One of my all time favorite brands is Metadot’s Das Keyboard. They typically don’t include all the bells and whistles, but they are built so well. But what if a Das Keyboard had all the current extras?
This is a part of the continuing series of TestyTim.com reviews on mechanical keyboards. You can read more, including a summary of what makes mechanical keyboards notable in general, in the review series overview.
Last week, I reviewed the Satechi SM3. It picks up many of the typing focused cues that have earned Das Keyboard my admiration over the years. In some ways, it feels more like what I’d expect from Metadot than the keyboard I am looking at today — the DeltaForce 65 — does.
You see, the DeltaForce comes in camo. Seriously.
After years of Das Keyboards holding to Henry Ford’s motto, “You can have any color, as long as it’s black,” this board goes to the other extreme. It’s the wildest board I’ve ever purchased. (Das Keyboards was kind enough to send me a review unit to try, but I had also participated in the Kickstarter campaign last year and received my own board.)
For those who prefer typing-oriented boards over gamer models, should the DeltaForce even show up on your radar? It did mine for a simple reason: my appreciation for Das Keyboard and all that the DeltaForce adds to their recipe outside of the colorway.
The board’s appearance does have its charm and for some settings, it might be perfect. It comes in four different camo themes. I personally picked the “Jungle Basecamp,” which fit best with some of the plants and other decor in my office.
Yes, the board is bright. If you work in a reserved office, you might need to join me in awaiting the day Das Keyboard fuses DeltaForce’s innards with the company’s traditional industrial design. But, if you can have a less tame board on your desk, DeltaForce is a tech spec force to be reckoned with.
The DeltaForce embraces the defining specs of a modern, premium mechanical keyboard. It is fully programmable with the increasingly standard bearer QMK firmware and accompanying VIA software to make it easy to reassign keys, adjust its lighting and so forth.
If you want to reassign what a key does, it is simple to do so and requires no driver or helper app installation on your computer. You can do a lot of sophisticated tweaks or, perhaps, you just want one or two keys to behave in a way idiosyncratic to your workflow. No problem.
Das Keyboards traditionally came in separate Mac and PC varieties, which presented a problem if you wanted to use it with both platforms. A PC Das Keyboard works fine on a Mac (and vice versa), but you need to manually tweak the computer’s settings to rearrange the key layout. Thanks to QMK, the DeltaForce is platform agnostic and can be easily made to work in the way most natural to your primary platform. (There’s still no quick toggle if you use both regularly, sadly, but this is still an improvement.)
I mentioned lighting and, yes, this keyboard has fully customizable RGB lights. They are bright and offer beautifully vivid color. You can easily make it even flashier than it comes out of the box should you wish or tone it down with, say, a nice, peaceful white or maybe a green that complements the camo (a sentence I never thought I’d write about a keyboard).
The LEDs are “south-facing” (below the switch) which has become preferred in recent times for the way it looks and interacts with keycaps.
This is also Das Keyboard’s entry point into the world of detachable cables. There are lots of reasons to prefer a keyboard with a removable cable: practical reasons (getting the right length or connector type), aesthetics (a different kind of cable) or disaster striking (a pet or errant keyboard drawer decapitating the original). It might seem like a small thing, but I’m glad Das Keyboard has finally made the jump.
One point to nag here: I love the addition of the detachable USB cable, but I’m still waiting to see Metadot’s first wireless board. Like other Das Keyboards, this one is wired-only. That’s not awful — and is preferable for gamers who want the fastest key response — but many of us have become accustomed to the pleasant decluttering Bluetooth keyboards permit. This board with a Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz radio added would be fantastic.
I’ll get more into the keycaps below, but these are PBT, which provide the best wear resistance and sport dye-sublimated legends, which fuses the legends’ ink to the underlying keycap so they won’t wear off.
Finally, the DeltaForce has hot swappable switches. This board is constructed to last and being able to replace switches ensures one switch meeting an untimely death doesn’t sink the whole well-crafted ship.
I usually start with typing experience. I only moved it down in this case because the DeltaForce’s adoption of creature comforts is what makes it stand out most from its siblings.
Das Keyboards feel like interacting with the interior of a luxury car versus more economy minded vehicles. Both may be functional, but precise tuning, premium materials and carefully thought out combinations do more than the parts themselves might hint at. This remains true with the DeltaForce.
