Closer Examination

As we saw before, the i-Rocks K71M keyboard comes in a thin foam wrap to keep it pristine and free of dust out of the box. Removing it, we get our first good look at the keyboard, and my first thought was definitely one along the lines of whether the plastic light bar in the middle was loose. But no, it is indeed only the fairly unique irregular trapezoidal case design with an angled top edge. This results in the keyboard being larger than average overall, and with bezels which are not uniformly on the black plastic case. i-Rocks puts it to good use with the large wheel in the top-right corner and indicator LEDs above, and the rest of the keyboard adopting a standard 104-key US ANSI layout.

The keyboard still looks fairly clean despite all of this, with a monochromatic design for the black case and keycaps and white (or at least white-ish) legends, the steel plate underneath to reflect more light, and the light bar itself. There is an i-Rocks branding on the space bar key, and some more legends are of a different color owing to the screen printing instead of the doubleshot injection method elsewhere. These are also placed differently such that the secondary legends typically associated with the US ANSI layout are next to the primary legends, and the keyboard-specific laser-etched secondary legends are underneath the primary ones. Single legend placement on the keycaps is also biased towards the top left, which hints towards where the backlighting will be more uniform. The font is on the cleaner side, and we see i-Rocks use a loop-less doubleshot-injection method without blocking bars underneath.


Flipping the keyboard around, we have the usual certification sticker, along with another sticker with the company logo and product name just in case you forgot what you bought. The interesting case design also follows through on the bottom case panel, which makes sense as it ensures the side lighting is uniform throughout. Four small hemispherical rubber pads on the corners keep the keyboard from sliding around on the desk, and two sets of feet at the top open up to optionally elevate the keyboard; these feet also have rubber pads to ensure they don't scratch easily. As such, the K71M has 6° and 8° of optional elevation in addition to the default 0°.


The side facing away from the user has a cutout in the middle where the USB Type-C connector of the cable plugs in, and substantial casing on either side protects the connectors. The cable itself is plain with black rubber insulation, the usual 6' in length, and goes to a spare USB Type-A port on your computer. USB 2.0 will suffice for power and data alike, with i-Rocks rating the maximum current draw at 500 mA, which happens to be the limit for the USB 2.0 connection as well.


Taking a look from the side, we see the profile of the keyboard in more detail, as well as the plastic light bar that goes all around. On the other three sides apart from the top, the light bar is basically a sandwich filling between the two-piece plastic case construction and does not jut past the edge. As for the keycaps themselves, the i-Rocks K71M keyboard uses the tried and tested OEM profile. It consists of keycaps in their usual slanted rows with concave surfaces on top, and we have the "standard" keycap spacing for the bottom row increase compatibility with aftermarket keycap sets. The good news is that the stock keycaps are very good to begin with because of their thick PBT plastic composition (average wall thickness 1.42 mm) and doubleshot injected legends that will not wear out before the rest of the keyboard—PBT plastic resists signs of wear and shine from finger oils better than ABS plastic. These are compatible with backlighting, which is no doubt part of the RGB lighting feature. The keyboard-specific secondary legends are laser-etched, but do not support backlighting with the double whammy of also wearing out sooner than the doubleshot injected legends.


There are two switch options with the i-Rocks K71M, and both happen to be from Outemu. You better not be wanting a linear switch thus, since the options are the Outemu Brown (tactile) or Outemu Blue (tactile and clicky). Both switches tend to be more budget-friendly options for the manufacturer and won't win any popularity votes in the keyboard community. They will do the job plenty fine, however, and we also see a surface-mounted LED above the keycaps similar to older-style single-color LED backlit keyboards from a few years ago, which will help with increased LED brightness for backlighting. The larger keycaps use Cherry style stabilizers, which helps with their removal, but at the expense of that typical mushy feeling with these stabilizers.