. Still, I would argue that I’ve made more mistakes and had a harder time gaming with this board than any other I’ve tried. I can successfully make it through difficult content with this, but I’ve noticed that, for whatever reason, I’ll occasionally fail to fire a skill. Because FFXIV has a wait time between each skill cast (called the global cooldown) it could just be me, but I can’t shake the feeling that the board has something to do with it, too, since, as I said, I’ve made more mistakes using this board than I make when using others. 

Final Thoughts

Even though this board looks cool and I like the idea of typewriter keys, I don’t really think it is worth your money. For the price of this board, you can get something that has many more features (like macro capabilities and onboard memory) and probably feels better to type on, too. The keys on this board were just a little too mushy for me, and the travel distance feels awkward. I find myself making more mistakes, both in terms of typos and gameplay, on this board than any other I’ve tried for Sypnotix. If you want something just for the aesthetic of the typewriter keys then this would work fine, but I do wonder if there’s something similar but better out there. While the overall design of this keyboard does look good, the key legends aren’t great and don’t let much of the RGB lights through. All in all, this keyboard gets the job done but isn’t really anything to write home about. 

---

---

Related