Cooler Master's NovaTouch TKL Has Expensive Topre Switches
Ever since Cooler Master started making mechanical gaming keyboards, we've seen quite a bit of innovation from the company. Rather than building "one size fits all" keyboards, Cooler Master builds many different keyboards to ensure that they have a model for every potential buyer.
The company's latest gaming keyboard, the NovaTouch TKL, isn't based on Cherry MX mechanical switches but rather Topre switches with a cross-stem design. The switches have a fairly standard actuation force of 45 grams but a remarkably short actuation point at just 1 mm into the key press. They feature a hybrid capacitive design, which is effectively a middle ground between a rubber dome keyboard and a mechanical keyboard. The cross-stem design makes the keyboard compatible with keycaps for Cherry MX-based keyboards.
The NovaTouch TKL is a tenkeyless keyboard, which means that it is built without a numpad, making it much more compact than standard keyboard layouts. It comes with a 1000 Hz polling rate along with on-the-fly key repeat rate adjustment controls, 128 Kb of memory, N-Key Rollover support and anti-ghosting technology.
Cooler Master is asking beastly $199.99 for the NovaTouch TKL. (Ouch.)
Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
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Sure, it's more expensive than a Cherry mech board, but even then not outrageously so. Besides, that's not the point. You're paying for the Topres, not the ability to use a keyboard.
IMO for a TKL Topre board, there will be a buyer more than happy to pay the entrance fee. Just because the author doesn't get it, or hasn't done his research on exactly what is being sold doesn't mean he can forego journalistic integrity and make it an opinion piece.
Cent or two? In production you can do the entire rubber dome keyboard all together, while the switches, being mechanical and having individual activators have to be made one by one. They are also made by a different company which also wants to make money. In the consumer market, cherry mx switches are 2.50 per switch MINIMUM. For manufacturers I would expect something just under a dollar per switch. The profit margin on these is incredibly small when you compare it to a lot of other keyboards.