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We have seen a fair few keyboards from Cooler Master over the last year or so, and today the line-up is completed with the arrival of the MasterKeys S and MasterKeys L. Given these are not ‘MasterKeys Pro' boards, they are essentially a step-down from the Pro White LED series. Incidentally, they don't feature any kind of backlight – RGB or single-colour – and that is interesting given that RGB is everywhere these days. So, just how good are these keyboards?
The Cooler Master MasterKeys S and MasterKeys L are unashamedly simple, both in-terms of appearance and features. Clearly, these boards are aimed at those who just want a quality keyboard for typing or gaming without the extra frills and gimmicky features that many competitors may charge you extra for.
With that in-mind, the MasterKeys S has an MSRP of £79.99 while the bigger L model has an MSRP of £89.99. Is this good value, and should you buy one of these boards? Let's find out.
MasterKeys S Specification
- Material: Plastic / Metal
- Colour: Black
- LED Colour: N/A
- Polling Rate: 1000 Hz
- Repeat Rate: 1x / 2x / 4x / 8x
- Response Rate: 1ms
- MCU: 32bit ARM Cortex M0
- On board Memory: 512KB
- On-the-fly system: Macro, Repeat Rate, Win Lk
- Smart cable manager: 180 degree cable routing grooves
- Wrist rest: N/A
- Cable: 1.5m long, USB 2.0 detachable with Micro-USB
- Product Dimensions: 356 * 135 * 33 mm
- Product Weight: (without cable) 970 g
MasterKeys L Specification
- Material: Plastic / Metal
- Colour: Black
- LED Colour: N/A
- Polling Rate: 1000 Hz
- Repeat Rate: 1x / 2x / 4x / 8x
- Response Rate: 1ms
- MCU: 32bit ARM Cortex M0
- On board Memory: 512KB
- On-the-fly system: Macro, Repeat Rate, Win Lk
- Smart cable manager: N/A
- Wrist rest: N/A
- Cable: 1.5m long, USB 2.0 detachable with Micro-USB
- Product Dimensions: 440 * 137 * 28 mm
- Product Weight: (without cable) 1140 g
So is the judgment of 7 stars based solely on the price (which I agree, is way too much for what you get)? Because from what I now understand, they are perfect in what they are designed to to: no-nonsense solid mechanical keyboard. Particularly their brown switches makes them very interesting for people like my who primarily want a typing keyboard, but not annoy their office mates. In that case, less is a lot more.
Yes – if the price was right, these would score much higher. As it is, these are a tough sell considering the MasterKeys Pro equivalents can be found for the same or less money.