Hey Guys. Sorry for the Delay, but here is my review: ( I edited out a few of the bits and the photos since I have it cross posted on a few other sites, so if it feels kinda jumpy, thats why )
Sorry for the Novel, and I'm not going to bother posting pics on here. You guys have all seen what it is.
Construction/Design.
I'm a huge CoolerMaster fan, and LOVE the QuickFire Rapid. ( I've owned 3 different ones, and a CM-XT ) Even as the QFR is a budget board, I never felt that it was entirely lacking in construction, but the novatouch completely blows it out of the water. By far, this is the most solid mass-produced commercial keyboard I've ever used.
The rubber coating on the case is something I've always liked, but with past CM keyboards the corners can become a bit worn after time. Though so far, this one has no worn out corners, so maybe the rubber formula has been improved ( rumor has it that CM revised their coatings when they introduced the CM-XT )
The only logo is on the bottom of the case, and on the back side, presenting a very clean, minimalist keyboard offering no gamer-y logo's, branding, or other nonsense.
This keyboard would fit in well at any office environment, or at the helm of a powerful gaming pc.
Ascetically, the keyboard is very pleasing, nice lines, and the only bit of flair on the back side, which is out of view from a typing position.
The keyboard uses mini usb instead of macro usb cables. while it stinks that I can't easily swap keyboards without having an extra cable plugged in, many people already have tons of these cables laying around for their phones. A really cool thing is its easy to get sleeved and colored cables off amazon for cheap and in all kinds of lengths, so that's a big bonus. Allegedly mini usb is supposed to be more durable for multiple connections, but I've yet to have any issues with any of my old keyboards that use macro. Though I kinda feel like with a keyboard of this price point and durability, that I really wish it was a hard-wired cable. Since I'm not allowed to open this one up, I cant say if it would be like the QuickFire Rapid, which was super easy to convert to a hard-wired cable if you wanted.
The keyboard is a little on the tall side, but even without a wrist rest its not uncomfortable to type on, but is a little noticeable. I personally prefer slimmer and lower keyboards, as to me, its much more comfortable and some users may find that for extended use, a wrist wrest may improve their comfort with the keyboard.
Keycaps, are well, crap. But that's okay! The Novatouch's selling feature is its Topre switches, but having mx style stems, so you can put your favorite aftermarket keycap set on it. And so I put a nice keycap set on the keyboard as soon as I got it. A nice set of Thick PBT cherry profile keycaps. I did notice the side to side play of the keys is about on par with a cherry switch. I don't really like that side to side wiggle, but its not noticeably bad, and the sliders feel pretty smooth.
Feel.
The feel of the keyboard to me is quite nice, and is completely different than anything you can find in a cherry switch. While they are rubber domes, they feel like the best kind of rubber domes. much smoother, and the collapsing of the domes is very pleasant. Before trying this keyboard, I've always had a soft spot for membrane keyboards, I like the feeling of the collapsing domes, but every keyboard just felt cheap, and this is the complete opposite. I still get the soft landing of the rubber domes, but the feel is very uniform and crisp. Unfortunately its just one of those things you really can't convey with words unless you get your hands on one.
Compared to cherry, the closest thing I can say is it feels kinda like an mx clear, but with a longer more round tactile bump. If you like clears and browns, I'm sure you'd love this keyboard.
The one thing I've notice about the key feel, is that it feels a bit slow to type on. Compared to my favorite switch ( mx blacks ) it feels a bit sluggish to type on. Kinda like typing on marshmallows, squishy and comfortable, but not very quick. Though during my week with it I got pretty comfortable with it and my typing speed sped back up a bit.
Noise.
There is a difference between cherry and topre sounds, while most cherry keyboards sound very plastic-y when typing on them, topre is often described as having a "thock" sound. Its a nice deep sound, not the high pitched taps of a cherry keyboard. but if you're thinking this is a quiet keyboard, its not. It's not mx blue loud, but still above a normal cheap keyboard.
While the alphas are quite tolerable, I did notice quite a bit of rattle on the stabilized keys, the mechanism used has a 'wire rattle' feel that reminds me quite a bit of cherry PCB mount stabilizer rattle. Oddly, the spacebar does not have that problem.
Though like all keyboards, keycaps will affect the sound. Thick PBT sound lovely, while thinner abs and pbt sets sound much more plastic-y.
I have noticed some keys have a different sound than others, at least on the unit I have, some keys sound a bit more rubbery than others, and have a weird 'suction' sound of the rubber domes popping back up. I'm not sure if its just a fault with this particular unit, or if something more common.
Office Use:
I am architectural designer for my 8-5, and during my week, I used the novatouch everyday at work. General office work and typing, this thing has been nice, though it's still a little louder than I would prefer in an office environment, and my boss always jokes that he knows if I'm working or not because my keyboards are so loud.
One design flaw with this keyboard, is that it does not have a Caps lock indicator. For my design work, you use all caps when typing, and when I see an email notification pop up and reply to it with all caps, it's a bit annoying. If I owned this keyboard myself, I would definitely look into seeing if there was any way I could wire in an LED for a caps lock notification.
I don't think most people use the caps lock as often as I do and may not be annoyed by it as much, but when you type in a password a few times and can't figure out why its wrong, then try pressing the caps lock and trying again, it can be a bit frustrating.
Gaming.
Typically, I'm a FPS gamer, and while the slow feeling of the keys I mentioned above did not hamper my FPS playing, I can say that during a much faster paced game such as DOTA/LOL, SC2, etc, that the slow keys may get to you a little bit.
I don't generally believe that there is such thing as a "gaming switch" but for serious gaming, I would much prefer to play on cherry blacks than the novatouch.
Note: The keyboard is OSX friendly, and works just fine on OSX and in BIOS ( both things are important to me )
The keyboard also has full USB n-key roll over, so thats is a nice feature to have.
Conclusion.
Its a great keyboard, and there are very few things I don't like about it. Mainly the stabilized key rattle, and the lack of a Caps lock indicator LED. The feel is good, its a comfortable keyboard, the build is a 10/10 but would I buy one?
I can't say for sure.
The MSRP of $200, plus you'll want to replace the keycaps as soon as you can, easily pushes the cost of this keyboard into the $250+ range ( which at that point you could buy a HHKB ), and I'm not sure if thats a cost I can justify.
There are other cheaper 'electro captivate' keyboards on the market that are a bit cheaper, and come with much better stock keycaps. While I don't know the quality of those, the lower price makes them seem a bit more appealing to me.
I'm a bit conflicted, I've been wanting to get a new TKL lately, but I think I may be leaning towards a cherry keyboard and picking up alum. case for it, and coming out with something a bit more unique and custom for about the same price.
It's a really fun keyboard to type on, but I'm not sure if it's $250 worth of fun.
I love my 60% keyboards, and love my linear cherry switches, But I feel like if I bought my own novatouch, I wouldn't use it all that much, considering I already have more keyboards than I would need, and would continue to use my main keyboard, while all the others sat on my shelf, and I feel like the novatouch would join them on the shelf. Though, if I didn't already have a stack of keyboards, I would definitely pick one up, strip the body down, and paint it up like I have with all my other CM keyboards.
Thanks to Cap'n and everyone else who helped the tour go smoothly.
