Royal Kludge RK84 Review, Unboxing, & Sound Test // The BEST budget-friendly mechanical keyboard?
so first up let’s see what’s in the box
here
did not come with any tape on this
it’s extremely easy to open they are
covering the keyboard
which is awesome
user manual which i’ll probably only
ever look at for you know figuring out
which buttons do the rbg
and whatnot uh keyboard obviously i’m
gonna go ahead and pull this stuff out
put it on the table here
looks like
that should be all the accessories
actually i put this away before i hurt
myself
all right
look at that
looking good it is time my friends for
the inaugural first type
okay these are the stock brown switches
that come with it they are not getter on
uh a lot of these keyboards will come
with gutter on but apparently not these
so in the bag first and foremost here
are the little feet that go underneath
optionally these are actually magnetic
we shall see how that works in just a
second there’s obviously a usb
2.0 to usb c
right here
i have like 50 bajillion of these but
it’s nice it looks nice and long as
it’s got like a nice little
velcro thing that stays on there oh yeah
that’s that’s plenty long i don’t like
it when they’re any shorter than that
here are some extra brown switches these
are rk as in royal clutch
brand brown switches i believe the
keyboard does appear dirty right out of
the back which is a little bit weird at
first glance everything looks really
uh not clean clean isn’t smooth clean as
in not clean as in there’s actually dust
all over it which is kind of weird here
is the 2.4 gigahertz
wireless dongle which we can use for the
computer and uh everything looks nice
and great so far i’m going to turn it on
in a minute so a very quick overview of
this keyboard they say it’s an 80 layout
it’s actually not because that usually
has a little bit of space in between the
top rows and the numpad a little bit or
not the numpad but the uh
arrow keys i believe it’s actually 75 i
think that’s what most people refer to
it as now this is a hot swappable
keyboard so if we come in here we should
be able to just yank these switches out
really quick i hate uh these types of
switch pullers i’m actually opening up
my own with a little you know
plastic grip or whatever
it is indeed hot swappable there we go
this keyboard actually has three ways to
connect to your computer obviously we
saw the dongle 2.4
gigahertz generally really fast and
steady but you can use bluetooth 5.0 as
well
and of course last but not least the
usbc
cable right there this does have rbg
backlit with like 15 or 20 different
modes we’re gonna test that out in just
a second when i plug it into the
computer obviously mx
compatibility with your three or five
pin
switches make sure you stick that back
uh perhaps the feature i’m most excited
about i’m actually i’m not sure how to
do it is removing the frame
i’m actually not sure what’s going on
here
oh yeah leverage okay so that’s actually
cool you can go with or without the
frame opening up the
the keyboard nicely a lot of people like
that it does let a little bit more light
shine through from the rgb or whatnot in
fact that’s the g
m mk keyboard i have over there of
course has this this thing but i’m
actually going to leave the case on for
now and just kind of like play around
with it more it just snaps back on
i love that that is just one little cool
piece of connectivity right there
another thing would be the two usb
2.0
passthroughs in case you want to i’m
actually going to try putting in my
macro pad right here and seeing if that
fires it up and the uh you know the
response rate’s nice but i love usb path
through passengers and this one has two
of them
this one is wireless so of course it
does have a battery they say it takes
about five to six hours for full charge
you’re gonna test that and that it
should last up to 200 hours i believe
they mention around
3 700 m a h
ma
how do you pronounce that i don’t know
pretty standard as far as bluetooth
keyboards go but we’re going to test it
out to make sure it works all right it
does come stock with some nice abs
double shot
keycaps they actually feel really nice
and smooth i’m not gonna lie it feels
really good really satisfying
everything’s nice and smooth
responds great it really it really looks
and feels really great it sounds okay
these are the browns i’m actually going
to put some
glorious pandas in here in just a little
while just to have some fun and see how
much better i have both unlubed and
factory lubed
uh glorious pandas there we’ll put on
there and the other thing i want to do
is just test out the feet right here so
these are magnetic
that’s actually pretty cool you just
snap them on top there i don’t know if i
have them correct there or if that’s
upside down
uh that’s a good question it actually
snaps much better the other way so i’ll
assume that and of course they have the
pad right there i have heard complaints
that the magnets will actually become
unglued after a little bit of use
uh so far i’m kind of scratching at it
and they actually seem to be on okay
but who knows with time these might
actually come off i could foresee
putting a little bit more glue on there
and it probably will be okay
but
they are nice and sturdy
and solid
there you go as far as build quality by
the way this is
really really well constructed i feel
like the frame
and
yeah it’s just really good of course
this frame does come off
right here but you can see like i’m i’m
i’m trying to like bend this and get
this to bend it’s not it’s not bunching
it seems like a really well constructed
thick keyboard which is really great
