Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum Keyboard Review: Fun Fury of Fancy Fingering

Experience and Final Thoughts

Just because the Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum has less features than the Tesoro Lobera Spectrum, does not mean it is any less fun. In fact, the Excalibur bears many of the same features that its more expensive sibling has in a more traditional form factor so it does not look out of place inside an office but it is ready for a game at a moment’s notice. The use of side-by-side legends makes sense and is as should be considering the LED placement on the switch. A fact that seems to be lost on many LED keyboard manufacturers for reasons unknown. The Windows key, although able to be disabled in Game mode, is still present so the Excalibur’s layout is not a hindrance for normal day-to-day use.  The functions are accessed with the secondary Fn key placed where the right-side Windows key normally is. On other keyboards, this normally means that users will have to use two hands to press short cuts but most of the secondary Fn functions are actually positioned within range of the Fn key including the 6-KRO/NKRO and game mode toggle on the INS/HOME/PGUP 6-key cluster.

All buttons except for the FN key and Windows key can be remapped or assigned a macro across five profiles so the Tesoro Excalibur is just as versatile as other keyboards with extra buttons. The only limitation is the user’s creativity and willingness to try out a layout of their choosing. The software, although helpful and at times essential, especially with detailed macro use, is probably the weakest feature however. There are simply large areas used for fancy, instead of functional design, resulting in small, almost unreadable font for the macro settings. What Tesoro could do however is to offer alternative skins for users who wish for a more functional software, maybe on a future update. For now, users will have to settle using a magnifying glass or prescription reading glasses to make full use of the macro setting assignment.

What the Tesoro Excalibur shines at the most is of course the LED function which can be changed per-key via manual RGB inputs. If the preset RGB number results don’t look quite like the color it seems on the LED, I would suggest looking for actual RGB values online and manually placing them as monitors tend to display colors differently, especially since many users do not have properly calibrated monitors. The LEDs do indeed show remarkable range of adjustability and consistency. The white plate underneath the keycaps actually help the light bleeding from the sides turn into a more fluid looking color, especially on animated color presets.

As for the price, the Kailh linear red switch version is available for only $99 on Amazon while the more popular Kailh brown and blues are at $119, $30 less than the Tesoro Lobera Spectrum which has pass-through USB ports and pass-through audio ports with reactive audio LED function. Not a bad trade off for users who could live without those features, especially considering the Tesoro Excalibur retains the (almost) any-key remapping and macro recording as well as the rest of the LED features.