Cooler Master Masterkeys S
To me the quintessential vanilla mechanical keyboard is the Filco Majestouch TKL. Sturdy, clean design, no intrusive branding, no frills, no backlight, great performance, available in ISO and ANSI and in all Cherry MX fragrances. Unfortunately --it's painful to admit-- not even a Filco is free from defect, even more painful if you consider that it's a €150 keyboard.
When I received the review sample of the Masterkeys S I was expecting yet another flashy gaming keyboard; imagine my surprise when I opened the box and found a wonderfully barebone piece of hardware instead.
Exterior
The packaging is the classic environmental friendly CM cardboard case. Kudos to CM for building such low impact box for a "gaming" product.
The keyboard design is clean with no aggressive branding, actually with no branding at all if you exclude the --easily replaceable-- Windows keys that show the CM logo. The legends are also decently designed even though I spotted the same old CM alignment issues on some keys.
This time CM got rid of the omnipresent dirt-magnet rubber coating and they went for a more sober smooth plastic texture. I can't thank them enough for that. Another important update over the richer cousin, the Masterkeys Pro, is cable management: CM listened and it's finally possible to route the micro-USB cable in all directions thanks to three grooves on the bottom. Cable is braided and connectors are gold plated.
You rarely see decent quality OEM keycaps, but the Masterkeys surprisingly features 1.5mm thick PBT keycaps (yeah, including the spacebar). In the box you'll also find a bunch of spare red WASD keycaps, but they are so thin to the point of being semi-transparent. I thought the actual keycaps were as bad but as soon as I pulled a couple out I noticed some nicely crafted pieces of plastic. They are not the thickest, but they are good enough and they feel solid.
Unfortunately CM went with pad printing for the legends, making the use of PBT material rather meaningless. A real shame because the legends will soon wear off and you'll need to replace the keycaps anyway (PBT or not).
My suggestion to CM would be to offer a "ninja" version, with side printed legends or even better a dye-sublimated option, possibly black on black ala HHKB. If you want to go quality keycaps go all the way.
The stabilizers are Costar, like the big boys!
On the right you can spot 3 white LEDs to indicate caps/scroll/windows-lock. On my sample they are very bright but CM confirmed that the final version will have blander LEDs.
Interior
First thing you do when you get a new keyboard is of course opening it! So, screwdrive time!
Only one screw on the bottom with the "void warranty" sticker and everything else is snap-it-on. The keyboard is built with the classic Cooler Master three-layer design: the PCB and plate are laid over the bottom tray and the top frame is snapped into position to cover the interiors. In the inside the PCB is held by two very loose screws to the case and overall the design doesn't scream high quality. Indeed you'll find the same approach on the very similarly shaped Masterkeys Pro S, but strangely enough this Masterkeys S doesn't suffer the reverb and "ping sound" of the PRO version, so no complains here.
The PCB is also better than the PRO, they evidently changed factory. The solder points are nice and tidy and no sign of dirt and soldering residues.
The controller is favourably mounted on a daughter board just above the arrow cluster. I haven't checked but at fist sight it seems to have the same kind of connectors as Filco and other similarly shaped keyboards. The Masterkeys is not 100% customizable but the detachable controller makes it hacker-friendly and it shouldn't be too difficult to put a teensy inside.
The USB port is routed to the back with a small extension cable and it's very firmly tighten to the case.
And of course, thanks to some divine intervention, **no backlight**! The PCB seems specifically crafted for this keyboard with no sign of LED/resistor pads.
Features
My version hosts none other than Cherry MX Green. Bram from CM Europe knows me well by now and spoiled me with some nice clicky switches. If you are not in for crispy typing you can grab a Masterkeys in any of the classic original Cherry or the more exotic MX Silver. As far as I understand Red/Blue/Brown (no black) will be available everywhere while Green and Silver only through the official CM store, meaning: expect a higher price for those two.
The matrix is driven by a 32bit ARM Cortex M0 MCU, which is more powerful than my first computer and possibly used at it's 2% potential. Of course the polling rate is the fastest available just to ensure you never miss a strafe (but please remember the Cherry MX debouce bottleneck).
The Masterkeys S also supports macros, but it's the most useless macro support I've ever seen on a keyboard. Simply put: "Macro" on the TKL Masterkeys is just marketing blabbing. It's pathetic that CM shows macros as a key feature on this keyboard because there's basically no key you can assign a macro to. You can't assign a macro to the function layer, just the plain raw key. So unless you decide that you can write without some letter, you can't use this feature.
On the full size Masterkeys L instead you can at least assign them to the numpad, still you can't use the numpad anymore but at least you've got macros.
Also overall macro management, support, update, deletion is very basic if not painful.
On the bright side the keyboard supports the very nice Windows, Mac and Linux layouts. The first two simply alter the modifiers order, the mystic "Linux layout" actually swaps capslock with control. That is a very nice touch that should be available for all layouts. I'm not really sure why they call it "linux" but --as an Arch user-- I knew linux was cooler, so I'm not going to argue.
Interestingly the Masterkeys together with the beloved Qwerty also supports Dvorak and Workman (hear-hear) layouts. They can be swapped on the fly by pressing a keycombo (not from a dip switch), so it's very easy to switch from one to another.
Conclusions
The Masterkeys S is a solid vanilla tenkeyless keyboard for €99 that will be easily available all around the clock thanks to the aggressive Cooler Master distribution. It is also one of the best Cooler Master keyboards I've tried and the first to be completely ping-less.
It could easily be the go-to option when a newbie asks for a decently priced mechanical keyboard, if only because it will be easy to find anywhere and you wouldn't have to suggest some Chinese or Korean distributor.
Probably the Masterkeys S direct competitor is the Ducky One TKL (non-backlit version), which is also on the same price range. They both feature a minimal design and they are very close feature-wise. Of the two though the Ducky has a more mature firmware with decent macro management and even mouse emulation. It is true that the Masterkeys has PBT keycaps, but legends are still pad printed making it less tempting.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great product and it's clear the effort CM went through to make everything right, but the price is still too close to the alternatives to make it the de-facto king in the vanilla tenkeyless realm.
That being said, Cooler Master products tend to lower drastically in price over time, so my suggestion would be to wait a few months, if it hits €70-80, go for it without regrets.
Cooler Master, if you are listening: dye-sub the legends and offer a software to fully customize the layout!
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