Das Keyboard 4 Professional - First Thoughts

Click, click, click, the brilliant sound of Cherry MX blue switches in a Das Keyboard. I received my Das Keyboard 4 Profressional earlier today. I was pretty excited about it, waiting for the van man to deliver the goodness. A bit of history of my keyboards.

A couple of years ago I bought a Razer Anansi keyboard, my previous keyboard being an awful generic thing. The Anansi, I had bought as I wanted to see if the Razer keyboards were any good, something that lived up to the hype that Razer and reviewists gave it. All in all, I can honestly say that the Razer peripherals of that generation were not that great. I had many issues with my keyboard, something that Razer would have replaced after speaking with their technical support but I had to prove a point with the support that the keyboard and the software was broken. I had also bought a Razer Naga Molten Special Edition at the same time as the Razer keyboard. It was a good mouse, it worked well but was too small for myself. All in all my experience with Razer products was mixed but ultimately it was something I wanted to avoid in the future. Razer is not worth the time, effort and money in my opinion.

Cherry MX blue switches

I really do like the blue switches from Cherry, they are nice and light and good for typing, as a first thought. The switch is very clicky, a sound which I love to hear, especially when the keys are being pressed quickly. If you’re needing the same switch but with less noise, the brown switch from Cherry is a good alternative from what I understand (I’ve not used a keyboard with just Cherry MX Browns). There’s not much more to say about the switches, they’re great and allow you to type well in a nutshell. There are other reviews out there that go deeper in depth.

The keyboard itself

After watching reviews by Banacules Nerdgasm and Unbox Therapy on YouTube (mainly) I decided to get the Das Keyboard 4 Professional. Before buying the Das Keyboard I had briefly used the same keyboard but it was the ultimate version. After watching the reviews and looking for alternatives, I found myself wanting a Das keyboard. I was a little annoyed by Das as I wanted a keyboard that was shorter for home use, a tenkeyless keyboard would have been great for home use as I don’t use the numpad that often. After doing some research into the tenkeyless offering from Das, the 4C version, I noticed that it came with mechanical key switches from another brand, ones from Greentech I believe. This wasn’t something that I wasn’t willing to dive into, especially with this being my first mechanical keyboard. The majority of reviews out there for mechanical keyboards use Cherry switches of some kind and I wasn’t willing to spend money on a keyboard that I might have been disappointed with slightly. I can honestly say though that I have experienced Cherry switches so my next mechanical keyboard may be of a different brand. How different can they be?

Enough of the switch brand complaints, back to the keyboard. Both reviews gave a good look at the keyboard. But honestly, until you’ve seen the keyboard in person it doesn’t look the same. It looks so much better in person. This keyboard looks very refined, Das learning from their previous iteration of the keyboard. Even the font style on the keys is modern, a nice look and adds to the overall aethetic quality of the keyboard. The media controls in the top right part of the keyboard is very well placed and built in. I like the “over-sized” volume knob that they have implemented. It is something that is easily controlable and slightly clicks when rotating it. One thing that I was surprised at is the media controls themselves as I am able to control music being played in my browser from Google Music. This probably has something to do with how Google Music plays on Windows 8.1, well, Windows in general, but still, I am glad it works as I now have something to control Google Music with, without actually being on the Google Music tab itself.

The hub is a great addition allowing to plug any USB device into it. For me I have my mouse plugged into it directly, leaving one USB slot for any other USB device. Since I have access to three USB sockets on my case I may put a USB bluetooth device in the hub to enable some bluetooth capability on my PC. The USB cable on the keyboard is USB3 and the hub is USB3 also. Of course, you won’t get full transfer speeds with the hub if there are two USBs in use at once but it’s more than useful than having USB1.1 or a USB2.0 hub.

My only gripe is the left rubber footpad is not gripping onto my desk well; the right one is gripping fine. This is with the ruler attached to the back of the keyboard. When I take the ruler off the keyboard to make it not raised the rubber feet are fine. It’s a little odd but I think that my desk might not be completely flat. Either way the keyboard is not moving when typing on it. Unless you were really heavy handed to the point of moving the keyboard in a direction you won’t have any issues in this department.

Overall, the keyboard is something that I love, a great buy and I would recommend it to anyone, especially those that have not tried mechanical before.