![]() The rear pair can be turned clockwise until they reach the same 1-inch height as the front ones, or turned counter-clockwise to provide a boost of up to four-tenths of an inch… The Retro Classic has four large, rubber-padded, pillar-style feet, which supply excellent anti-friction… It's a minor point, but we found the LEDs more conspicuous on the Azio than on most other, similar implementations. Instead of the usual pinpoint LED indicators for Caps Lock, Num Lock, Scroll Lock, and Win Lock, the Retro Classic has fairly large and bright LEDs, which bear a passing resemblance (deliberate or otherwise) to Art Deco light globes. But on the Azio, the backlighting is perfectly even, and the symbols are easy to see. As a result, on some keyboards it's all but impossible to read shifted symbols on keycaps. Then, the top halves of keys were better lit than the bottom halves, which led some companies to invert symbol placement. In our experience, you can't do the same for recessed keys.Īnother point Azio gets right is the placement of unshifted key symbols below shifted ones (2 below for example), which was the traditional arrangement on typewriters and computer keyboards for more than 50 years until backlighting arrived. ![]() A can of compressed air can deal with debris that lands on top of a frame. By contrast, keys that sit above the frame have much smaller openings underneath for dust, grime, water, or beef stroganoff to get caught in. The far-more-serious disadvantage is that anything small that accidentally drops on the keyboard tends to get stuck inside, possibly forever. The advantage to keys recessed in a frame is that light pools nicely around them. Here's a view from a different angle of the Artisan keyboard… Check out the Onyx version (black leather with black chromed frame, resembling the Ncore Retro in style) to get a sense of this… One of the things Azio does right is set the keys above the frame, rather than recess them into it. (Backlighting is also doubled up, something we'll cover in our next section.) There are no dedicated media keys, which we would have expected in a mechanical keyboard at this price, but at least the function keys for media commands are sensibly arranged together, from F5 through F11-unlike the Razer Cynosa Chroma, which for some reason utilizes F1 through F3 and F5 through F7… Fn+F1, for example, opens your Web browser, and Fn+ F3 your email client. The lack of additional keys, however, means that the Retro Classic's function keys work double shifts in tandem with the Fn key on the bottom row. It's not the heaviest we've ever tested, but it's one of the heavier standard QWERTY keyboards without a wrist rest or expanded real estate to hold additional keys. The copper detail is actually part of the full frame, as you can see here in the Elwood (walnut wood with gunmetal frame) version…Īll that metal contributes both to the unit's sturdiness, and to its weight of 3.8 pounds. Overall, the Retro Classic is a handsome keyboard, no doubt about that, but its beauty isn't just skin deep, with a bit of copper detail skimming the top edge. ![]() This is the Posh (white leather with copper frame) version… It's even got a hex-bolted manufacturer's logo plaque, if that sustains your whimsical fancy. However, Azio's take includes a plate covered with leather, and a frame made of zinc aluminum alloy plated for a matte copper finish, for a lush, tactile feel on each key. The keyboard is designed with white lettering on black, circular keys. (Opens in a new window) Read Our SteelSeries Apex M750 Review However, you can now choose from several antique-styled, 1940s Remington typewriter-esque keyboards, including the Nanoxia Ncore Retro Alu and the Qwerkywriter S (Opens in a new window) (the latter, with its working knobs and return lever, may provide the most visually faithful reproduction of a period typewriter yet despite its heart-attack price of $399.) In our view, the most luxurious (and luxuriously priced at $189.99) riff on this idea to date is the Azio Retro Classic mechanical keyboard that's the subject of today's review. What's surprising is that this retro fad took so long to show up in the mechanical keyboard market. Wireless speakers and digital cameras are two such markets where we've seen this trend. But some tech companies have occasionally introduced gadgets with contrary, nostalgic designs that look backward to the past instead of forward. Look at a gaming laptop sometime if you don't believe us. When it comes to product design in the tech world, most devices have a decidedly sleek, modern quality that, even now, conveys a sense of the future.
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