Tesoro Excalibur Review

The Tesoro Excalibur is sharpened with key features such as onboard memory to store macros and LED backlighting zones to help fight the competition.

Product on Review: Tesoro Excalibur
Manufacturer: Tesoro
Street Price: £70

Coming in at a relatively inexpensive price, you would be forgiven for thinking, ‘So, how did they manage that then?’. The answer lies in the switches. Opting to use the cheaper, Chinese made Kailh switches over the Cherry MX is likely the first indicator as to why you are looking at an illuminated mechanical keyboard at an affordable price. Though initially receiving bad reputation, the Kailh switches have reportedly improved and have recently been adopted for use in various well known products. The Excalibur comes in the choice of Kailh brown, blue and red which should cater for the majority of people.

Beyond a no frills design, the Excalibur also includes 512Kb of onboard memory for up to 200 macros or 2000 keystrokes that can be saved over 5 custom profiles, 5 Modes of LED backlighting (only available in blue) as well as various media keys and 6/NKRO.

Overview by Tesoro

About Excalibur
Tesoro Excalibur is an entry-level mechanical keyboard with a number of advanced capabilities like macros, built-in memory, game profiles, and adjustable LED backlighting with several backlighting schemes. The keyboard is available in three modifications with Kailh Blue, Brown and Red mechanical switches.

Excalibur is the first Tesoro keyboard to have a classic solid look. It can be used with a gaming station as well as on an office desk due to its straight solid lines. The adjustable blue backlighting makes Excalibur suitable for use during the daytime as well as at night.

Technical Specifications

Dimensions (mm): 450 x 145 x 24
Memory: 512KB
Profiles: 5
Macro keys: all
LED levels: 4
Key lifespan: 50 million keystrokes
Multimedia keys: 6
Connection: USB
Cable length: 1.55m
USB ports: no

Packaging & First Look

Lively packaging in familiar Tesoro colours

The packaging displays features of the product while keeping to the purple on black theme that though familiar to Tesoro will recognise. It may be slightly misleading as the backlight colour is blue and not purple, though this is marked on the edge of the box. Understandably we see an image of the legendary sword Excalibur which is part of the running Tesoro naming scheme.

Rear side of packaging

At the back we get some more information about the features supplimented by images, finished off with the multilingual technical specifications.

The Tesoro Excalibur

The Excalibur is a simple yet elegant design without any over the top excess of additional macro keys. Some may actually prefer the fact that this does away with that soft, rubberised plastic that plagues many PC peripherals of late.

Closer Look

The Numpad

The numpad keys 8 and 2 are used to select lighting mode in conjuction with the Fn key, and the Insert/Delete keys can toggle between full NKRO and 6KRO.

Media keys

As with other keyboards we see a selection of media fucntion keys paired with the F keys, these include mute, volume, play/pause and skip track, you can also use the function key to change to any of the 5 macro profiles on the fly when using the FN key with F8-F12.

Underside

Nothing exciting going on underneath except for the fold out stands and non-slip feet.

Backlit

Lighting Zone 1

Lighting Zone 2

There are 6 lighting modes including off. These are, 0. Off, 1. Full lit 50% brightness, 2. Full lit 100% brightness, 3. Breathing/ Dimming, 4. Zone 1, 5. Zone 2.

Software & Performance

Software

Once you have installed the software drivers, the Excalibur supports 6KRO and NKRO, which can be changed on the fly if you wish by using the Fn button in conjunction with either the insert or delete key. This is actually quite handy as 6KRO may be more useful for typists, limiting the amount of simultainious inputs can help to reduce typos and errors, while NKRO will be more useful to gamers.

By mashing the keyboard its apparent you can input more keys than you have fingers and toes.

There are 5 customisable profiles available for you to be able to assign macro keys through the software provided by Tesoro. You can assign each individual key a command, such as a recorded action that you can then adjust the timing of, or repeat string of commands again, launching applications as well as being able to disable desired keys. Though basic, and a little slower to use than other software drivers, it gets the job done. Be aware that it doesn’t scale too well with high resolution monitors however.

Attractive yet simple GUI

Performance

The keyboard has a fair amount of weight to it and feels sturdy and strong. The aesthetic is simple and would look great in most situations. Considering the price it is understandable that it is lacking in some features, though it’s a shame that there are no finishing touches like a USB pass through or even a braided cable that could really set this keyboard apart from the rest.

The version we are testing has Blue switches, AKA clicky switches, being used to the MX Cherry Blue, I couldn’t notice any real difference with the Kailh, except maybe a slightly different tone of click? Not that it matters, typing and gaming was great and didn’t encounter any issue at all. Though I personally prefer black or brown switches I find no real issue with using blue for gaming and the sound isn’t all that distracting, of course this will be a matter of what your preferences are. The LED backlighting is clear and bright and the zone lighting is pretty useful for gaming in the dark, especially if you use them in conjunction with the macros.

Conclusion

Using the word ‘lacking’ when considering the price of the Excalibur is a definite misnomer; especially because there is little this beast actually lacks! A solid performing mechanical keyboard that is backlit, available in various switch types and provides simple yet effective software to create powerful macros, is actually quite sweet.

However there are a few things that hold it back from gold, firstly is the basic package, there are things such as a wrist pads, replacement key caps, key cap remover, USB or audio pass through or even a sleek looking braided cable that could have completed this product nicely, helping it stand out that little bit more when compared to its competitors. Another consideration is towards the Kailh switches used instead of the MX Cherry, this could potentially sway some people to look elsewhere. Though from our experience with the Excalibur, the switches were not an issue.

The Tesoro Excalibur is a treat at this price point and gamers should consider this one seriously. Highly recommended!

Pros
+ Good build quality and minimalistic aesthetic
+ Available with Blue, Red and Brown switches
+ LED Backlit with lighting zones
+ Onboard memory for storing macros
+ Can toggle full NKRO and 6KRO
+ Price

Cons
– Only available in Blue LED
– No braided cable
– Basic package (No included extras)