Thermaltake Esports Challenger Pro keyboard

HOW FAR CAN YOU GO in improving a keyboard? Enahncing the tactile feedback from the keys or overall typing comfort come to mind. After all, the old IBM model M keyboard is legendary and its early keyboards still remain noteworthy in this respect. But keyboard 'intelligence' as in customisation, local processing and memory for script keys? This is not often seen.

The gaming market does seem receptive to highly customisable keyboards as there are direct benefits from having a keyboard that can allocate a variety of complex macro functions to specific keys in order to speed up game control and navigation. On top of that, enhanced durability - especially for cursors and other keys commonly used in games - and a high typematic rate for speed are highly desirable.

Thermaltake's new subsidiary Tt Esports focuses on high-end gaming-oriented peripherals, and its latest product seems to adhere to this. Here we have a look at its Challenger Pro high-end keyboard.

The black-and-red USB 2.0 keyboard is slightly, just slightly, larger than a typical standard PS/2 keyboard, with the extra space on the left and right allocated for ten extra fully-programmable function keys (T1 through T10). It also has 64KB of internal RAM available for detailed macro function programming on these keys, including different profiles for various games or programs. The top row contains two small fan positions to, guess what, cool overheated gamers' hands when they play, along with a few extra keys for media player functionality. There are also two extra USB out ports for additional peripherals.

The middle row A,S,D and F keys (also often used in games) are highlighted in red, and there is a red-hued back illumination for the keyboard for night time gaming. Just like the key function programming, the illumination level is also customisable through the Esports GUI utility provided. I found it useful when leaving a system on for benchmarking at night while having to occasionally press keys to continue to the next benchmark.

We ran the keyboard on a mid level gaming system here, with an Intel Core i7-870 chip on an Asus Maximus III Gene mainboard. A Gigabyte laser mouse was also attached. In a typical high typing rate game like Warcraft, the extra typing speed was beneficial, but the key point I found was that Tt Esports managed to find a good compromise between key 'depth' and quick response times, which is hard to achieve if the key travels too deeply. So, the keyboard was comfortable both for normal typing and for high-speed gaming.

In Short
The Tt Esports Challenger Pro keyboard is quite an interesting product for what's an otherwise boring but necessary input device. Its features can help both gamers and quite a few regular users to increase their productivity, if 'productivity' is word we can use when talking about gaming. Remember that, after all, you might have all the GHz from your CPU and gigabytes of RAM, but what you actually interact with directly when using the PC are the monitor, keyboard and mouse. And spending upwards of $50 on a keyboard isn't that much when you have a £2,500 total system cost, for example. µ

The Good
Extra features, good typing comfort, response speed.

The Bad
It is big.

The Ugly
Nothing.

Bartender's Score
8/10