Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum Keyboard Review: Fun Fury of Fancy Fingering

Layout and Feature Overview

The Tesoro Excalibur measures 450mm wide by 145mm long and is quite slim with a height of only 24mm. The shell is a two-piece design and both sides are made of ABS plastic. The layout is a standard 100% ANSI Windows layout with right-side Windows key replaced with the Fn secondary function key.

Four small rubber strips on the back hold the Excalibur in place on the desk and a pair of feet can be flipped out to the rear to increase the angle of incline for typing.

While the Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum is capable of RGB color options, the game mode button, caps lock and numlock only have a blue LED. Tesoro has also done well with the font positioning for the most part with the secondary shift functions of the buttons positioned at the top side by side with the main function so as to still have backlit illumination since the LED is located at the top of the switch.

The Game mode button LED and the live macro recording LED are both toggle buttons. When the Game mode button is engaged, the Windows shortcut key is automatically disabled. Live macro recording will record any input between the time it is first pressed and until it is pressed again. Other secondary functions are accessed by holding the Fn key and pressing the corresponding key. Profile switching is from F1 through F5, F6 is an all-key lock, F7 through F12 are multimedia controls. Fn+Insert is for toggling to 6-KRO (for optimal compatibility, useful for UEFI keyboard function). FN+Del is for enabling N-key rollover.

Using the Fn key with the arrow keys controls the illumination and LED preset functions. A video demo of the various lighting modes are shown below:

• Standard (solid color)
• Trigger (single key-press reactive)
• Ripple (full surround area key-press reactive)
• Firework (smaller surround area key-press reactive)
• Radiation (linear ripple key-press reactive)
• Breathing
• Rainbow Wave (multi-color RGB LED wave)
• Spectrum Colors (per key variable control, options available software)

CTRL and ALT keycaps are 1.5x the normal keycap while the spacebar is 6.25x. The switches are Kailh (Cherry MX clone) plate mounted with wire stabilizers. Tesoro offers the Excalibur Spectrum in three Kailh switch variants which are comparable to Cherry MX switches with blue and brown being tactile while the red is linear.

The USB cable is 1.55m long and is braided for protection. The Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum has both NKRO and standard USB 6KRO functionality. This is achieved with the use of multiple HID devices in Windows and without the use of a PS/2 adapter.

The Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum is opened from the back by removing 7 Phillips head screws. There are no screws underneath the label or the rubber soles so disassembly is fairly straightforward. The two pieces of ABS shell also snap together on the edges so users have to separate that manually after unscrewing. These two pieces can then be painted easily even without removing the keycaps.

The Tesoro Excalibur uses an NXP ARM Cortex-M0 LPC11U3X series processor for handling all the functions with a 512KB Macronix flash for storage. For driving the onboard RGB LED’s, there are three Macroblock MBI5042GP SSOP chips located at the rear PCB.