Tesoro Gram Spectrum Mechanical Keyboard Review - Rerez

I've been playing PC games for a really long time and back in the old days when you used to use DOS computers they came with these really big mechanical keyboards that were really awesome. I love the feel of them. I love the way that you could play games with them in a really fast and interactive way. While we kind of lost that as years went on, we got more digital keyboards and stuff like that, for the past couple of years a lot of companies have been making a lot more mechanical keyboards and gaming keyboards. And all these fun little things to make gaming a lot better on PCs. Now lately what I've been using is a Logitech G510. This keyboard is a really neat one. It's got a screen on it, a volume rocker dial and a whole bunch of specific keys for macros. But unfortunately this sucker costs a lot of money and I always assumed that anything that was cheaper than this would be a lot worse. Well I was wrong. We just got a keyboard sent in to us from Tesoro. It's called the Gram Spectrum and it's a lot cheaper than my current keyboard and it's also a lot better. Now despite its smaller size the Gram Spectrum actually feels like a heavier keyboard which for some people might be a turn-off but for me I kind of like it. A heavier keyboard means it lays on your desk and it doesn't shift around or move when you're really into some kind of gaming session. Plus it's got rubberized feet on the back that actually does hold itself down pretty well.

What really sets this keyboard apart from the other one is that the G510 does light up but the Gram Spectrum lights up like a rainbow. Seriously this keyboard has its own RGB lighting set up behind every single key so that means every key can light up its own specific color. You can set it up to have any specific kind of layout that you want. Just light up the WASD keys and everything else is bright white or whatever and you can do all of that kind of stuff with its custom built-in program that it has. It's kind of cool but it might be frivolous for you if you don't really care about the lighting situation. Now sure there's going to be a lot of gamers out there that really love the lighting effects that this keyboard provides and believe me they look really cool but personally I don't care. The keyboard can light up anyway it wants but if it doesn't operate as a good keyboard what's the point? In fact for some people out there, a little bit myself, we don't really like the keyboard lighting up so bright while we're playing games on the computer because if you have a reflective monitor the lights actually reflect and bounce off the monitor. So that can kind of be a negative. But if you want you can turn off the lighting effects altogether and I guess that's something people can do if they really want. And I will say this too if you really do want these lighting setups to do something different like program it to reflect how much health you have in a game that's cool but I really haven't played a video game that doesn't tell you how much health you have when you're actually playing the game. So you know on-screen prompts tell you what's going on I don't need the keyboard to tell me anything which was a big problem with my Logitech G510 because it had that screen on it that told me what was going on whenever I was playing a game but I never looked at it because I was playing a video game. So you know that's a thing.

Most expensive gaming keyboards and media keyboards offer unique keys outside of the original layout of the keyboard and by that I mean like play buttons and pause buttons, volume rockers and in some instances unique macro keys that can't be set up for anything other than macros you set them up for. I find those features cool and this keyboard does have the ability to record macros but has to record them to original keys on the keyboard itself. So you can basically hold function and then S and then it'll do some kind of recording you did. And it does have play and pause buttons and all that stuff but they are interfaced with a function key with one of the F keys at the very top. I mean guys this is not a cheap keyboard and it does have those functions but I really just prefer it didn't have the need to use a function key to access them. I guess you can get used to it over time but personally I'm not a fan of that. So with all those criticisms out of the way what makes this keyboard so good? Well to begin with all the keys are this low profile thing. They're not really flat, they're not really big, they’re somewhere in between which is really good because you can roll your finger from one key to another easily without having any kind of hiccup or cut on the side of a key or something like that. Something else I really like is the travel distance of the keys is really short but still long enough to make you feel like you're pushing the key down properly. Then on top of all of that it uses cherry-red MX switches which are very responsive mechanical switches that have a good feel when you're typing things. They also have a great little sound which I'm a big fan of. Plus this has possibly one of the best keyboard key setups I've ever used in any keyboard in my entire life. With every keyboard I've ever used whenever I push the space bar down on a specific section of the key the space bar never went down all the way. It would get caught on the mechanics itself and in some cases it just would feel squishy and not responsive. But it didn't matter where I pushed the keyboard keys on this at all every single time I pushed the space bar, anywhere on the space bar itself, the entire key went down flat. And I know that seems like kind of a small feature but when you're playing as many games as I do you start to notice when you don't jump on time because the key didn't register your push.

No matter what game I played no matter how hard I hit this keyboard it constantly responded accurately every single time. That's what a keyboard like this should do. Look it does all those RGB lighting features and it has all that basic stuff like that but this keyboard at the end of the day is a solid keyboard and that's what you should be getting it for. You like the lights that's great but this thing here works as a good keyboard first and foremost and if that's the kind of stuff you're looking for in a gaming keyboard well I don't really know anything else at this price range that works this well. Sure you can get a G510 or one of those keyboards from Logitech but they seem to be really expensive nowadays and I don't know a lot of the features on them just seem frivolous. And although this does have a couple of features that are just kind of pointless like the lights but the keyboard itself does work just that well. If I can find a keyboard in the future that works as well as this one for a cheaper price I'll let you know. But until then the Tesoro Gram Spectrum is possibly one of the best game keyboards you could get.

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