Closer Examination

At its heart, the Leopold FC660C is a 66-key, 65% form factor keyboard. We have covered plenty such form-factor keyboards over the past few months from the likes of Ducky, Ajazz, Epomaker, and ASUS, and the commonality across 65% keyboards is that there is no standard layout. The smaller 60% keyboards have become popular enough even with mainstream brands, so I usually already have a good idea of what to expect going in. Instead, as with the FC660C, I have to check twice to know what the key layout is like. We do get dedicated arrow keys, which is the only thing I can still guarantee about 65% keyboards, and then there is an unfortunate use of space at the right with only two keys separated from the rest as opposed to having four in a line. This is because the modifiers on the right are the same size as usual on a full-size keyboard, meaning there is no extra row of keys to naturally be placed above the right arrow key as with most 65% keyboards. This is all the weirder when you consider Leopold has added additional touches to the key layout elsewhere, including with a slightly shorter space bar (6u, as with pretty much all Topre keyboards) and shifted R.Control with Fn, as well as moving Menu to the left by default.

All FC660C keyboards sold today have this same design, including with the average-sized-but-uniform bezels all around—the differentiator between them comes in the form of the switches and keycaps, with the latter being more obvious. This version with the PBT dye sub keycaps indeed follows a two-tone color scheme as mentioned before, with white keycaps in the center and gray ones on either side. Both sets have black dye sublimed legends, which works well given it has to be darker than the base color anyway. We also see some front-facing legends, which nicely show the layered functions on this smaller form factor keyboard to bring back some of the missing functions relative to, say, a TKL keyboard. The legends up top are biased towards the top-left corner, with secondary legends above the primary ones. I will also point out the nerdy-yet-cool mathematical formula relating capacitance to charge and potential, as well as the means to calculate it for a parallel plate capacitor, on the bottom-right corner facing the user—quite fitting given the use of electrostatic capacitive switches.


Flipping the keyboard around, we see the usual certification sticker in the middle. Four small square rubber pads on the corners help keep the keyboard from sliding around on the desk, as do the two feet at the top with a rubberized bottom and contact surface acting as two more rubber pads whether the feet are raised or not. This view also confirm the use of a two-piece plastic case, and a cutout on the back provides access to a set of four dip switches for further customization we will discuss shortly.


The cable is detached and white to match the rest of the keyboard. Don't expect any fancy sleeving or braiding. You get the basic cable insulation, it is the usual 6' long, and plugs into an available USB Type-A port on your computer, where USB 3.2 Gen 1 is recommended, although USB 2.0 will suffice. I mentioned it before and will say it again—there is no reason to stick with mini-USB in 2021, and among other things, an update sooner rather than later to address this would be good.


A look from the side reveals the use of Leopold's Step-Sculpture 2 keycap profile, which is similar to the Cherry profile when it comes to the MX-style mechanical switches. This means you have a lower profile keycap set in general, but with more sculpting of the rows—especially the two bottom rows. It works quite well in practice and provides a non-floating keycap design in conjunction with the two-piece plastic case construction. The keycaps are, as with the replacement ones we saw on the previous page, composed of thick PBT plastic with dye-sublimed legends. This means the legends have to be darker than the base color, so Leopold went with black for the legends. The PBT is quite textured—smooth is not an adjective I would use here. These are once again not the best keycaps I have seen, especially with residual marks left on the edges where these came off the mold. There is no backlighting support on the Leopold FC660C, so the legends being opaque is irrelevant. Also, it goes without saying, but these are Topre switch keycaps, so you can't just swap over to your favorite MX-style aftermarket set. There are Topre to MX stem adapters, but I don't have enough experience with them to say how well they work.


Speaking of Topre, here we see the use of genuine Topre 45g (45 gf actuation force) switches. The purple sliders indicate these are the Topre Silent switches too, which include an integrated damper similar to what Cherry did with the MX Silent switches. The traditional Topre 45g switches use a black slider, with the purple something I also associate with the short-lived Cooler Master Novatouch TKL, which in hindsight seems to have been quite ahead of its time! Also notice those two protrusions inside the cylindrical slider. Those help the keycap plug in place, which you can certainly feel when removing and pushing the keycaps in similar to MX ones, so much so that a typical keycap puller meant for your average MX keycaps works fine for Topre keycaps.


There is a single indicator LED for the Caps Lock key by default, and it outputs a red color that goes through the associated cutout with a plastic diffuser in the keycap itself. This is why when replacing the keycaps with the replacement ones, we see the same with the Control keycap, which makes no sense to me. The actual replacement is a whole other matter with some preferring this layout, and I see the keycaps themselves helping further.