Swapping switches yourself aside, if you get the DeltaForce, you’re going to get a red switched board. Red switches in general give a smooth sensation — as opposed to a notable click or resistance — when being pressed and these Gateron Reds are “pre-lubed” to make the keys slide even more smoothly.
I long resisted red switches in favor of intentionally clicky ones. For touch typing at high speed, clicky switches have the advantage of alerting you almost subconsciously that you’ve pressed far enough before you bottom out and jolt your fingers. That said, I’ve now tried several boards combining red switches with a cushioning gasket mount and they can be quite a joy to type on.
The DeltaForce’s keycaps aren’t just camo colored, they are thick PBT keycaps in camo color. The thick keys paired with a solid aluminum case and the gasket mount within provides a confident, comfortable feeling when typing. Acoustically, the keyboard emits a satisfying clackiness as the PBT caps are struck and encounter the underlying board. It’s almost like the keys are satisfyingly tap dancing.
The board features multiple layers of soundproofing and it does create a quiet typing environment. It’s louder than an Apple laptop scissor-switched keyboard, but much quieter than most mechanical boards.
I’ve tested both Epomaker and Keychron Pro-series boards with similar gasket designs and metal structures, but the DeltaForce feels more solid to my fingers. Its most obvious comparison in my mind is its own kin, such as the Das Keyboard Professional 6. The impressive, albeit more plasticky, Vortex Model M SSK also comes to mind.
A signature of Das Keyboard, the DeltaForce offers a volume knob as opposed to relying on several multimedia keys to adjust sound. This particular knob has a good, robust weight to it and a tactile click to each turn — I probably shouldn’t admit how many times I fiddled with it just because it has such a satisfying quality to turning it.
Everything exudes refinement and strong precision. Ignore the gamer-oriented coloring for a moment. This is a precision typing tool, a fine pen to most keyboards’ disposable ballpoint. It just happens to be a camo colored fine pen.
Part of enjoying a typing experience is having it fit conveniently on your workspace — this board’s compact, 65-key layout checks off that box perfectly for me. Some compact boards skip the cursor arrow keys, which is a non-starter for serious writing and editing, but this one has them in the inverted-T arrangement of most laptops.
Das Keyboard has traditionally stuck to full sized layouts, which fit poorly on my desk. Having the same quality with the smaller footprint, eschewing a numpad, is a real treat for anyone satisfied with the key arrangement of most laptops (sorry, accountants).
Those reading my reviews know I regularly place Das Keyboards as benchmarks against other keyboards I review. They’re always fantastically constructed of excellent materials and delightful to write with.
By most marks, the DeltaForce feels like a step forward for Das Keyboard. The casing feels even more robust. The keycaps are fantastic. The customizability is a huge step forward.
Almost as if Das Keyboard is holding back from making the perfect board intentionally, there are always a few things missing. Wireless functionality feels like the glaring one here and for keyboards that have often been targeted to professional writers and programmers, the lack of a staid color scheme option feels odd.
But, I always say it and I’ll say it again: I love how it feels to type on a Das Keyboard. From a pure typing point of view, Unicomp’s Model M and Matias’s Tactile Pro, each a variant of legendary keyboards of old, may have a slight edge. But few boards are even worthy of comparison to those and Metadot continues to make ones that come close while sporting superior fit and finish.
Such quality doesn’t come cheap, but neither is it priced astronomically above its peers. The DeltaForce 65 slots in at a comparatively reasonable $199. As we look toward Christmas, Metadot is even running a 15% off sale in its store, which knocks the price down to $169.15.
I always smile when I think about pulling out a Das Keyboard and typing on it. The DeltaForce is no exception.
Packed with features, any serious typist who likes — or can tolerate — its aesthetic choices will find it a remarkable value. As for me, the wild camo grew on me the more I used it, in no small part because it is such a delight to use. (Metadot Das Keyboard DeltaForce 65; $199 MSRP, on sale for $169.15, daskeyboard.com). 
Timothy R. Butler is Editor-in-Chief of Open for Business. He also serves as a pastor at Little Hills Church and FaithTree Christian Fellowship.
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