TechPowerUp readers have by now noticed that we have moved on from providing a numerical score in our product reviews, and this happened while I was working on the review for the Das Keyboard 5Q. I will say right away that I was planning on giving this a 7.5/10 on the old scale before the recent driver update that helped squish a bug I had and added in Q Command Center. It might have gone up to maybe a 7.7/10 by the end, and a lot of the score would have had to do with the price point it demands as opposed to commands. At $250, the Das Keyboard 5Q is by far the most expensive keyboard from the company, and this also brings up much higher expectations to go with it. There is simply no room for a small batch of keyboards to go out with a poor finish or incorrect keyboard feet, for example. Yet this was the case here, and we have not even gotten to the main feature yet.

"Cloud-connected keyboard" is still strange to type out, and even stranger to use in practice at this time. Perhaps a time will come when this will seem normal, but I expect the final product at that time to be different and with displays instead. The Das Keyboard 5Q, in a sense, is a bit of a pioneer to implement this without a display of any sorts. This was by no means simple to do, and the extremely complex PCB speaks volumes about it. Das Keyboard admitted that they had underestimated what it would take to bring this to market, which in turn led to a crowdfunding campaign that left a bitter taste in many a backer's mouth. At the same time, they did deliver a keyboard that is arguably over-engineered to the point where the assembled PCB costs more than the rest of the items in the bill of materials combined. Was it needed? Probably not. But they still did it to give backers something different and capable of more than it can currently do, and I can appreciate that. The Gamma Zulu switches will be divisive among enthusiasts and average end users alike, but the analog controller providing a fast response time is another case of doing it for the sake of it—it's great for marketing and cool to see as an enthusiast user myself, but I imagine most people would have taken a lower price point instead.

The problem is that this by itself is not enough when the implementation is still somewhat lacking months after backers received the product and it has moved into retail channels. The stock keycaps are inferior to what a $250 keyboard should have, regardless of what the majority of that cost went into. Indeed, Das Keyboard realizes the 5Q is not a money maker to them. That is where the other Q-series-connected keyboards come in at $199. Without having tested them at this point, I have no opinion on whether they justify the price more so than this one. The Das Keyboard 5Q is hard to judge knowing that it is going to be a niche product, and I was not going to give it any of the awards we have until something else happened during the course of me putting together this review. The numeric score was not the only change made to the TechPowerUp review system, and we have added in a new award for when products offer something novel in a specific category. The cloud-connected Das Keyboard 5Q thus merits the new TechPowerUp Innovation award in my opinion, and that it shall have.