Turtle Beach Vulcan II TKL review: Pretty, bright, and mechanical

It probably seems like every new gaming keyboard on our list of best gaming keyboards these days has magnetic Hall Effect switches — because, for the most part, they do. But not Turtle Beach's latest addition to its Vulcan II series. The Vulcan II TKL is just a regular old mechanical keyboard that does exactly what you'd expect from the cheaper version of the brand's TKL layout (the Vulcan II TKL Pro does have magnetic HE switches, by the way).

The Vulcan II TKL is a wired mechanical gaming keyboard with a hot-swappable PCB, bright customizable RGB lighting, and smooth, lightweight linear mechanical switches. It looks just like the other keyboards in Turtle Beach's Vulcan II lineup — that is, very pretty if you like lots of light spillage on your keyboard (I do), and the included Titan HS switches are speedy, accurate, and quiet, which some people will love (I didn't). The Vulcan II TKL is available now for $120.

Design and Construction of the Vulcan II TKL

The Vulcan II TKL is a wired keyboard with a TKL (tenkeyless) layout, which means it doesn't have a 10-key numberpad but has everything else — function keys, arrow keys, and navigation keys.

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The keyboard is housed in a slim plastic chassis with a brushed aluminum top plate. It comes in only one colorway (black), and is fairly compact, measuring 14.42 inches (366.16mm) wide by 5.41 inches (137.22mm) deep, and is 1.27 inches (32.15mm) thick, including the keycaps (the chassis is much slimmer at 0.65" / 16.6mm at its thickest point). While it's not a particularly hefty keyboard — it weighs 1.29 pounds (584g) — it features a nice, premium-feeling build: the plastic chassis has a beveled edge that sits flush with the aluminum top plate, and everything feels very solid. In the upper-right corner, there's a slim plastic volume knob (clickable), the only "extra" key on the board.

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The Vulcan II TKL has T-shaped ABS keycaps with shine-through legends. T-shaped refers to the shape of the keycap viewed from the side — these keycaps are thin, about 0.16 inches (4mm) thick, leaving most of the switch exposed. This allows the keyboard's bright, customizable RGB lighting to shine even brighter, and is kind of Turtle Beach's (or, well, Roccat's) signature aesthetic for the Vulcan line. (In fact, the Vulcan II TKL features basically the exact same aesthetic as the other keyboards in this line, e.g.,

\ the Vulcan II Mini, the Vulcan II, the Vulcan II Max.) The keycaps have smooth, lightly curved tops and a profile similar to an OEM profile — fairly tall, with straight (not sculpted) rows. Luckily, the Vulcan II TKL is compatible with most third-party keycaps (not all keyboards in this lineup are), so you can swap these out whenever you want.

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The Vulcan II TKL is a wired keyboard, but it features a detachable USB-C cable, with its port located along the top, on the left side. On the back of the keyboard, you'll find two sets of plastic flip-out feet, as well as four moderately-sized pieces of non-slip rubber pads to keep the keyboard in place during intense gaming sessions. I didn't have any issues with the keyboard slipping around my desk while I was typing or gaming, but I'm not a particularly emotional gamer.

The Vulcan II TKL comes with a handful of accessories in the box: a 6-foot (1.8m) detachable braided USB-C to USB-A cable, a combination keycap and switch puller, and three extra switches.

Specs

Typing and Gaming Experience on the Vulcan II TKL

The Vulcan II TKL features Turtle Beach's in-house Titan HS (linear) switches, rated for up to 50 million keystrokes, with a 45g actuation force and a 1.8mm actuation distance. Unlike (what seems like) most gaming keyboards on the market right now, these are not Hall Effect switches — they're regular old linear mechanical switches. The keyboard does have a hot-swappable PCB that accepts both 3- and 5-pin mechanical switches, so you have plenty of switch options if you don't like the switches it comes with.

Typing on the Vulcan II TKL is... an interesting experience. Keypresses are lightweight and smooth, with a soft, mushy sound. They don't feel particularly mushy — and I didn't have any issues with accidentally pressing keys while I was typing or gaming, so my general accuracy wasn't affected — but they sound mushy. This seems to be almost entirely the switches — the case isn't very thick, but it does a decent job of absorbing sound, and there's very little case ping.

Perhaps switching out the keycaps would improve the typing experience — I found the Vulcan II TKL's keycaps to be a little too high-profile, especially on such a thin, low-profile chassis. But that's just personal preference, and the keycaps are easy to swap out — though most other keycaps will mean losing all that showy RGB lighting. This board does have a north-facing PCB, so full-sized keycaps will likely reduce the lighting by a lot.

Gaming on the Vulcan II TKL is solid, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend this keyboard for competition. The switches are smooth, and my keypresses were accurate, even if they didn't sound as perfectly crisp as I wanted them to; I didn't have any issues with switching between keys quickly or moving my hand around the board to find different keys. While the switches aren't magnetic and therefore do not support features such as Rapid Trigger, actuation adjustment, or Snap Tap, they actuate quickly (1.8mm), and Turtle Beach has its own software solution to Snap Tap that you can set up with the Swarm II software.

Features and Software of the Vulcan II TKL

The Vulcan II TKL is customizable via Turtle Beach Swarm II, which is the universal peripheral software Turtle Beach inherited when it fully absorbed Roccat. You can use the Swarm II software to remap keys, customize the keyboard's RGB lighting, update firmware, and set up "ReacTap," which is Turtle Beach's answer to Snap Tap / SOCD. It's a software solution that lets you bind two inputs to one key, allowing you to then activate a second key by pressing it without fully releasing the first (like Snap Tap, ReacTap prioritizes the last-pressed input. Also like Snap Tap and other variations of this feature, it might be considered cheating in certain games.

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I've never been a big fan of the Swarm II software, but I didn't have any issues with it this time around. There are only two screens for the Vulcan II TKL (remapping and lighting), and remapping is fairly straightforward — the keyboard is equipped with multiple layers you can remap, including a Function layer and an "Easy Shift" layer. Easy Shift is activated by holding down Caps Lock (can be reassigned) and is just another full keyboard layer. You can also turn on ReacTap on the remapping screen — you can set it up yourself with custom keys, but Swarm II also gives you the option of quickly assigning it to A & D (for strafing). The volume knob is unfortunately not remappable.

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The lighting options for the Vulcan II TKL are, as always, very pretty — I'm a big fan of the company's default AIMO lighting scheme, which is bright, colorful, and not as mundane as typical spectrum cycle defaults, but there are also a handful of other presets you can choose from, as well as an editor for fully customizing every key.

The Bottom Line

The Vulcan II TKL is a nicely-built compact TKL keyboard featuring the Vulcan II's signature aesthetic — slim chassis, brushed aluminum top plate, T-shaped keycaps, and bright, glowy RGB lighting. It's fully mechanical, equipped with soft, lightweight linear switches (that will at least make your coworkers and roommates happy) and a decently sound-dampened case. It's not a particularly exciting keyboard — it looks just like the other Vulcan II keyboards, but it looks great if you like the look.

It is $120, though — not particularly expensive in general, but a little pricey for a wired keyboard that doesn't have too many extra features. You could spend a little more and pick up something like the Logitech G515, which is lower-profile and wireless (but not as pretty, in my opinion), or you could pick up a magnetic keyboard like Arbiter Studio's Polar 75 Pro, which retails for $165 but is currently on sale for $110.