you never know you gotta take the coffee
shops and bang around you want it to uh
you know continue to work the only other
thing i’ll notice is that you probably
will need a serial number in order to
properly uh register and connect it to
the software it does come with software
i’ve heard it’s terrible i’m actually
going to fire it up and see in just a
second on off switch right here and this
one i actually have no idea that it says
b
or g i don’t know if that’s like
bluetooth or the dongle that’s what i’m
guessing gigahertz maybe that’s what g
stands for don’t actually know we’re
gonna find that out in a second make
sure everything works right we’re gonna
head over here i’m gonna plug it into my
computer test fire up the rbg as well as
do like a nice little
typing test sound test
really quick i do want to actually point
out
that
you could see the rbg functions as the
you know what keys to press right there
so function home function in i assume in
just a second i’ll test it these are
going to turn on and i think this one is
swap colors this is like to change
between rgb modes and this will
obviously make the animations go faster
and then slower and then brighter and
then softer with the function key
obviously also this is how we get to
bluetooth i just looked at the
instruction manual
function
q w or e will swap between up to three
bluetooth devices i’ve always kind of
enjoyed that
and apparently you can long press
function and then q w or e to start
pairing for those specific channels
right there i’m on a mac this says win
mac i’m actually not positive what that
does but it could be swapping around
this for the command key this is usually
control you swap control and command or
something like that i believe i usually
do it manually for my mechanical
keyboards but it looks like there might
be a way to toggle between them right
there in which case that’s actually
pretty cool i’m actually really happy
that i don’t have to go into my settings
if i want this to work on a mac this to
be command then i can just go here we’re
gonna try that all right so let’s give
it a little plug in i’m gonna go wired
first also let it charging the it’s not
in the middle like most of my keyboards
that i own but it’s actually over here
towards the side plug it in
and
it’s not doing anything to my computer
so far
all right so believe it or not i figured
it out and that is my normal usbc
cable was not functioning correctly it
actually was not going in there felt
really loose it wouldn’t snap in which
is kind of odd and i don’t know i used
the one they gave me and it is a little
bit larger it snapped right in so
there’s that i suppose
and
now we seem to be functioning the
keyboard dialog did pop up on my thing
here okay so it actually took me a
minute to make this work on my computer
and part of it is when you are plugged
in you want to make sure your power is
actually set to off the power switch
needs to be off it’s kind of weird when
it’s on that p will actually blink
and i looked in the instruction manual
it didn’t tell me actually what to do
but i was curious i shut the power off
and boom it fired right up now i pressed
function and then the a
and the s key and sure enough that
swapped out where the command versus
control is so if you are on a mac do
function s if you’re on windows it was
like that by default but you can also
switch back and forth i suppose if you
really wanted to all right let’s test
out the uh the rbg fund for a minute so
function and then home will swap the
modes
you can see a little flashing on the
video right here but that’s actually
because of my camera it doesn’t look
like that in
person i don’t know why it’s really
doing that
crazy waves
looks like everything is working
absolutely fine there’s a bunch of
different stuff that it does i’ll let
you guys play around with that but it
works just fine it looks great so let’s
go ahead and start a little typing test
with the
default rk
brown switches that comes with it here
so
so i actually really love the way these
switches
and the default keycaps feel i’m not
gonna lie i’m a tactile switch kind of
guy and this actually feels really good
out of that i just want to say that up
front sounds pretty good too very muted
not very loud browns right now i’m
actually going to put in
some both lubed and unlubed glorious
pandas it might take a little while
we’ll come back and we’ll see what that
sounds like now
[Music]
all right the very last thing i want to
do is just to double check that i can do
the bluetooth mode whoops all right and
it looks like the keyboard
is working right there
this is working nicely all right next up
i’m actually going to turn the keyboard
off
again
and then switch the b over to a g
make sure i have my
dongle plugged in here and again i have
to redo the windows and mac bit function
s
okay so this is obviously not working
really well with my particular setup
here i’m actually going to
swap where this dongle is
all right so right off the bat i’m going
to tell you that this does not work that
great for me right now the mac mini i
have is two feet away the dongles in the
top
left you can’t actually see it right now
but it’s the closest bit to the keyboard
that i actually have it should be
working in my opinion real a little bit
better
okay the bluetooth actually worked far
better than this so i’m actually gonna
switch back take my dongle out if you
know what i mean and go back to
bluetooth so while i download the
software and we’re going to see exactly
first of all if it works
and how it works i will also talk about
one of my favorite things about this
keyboard and that is it’s cheap and it’s
