Performance

The Das Keyboard 5Q supports N-key rollover USB out of the box, which tested successfully using Aqua's test. Switch Hitter confirmed no chatter with these keys either.


When first powered on, the LEDs on the keyboard light up really bright before turning things down. This ends up being a teaser for enhanced brightness mode, for which there was no manual control support at the time of testing. This is a let down and a half since one of the selling points for the Gamma Zulu switches is a much brighter backlighting effect. As it is, the keyboard with the stock ABS keycaps is no brighter than the average RGB mechanical keyboard of 2018. There is an optional translucent keycap set available by the company that does make things brighter by allowing light through the sides as well, but this is also possible with other such keyboards. Color accuracy is on point here, however, with one of the truest-to-color whites on an RGB keyboard I have ever seen. There is also hardly any light bleed despite the floating keycaps, and the side lighting works well in action, too.

Here are some of the dynamic lighting effects demonstrated, making full use of the hardware and software alike. There is not as much control here in the driver or through the onboard buttons as with other competitors who have had RGB-backlit keyboards for years already, but I will note that the RGB lighting here can disrupt the cloud-notification feature, so perhaps you may not want to have dynamic effects on for long either.

This cloud connectivity is by far the biggest feature of the Das Keyboard 5Q, and it works.. better than it used to. I was actually aware of this product long before I was contacted by Das Keyboard for a review, having known of the Kickstarter campaign from yesteryear. Comments by backers on the crowdfunding website, as well as online communities elsewhere, paint a negative picture of how poorly optimized the driver was and how often things did not work as they were supposed to. All I can say is that this functionality is far better off now, at the time of retail release, with things working as expected. There are delays in getting notifications or having commands executed, and sometimes these can be over a minute long or still fail altogether (I had ~4–5 such fail states over 70+ successes, for what it is worth), but there are other variables involved, so I can't fault the keyboard or the driver necessarily. There was one point where I got frustrated enough to pull out the smartphone app associated with my smart lights to turn them off, so things definitely are not perfect, but with the ever-growing applet base and continuous driver development, this is not a deal breaker anymore.


The Das Keyboard 5Q only comes with their Gamma Zulu switches at this time, which are manufactured by Omron to Das Keyboard's design using exclusive tooling. There are definite similarities to the other Omron mechanical keyboard switches, and yet subtle differences at the same time to where this is not a rebrand of another switch. If you have tried out one such switch before, then you already know whether you will like typing on these or not. There is more information available about these switches here, including an interactive cutout, and note that this is a medium force tactile switch that has a rated 1.5 mm actuation distance and 3.5 mm of total travel distance. They are rated for 100 million keystrokes before failure and utilize double crosspoints for reliability. Another thing to note here, and this is separate from the switches but adds to them positively, is the use of an analog controller that enables fast response times coupled with the shorter actuation distances (which effectively makes it a faster switch, all other things being equal).


As always, the sound of a keyboard is based on more than just the switch type. So when comparing sound clips, consider the keyboard as a whole. In this case, I have provided above an example sound clip of me typing on the Das Keyboard 5Q sample at ~85 WPM as it comes out of the box. For context, you can find sound clips from other keyboards here, including those with tactile switches. I did bottom out here, which is not hard to do given the relatively light keys and shorter travel distance.