Disassembly

Disassembly of the Tesoro Gram MX ONE is fairly simple, as is usually the case with metal-frame keyboards these days. There are two hidden screws, however, with one under each of the corner pads at the top. You will also have to remove some of the keycaps to access more screws, these in silver and with countersunk Phillips heads as opposed to the black color before. There are no daughter PCBs here, and thus, there are no internal cables to worry about when separating the pieces.


The bottom piece is made out of ABS plastic and has a cutout for the mini-USB port to fit into, as well as two other cutouts to accommodate the keyboard feet. The PCB is on the same piece as the thick stainless steel plate, which got the powder-coating treatment for the white color for durability, and the switches are thus soldered through the plate and on to the PCB. We get a black PCB in this case, with very good soldering work throughout, including on the USB port and various LEDs.


A note on the PCB tells us the PCB design was finalized in March of 2018 and can likely support US/UK/Japan language layouts even though this keyboard only comes with US ANSI support for now. Powering the keyboard is a VISION VS11K15A microcontroller, of which there is not much information available online, but some time online revealed it being used by many other backlit keyboards to good effect, including the Cougar PURI TKL we saw recently. There is not a whole lot going on in terms of pre-configured or customizable functionality, so the controller should be plenty fine given there are no complaints otherwise. All the components, including the switches, LEDs, and capacitors, are soldered to a multi-layered PCB.

Before we move on, be advised that disassembly may void the warranty and that TechPowerUp is not liable for any damages incurred if you decide to go ahead and do so anyway.