Closer Examination

The keyboard has a wax paper wrap around it which, when removed, gives us our first good look at the product, and there are a few things here that are impossible to describe completely if you do not hold it in person yourself. There is a plastic top and bottom panel, but boy, does it feel sturdy and hefty. A TKL keyboard weighing 1.1 kg is more in the full-size keyboard territory anyway.

The all-white option looks great, even if it is not the easiest to photograph against my white backdrop. iKBC made it all as white as possible here and hasn't just thrown in some white-colored keycaps, which was nice to see. The bezels are average, and the whole keyboard would not look out of place in an office or similar professional setting until the RGB backlighting turns on. A lot of secondary functions seem to be pad-printed on to the PBT keycaps in a deep blue color, meaning they will not be backlit, but there should be enough light from between the keycaps to where these front-printed legends will be visible in the dark. The legends occupy a good amount of space up top, right above where the LEDs are generally present underneath, with the use of the regular seamed doubleshot application meaning there will be gaps in letters that have a closed loop (D and P, for example). The standard secondary functions, such as those on the numbers row above the QWERTY row, are located on the same horizontal line as the primary ones and will thus be backlit properly as well. The font chosen is one I personally like and is not aggressive or "gamery" if I say so myself.


The detailed white color scheme carries over on at the back as well, with white rubber pads on the corners as well as on the two feet to help prevent the keyboard from sliding on your desk. The feet incidentally have two levels of height for two angles of tenting and 0° to choose from. There is a non-detachable, braided white cable that comes out the top of the middle and ends in a standard male USB Type A connector. USB 2.0 will suffice here, although I recommend going with a USB 3.0 port to not let powering the RGB LEDs be a concern. No USB pass-through here, and what you see is what you get.


The keycaps have an OEM profile, which was to be expected given the replacement keycaps followed it as well. With no key re-assignment or any macro functionality, the sculpting of the keycaps will provide a familiar feel to those used to the OEM profile already, and there is no real reason for iKBC to have gone otherwise anyway. The provided keycap puller works great here when it comes to removing the smaller 1u keycaps as well as the larger modifier keycaps, although you do need to take turns and raise one side of the space bar before the other unless you have two of these wire-style keycap pullers.

Doubleshot PBT is indeed the name of the game here, and they feel really, really nice to type on. Knowing that they will not develop a shine with use is also a great plus point, and the really thick (1.38-1.46 mm on average) keycap walls further add to the good, sturdy build quality here. The presence of the legends up top, above the LEDs, means backlighting works well here despite it being a white on white situation. The keycaps are also not floating due to the presence of a top panel piece, which minimizes light bleed at the expense of ease of cleaning. Good thing then that you get a keycap puller to help with that!


The switches used here are genuine Cherry MX Brown RGB, as indicated on the packaging, and the modifier keycaps use Cherry stabilizers. I have also shown above an example of how you could go about the replacement of keycaps if you so desire, although I just ended up using the stock keycaps more often than not. The iKBC F87 has a standard keycap layout, meaning you can use just about any third-party replacement set, but I would say try out the stock keycaps first to then decide if you wish to change them - they are really good.