available on amazon for about 85 bucks
at the time of this recording of course
they got blue brown and red switches
black
frames and keycaps and of course white
like i just saw it’s actually a little
bit cheaper on the rk website
arcadegamingstore.com it’s 80 bucks and
i did notice you don’t see it right now
but when i first landed on the website
you might even be able to
open this up in incognito and see what’s
going on here
uh yep 10 off your first order so that’s
actually pretty nice i’m not sure how
much shipping will be to your area but
if you grab this 10 off that’s eight
bucks so 72 dollars
plus shipping whatever that ends up
being versus the 84 85 bucks on amazon
so looking at software here i looked at
my serial number that’s what they mean
by sn instructions aren’t super clear
but
good enough i suppose
i found my serial number and it happened
to be this one right here this is a
microsoft windows applications are not
supported by mac os
so these are the readmes that do not
provide any information on windows
versus mac but they do have instructions
for finding this
uh the serial number on your board as
well as how to install and that sort of
stuff
i’m just going to assume at this point
that their software does not work with
mac os it does not say anywhere on the
website i even opened up the amazon
questions and reviews and tried to look
in here
and i couldn’t find anybody that would
actually comment and give me the right
answer if i could use the software on
mac os
or not
so i am not going to show it at this
point just because i keep getting this
thing and i’m not really sure how to
bypass that i might be able to but i
don’t know all right let’s finish up
with some likes and dislikes my own
personal preferences when it comes to
the rk44 in the likes department i like
the way it looks i’m actually just a
pretty big fan
of the white case i love that you can
also of course
remove the frame
got a nice little like almost lower
profile look now you can see a little
bit more rpg it feels nice
speaking of rbg the rbg looks great it
works really well
generally just like really happy with
that the board is solidly constructed it
feels great it looks great and it
actually sounds
pretty good one last thing that i really
like is the price
89 or 80 bucks somewhere around there on
amazon or their website or
literally walmart you can grab this
board you almost can’t go wrong it’s a
really great keyboard for that price it
really is but let’s move on to the
dislikes i’m also just going to talk
about the og gmmk which is actually my
preferred keyboard of choice so the
first one i ever bought and i just love
it
by the way
89.90
100
90 only 10 more bucks
think about that
i personally prefer prefer that board
but it does have less features overall
i.e no bluetooth or 2.4 gigahertz dongle
etc but that leads me to my cons and
that is
connectivity and or getting up and
running with this keyboard was not easy
in fact it didn’t work right even after
i set it up the first time in fact
actually the thing that drives me the
most crazy about this i have a mac if
you’re on a pc it may not matter but i
literally had to do the function s thing
to switch from windows to a mac
configuration like for my command i.e
like control for windows users every
time i turn this on for me that’s a huge
turn off right there it’s the smallest
thing the dongle also i was extremely
disappointed with again my mac mini was
very close to my keyboard and i’ve run a
lot of different mice and keyboards from
little bitty usb dongles like this usb
2.0
i believe
and i’ve never had a single problem but
this one gave me massive problems it was
literally unusable for me again my
computer’s not that far away either it’s
not like it’s down on the floor i’ve had
no problem using other devices like this
i’m not sure why this one caused me
problems but it did actually one more
thing in the like department the
bluetooth so far has been flawless for
me it connects fast
instantaneously as soon as i turn the
thing on and uh there’s zero lag it’s
zero latency there’s uh no problems with
the bluetooth two more really small cons
in my department and that is i don’t
like the magnetic feet i feel like i’m
never gonna use these ever and i’m just
constantly worried about losing them
even though i’m not using them which is
really weird i almost wish they were
like little fold down flaps like most
keyboards have
but
i suppose if you use it all the time you
probably wouldn’t have any trouble with
it and i gotta be honest the sound i i
like the sound on the whole but it does
feel a little echoey but again this is
like really nitpicky and personal
preference and especially if you are a
noob in a good way two mechanical
keyboards and this was your first
purchase or your second purchase for
like 80 90 bucks on amazon i don’t think
it’s that bad in fact i think it’s
actually really nice so if you can also
uh get the software to work if you can
get the connectivity the way you want it
and you like the way it looks and you’ll
have to trust me on the field or whatnot
actually this is a fantastic keyboard
all right
time to type this video goodbye i’m
actually going to update this particular
keyboard with two things number one
being sound dampening foam i went to
home depot literally yesterday and i’m
gonna take this bad boy apart and uh put
some sound dampening foam in there and
i’m also going to switch out the keycaps
for
palm jellies because i’m a madman and
we’re gonna see what that sounds like so
i will put that in another video i’ll
leave it up here uh when it’s live thank
you guys for watching i really hope you
enjoyed this video
adios
