Leopold FC660C first impression part 1

Leopold is one of the boutique keyboard makers in South Korea with a strong professional Starcraft player’s endorsement and following.  So, I decided to check out their 60% keyboard offering with Topre switch and see how I like it.  Long time readers know that I had a love and hate affair with Topre switches and I think I am finally a convert as a fan as long as the price is within a reasonable reach.  A new FC660C is on the lower two hundreds, which is pretty expansive if you ask me, but that’s the price of admission into the Topre kingdom.  Just how it is.  Sigh….

Aside from the expected sticker shock, this keyboard is rather unique in many ways.  The keyboard layout is definitely non-standard.  I appreciate the dedicated arrow keys, but many of the navigation keys requires Fn key to access.  So, it’s kind of choosing which one is more frequently used and which one is not and they depends on the user preference.  So, one may prefer one configuration while the other leans a different way.  Anyhow, I use the arrow keys quite a bit; so it makes sense for me.  I also use PgUp and PgDown quite a bit, but it needs the Fn to activate.  The Fn key is right next to the arrow keys so I am not going to freak out.  I probably wished that instead of Ins and Del, Leopold would use these keys for Page movement keys because I use those more than Insert and Delete.  However, for some games, these keys are more important.  So, I guess that’s why Leopold elect to put them in there rather than page moment keys.

So far so good.  This keyboard sounds more snappy and crispy to me when compared to the 87UW.  I am inclined to attribute that to the key caps as Leopold has their own cap design and make the keyboards themselves rather than contracts it out to Topre as before.  So, more to report later on.  Stay tuned!