Keyboards come in many shapes, sizes, colors and styles but my favorite has always been the mechanical keyboard for the longevity of them but also for the tactile and audible sensations from them, I just find them much better to type on. Up for review today I’ve got the AllEasy CK108 mechanical gaming keyboard that features blue Outemu mechanical switches and backlit LEDs beneath the switches. The LEDs are RGB and you can choose from various preset color combinations or you can program them yourself with your very own color choices. Read on to learn more…

Specifications and Features

 

 

The keyboard comes with a removable black plastic wrist rest, personally I don’t like them and I won’t be using it. The keyboard without the wrist rest isn’t very large, it’s about 17.25 by 5.75 inches in dimensions and about 1.25 inches high without the legs extended. The top of the keyboard is a brushed aluminum that’s silver or gray in color making for a very nice presentation. The keyboard feels very well made, it’s sturdy and it feels heavier than it looks for its small size really. Above the numpad are four LEDs for num lock, caps lock, scroll lock and game lock. The game lock lights up when you lock out the Windows key to let you know it’s off or deactivated.

 

The keyboard is the standard QWERTY layout with function keys across the top and a numpad on the right side with cursor keys and the insert, home block above those. The function keys are actually multimedia and basic app keys but they’re not labeled for whatever reason. The function keys would be, from F1 to F12, CD, volume down, volume up, mute, stop, last, play/pause, next, e-mail, internet, calculator and search.  The keys themselves has a unique font, not sure what it’s called, but it has a futuristic look to it. The keys have a slight texture to them and they are a bit shiny under the light, not glossy exactly but they very much reflect the light shining on them.

  

 

 

This is a mechanical keyboard and if you remove the keycaps you’ll find clear switches with blue centers, they look rather unique. These are blue switches and the brand is Outemu, it’s not a very well known brand but I’ve another keyboard with them and not had any issues at all. The sound from these is different than my other blue key switch keyboard though which could be the keyboard itself and how it’s designed. It’s not a bad thing it’s just different, these seem to have a shorter travel distance and less of a higher pitched click, it’s almost a dull thud sound I guess I would describe it as or maybe muted slightly. These keys aren’t as tall or high as my other keyboard is so it makes a difference in the sound it makes so they’re clicky yes but not as high pitched click. The sound is just not what you might expect from a blue switch keyboard and I think it’s because the keys themselves are close to the keyboard base. It’s not a complaint or anything, just something to be aware of. From my time with this keyboard I’ve also noticed the keys are also slightly closer together than my previous keyboard. Any time you switch keyboards there is an adjustment period for you to get accustomed to using the new keyboard. I could type fine on it after about a week though, so it’s not bad of an adjustment period.

 

The keyboard is thin and has a nice side profile with an almost wedge shape to it. Looking from the side you can actually see the switches. I like this design a lot as other keyboard has the frame come all the way up to the keys, and this makes the keys look as though they float.

 

On the bottom of the keyboard you’ll find four rubber non-slip feet and there are retractable stands as well to raise the keyboard up at an angle for you. On the front edge you’ll see two rectangular slots where the wrist rest attaches to the keyboard.

 

The main feature of this keyboard is the RGB LEDs and the fact that you can fully customize them, and I mean you can make each individual key a different color if you wanted to. There are six pre-defined settings with three choices for each of those six, meaning there are 18 preset color combinations for you to choose from. There are animated and non-animated choices and you can easily change the brightness levels with the Fn key and cursor up and down or the animation speed with Fn and cursor right and left. You can also lock the Windows key by pressing Fn and the Windows key. You can also customize the colors with the Fn and tilde key, it will enter programming mode and you can choose colors with the cursor right and left keys and then press each key you want to be that color. For example you can make the WASD keys red and then rest of the keys can be off or another color, or any combination you can think of really. You can have solid colors, multiple colors or a full on rainbow of colored keys. The color choices are great, there’s plenty of them for sure, the only improvement I would make would be I wish the LEDs were a little brighter. They’re fine as is, they’re very much show up in the dark, but just personally I would like them to be brighter or maybe the keys themselves more transparent.

  

  

  

  

 

There are three keys labeled PS, SL and PB above the insert, home keys which I’m not sure what they do as it’s not in the manual. I pressed them and nothing happened and then I pressed them with the Fn key and still nothing happened. The manual doesn’t list them but the product description on the webpage does and it says FN+PS Short Press: Directly used in color, lighting effects replace with theme color display and FN+PS Long Press 5S: Enter into the theme color setting mode and I tried it but they didn’t do anything. Not sure what’s going on here at all, not sure how to use those keys as they don’t seem to do anything.

 

Lastly I have a video for you of the unboxing of this keyboard but it’s also a demo of the various lighting modes: