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Thermaltake Poseidon Z RGB keyboard

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Thermaltake Poseidon Z RGB keyboard

Description:
Gaming keyboard with mechanical brown switches
 

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Poseidon Z RGB gaming keyboard

review by jedson3614



Thermaltake has joined the esports bonanza with another department named Tt esports and offers peripherals full of features. Tt esports is committed to "bringing the most personalized and highest quality gear for the most competitive cyber battles, and advances the idea of products designed by gamers for gamers". Often you see everything labeled as gaming when it comes to peripherals because that is what sells, but what makes a product a "gaming" product ? I would say with keyboards, the features and feel are what classify a product as gaming . Features like RGB lighting, Macro functionality, key actuation, switch type, and often response time all make a gaming keyboard stand out. I will be looking at the Poseidon Z RGB keyboard today, and see how this peripheral stands out amongst a crowded market of gaming products. Choosing the right "gaming" peripheral comes down to feel and comfort. You want the best layout when it comes time to frag with your friends.

Why Mechanical Brown Switches



Tt esports brown switches are best for users who love that bold distinct "clicky" feel but have the issue with the loud audible click over other switch types, like mechanical blue switches. Brown switches offer good feedback and responsiveness as you use your keyboard. The actuation force on this keyboard offers 45 (cN), quiet click, and tactile responsiveness.

The specifications are as follows:

COLOR BLACK
NO. OF MACRO KEYS NORMAL MODE : NO
GAME MODE : FULL KEY 102 (BESIDES FN AND WIN KEY) TOTAL 510 MACRO SETS
NO. OF GAME PROFILES 5(EACH CONTAIN NORMAL AND GAME MODE)
WEIGHT(G) 995 GRAMS
DIMENSION 440 X 133 X 37 MM
INTERFACE USB
MEMBRANE, MECHANICAL, PLUNGER MECHANICAL
ANTI-GHOSTING KEYS 100% ANTI-GHOSTING WITH 104 KEY ROLLOVER ON USB
ON-BOARD MEMORY SIZE 512KB
POLLING RATE 1000 HZ
BACK-LIGHT RGB 16.8MILLION COLOR
WRIST REST NO
SMART CABLE MANAGEMENT YES / 3 WAYS
MULTIMEDIA KEYS 7
KEYSTROKE LIFECYCLE 50 MILLION
CABLE LENGTH 1.8M
OTHER FEATURES ADJUSTABLE BRIGHTNESS
GRAPHICAL UI YES

Shipping



The box feels a little heavy for a keyboard giving you the feel of sturdy quality. The front of the box really showcases the RGB lighting and its 5-year warranty. The back goes over programmable keys the 16.8 million RGB colors, software, and Tt certified brown switches.



The accessories include:
  • RGB mechanical gaming keyboard
  • Multi-user quick installation guide
  • warranty card

System requirements:
  • PC with available USB ports
  • Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Win 8

Not sure why Windows 10 is not listed on the box, but I tested this keyboard using the current version of Windows 10 (Anniversary Update) and it installed correctly.

Design



The Poseidon Z RGB keyboard offers software customization options and a full spectrum keyboard capable of 16.8 million different colors. Backlighting, RGB color, and effects are all that drive the customization opportunities of this keyboard. The 16.8 million colors are driven by the 32bit microprocessor and offer presets out of the box. The Poseidon Z advertises complete customization all the way down to individual keys.



The Poseidon offers a powerful 32bit ARM chipset to control and process all your lighting and keystrokes. This provides the best possible performance for all the possible configurations and lighting effects.



Seeing the 32bit ARM chip we know this is where are the controlling happens , but also is where the memory is read from and where the profiles are stored.



The custom lighting effects of the Poseidon Z are controlled by the esports Tt software. It offers options to personalize, customize, and fine tune the keyboard to your liking. You can save up to 5 different profiles using the built-in memory which offer your saved settings to come with you on the go.



Advertised preset effects:
  • Wave
  • Arrow Flow
  • Ripple
  • Reactive
  • Fully Lighted
  • Pulse
  • Spectrum Running


The Tt esports certified switches are engineered to give a tactile response. They are developed and tested to give you the actuation accuracy over a lifetime of 50 million keystrokes. Tt claims it has the world's first 5-year warranty on a mechanical RGB keyboard offering the best key durability and reliability. They were designed for gamers in mind and specifically the brown switches provide a tactile response and no noisy clicking for midnight gaming.

The switch is layered with the best parts:



The top secure guard ensures you are protected against impact damage.



The switch type gives the best of both worlds. The Poseidon Z offer blue/brown switches for tactile feel with or without the noise.



Gold plated contact points for the best impact and to avoid corrosion. The RGB LED offers the 16.8 million colors using an advanced CPU controller. The Poseidon Z RGB offers a mirrored back plate beneath each switch giving you the best RGB lighting around. Every keycap is extra bright and is enhanced so your keyboard ahs the brightest LEDs.



Premium springs are used to improve actuation force and offer the brow 45g / blue 50 g of force.



The bottom secure guard helps to bottom out and is designed to protect against force impact and is also resistant to dust.



The body feels solid and also offers rubber pads at the bottom of the keyboard and each stand.



The USB cable length is more than sufficient for reaching your PC. There is no sleeving here, only rubber, but the cable surprisingly does not easily get tangled. The cable comes 1.8 meters in length. There is a channel to route your cable under the keyboard to also keep thing nice and neat. I actually appreciate no gimmicks here with gold plated USB connections. I have found no significant improvement over anything labeled as "gold" plated.



This keyboard also supports Macro recording for advanced configurations. There is a dedicated switch that allows you to record and assign quick Macro keys on-the-fly. In addition, you can reprogram 5 specific keys and disable the windows button. The disable Windows key is the button in the top right and really ahs a tactile mechanical feel as well when pressed. This can also be configured with each profile.

Testing



Testing mice and keyboards can be kind of difficult because they are parts that require one to interact with personally. There also isn't a ton of software to test these devices against. However, the Tt esports peripheral line has software that I will go over.

My test bench is as follows:
  • ViewSonic XG2703-GS Monitor
  • Motherboard- EVGA Z170 Classified K
  • CPU: Intel Core I7 6700K
  • Network Card- Netgear AC 1200 USB
  • Cooler- Enermax Liqmax II 240
  • Memory- Anarchy X 16GB DDR4 2800MHz
  • Video Card: Nvidia GTX 1060
  • Storage- PNY CS2210 480GB (Boot) / ADATA SU800 512GB / Seagate 3TB/ Zotac Sonix 480GB
  • Power Supply- Corsair RM650X / Sleeved CableMod red/black cables
  • OS: Windows 10 x64 Pro
  • Headphones- Creative H7
  • Peripherals - Thermaltake Tt esports Poseidon Z RGB (Brown Switch) gaming keyboard and Tt esports Ventus RGB gaming mouse
Software



You can download the software for your Poseidon Z keyboard right here. The software is full of features and offers the ultimate control over your product. You can individually assign Macro keys to any key and even change the RGB lighting on a per key basis. This allows for multiple configurations to match your PCs color scheme. There is even an instant shift system that assigns your shift key to assign profiles quickly.

One of the biggest hurdles with this software is the load times. It takes a long time about 15 seconds to open up and about even 20 seconds if you have OSD (On Screen Display) turned on. Even saving profiles takes about 8 seconds to save your configured settings. This isn't a product breaking but does make the software feel slow and unresponsive at times.

There are two modes for this keyboard. Gaming mode allows for you to configure and remap keys for different game circumstances and normal mode allows normal keyboard operation for typing or other basic uses. Gaming mode is what unlocks the key assignment options in your software.



The Macro key tab allows you to open the Macro key options. You can edit any Macro you can dream of here. You can design new Macros, import, and export, and set delays. This software feature is extremely useful and one of the biggest features to configuring a keyboard to a person's needs. Here you can set "Launch Prgm" which allows quick launching of apps or games.



The light option tab below Macro Key is what drives the settings for your RGB lighting. Here you can configure any number of effects, lighting colors, and modes. There is a lot of features here which is the software strongest point. I will be showing a video to help capture some of the effects and lighting this keyboard supports. Essentially you can configure any individual key or even just have basic effects like breathing, or an RGB color wave.

This video shows some out of the box lighting effects that the Poseidon Z RGB keyboard is capable of. It?s also showing some Battlefield 1 gameplay while using the keyboards macro functionality. You can also hear how loud the audible click is on these brown switches. The effect is rather surprising because they have that mechanical feel to them without the major noise problems of other switches.

Conclusion



This keyboard does have a huge amount of customization through the software and full RGB lighting. Some of its problems do stem from the software being slow to load profiles and settings but the keyboard itself is designed well. It feels heavy and has awesome Tt esports certified switches. The software and firmware can be updated over time to possibly fix some of the slowness felt through the software and the keyboard does offer macro switching even without the software. I would say though the software is necessary for at least storing your settings and profiles before you can cast is aside. There is no easy way to change the RGB lighting from the keyboard itself but does offer keys to dim or turn off lighting.

This keyboard offers some of the best mechanical switches I have seen in a keyboard. The RGB lighting is bright, consistent, and fully configurable. Even though the software feels slow at times the configuration options make up for that. You can save up to 5 profiles and configure everything, including individual keys. I highly recommend this keyboard for any gamer looking for a mechanical keyboard with RGB lighting and wants options for configuring Macros. The Poseidon Z RGB gaming keyboard comes with either mechanical blue switches or brown. The brown version of this keyboard can be bought for $89.00 on Amazon(?Here).

ProsCons
mechanical brown switches / RGB lightingSoftware

Ratings
Overall4
 
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