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Topre RealForce 104UW Keyboard Review

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Our Verdict

Not your average keyboard, the Realforce 104UW has a particular design and feature set that you’ll either love or hate.

For

  • Smooth, rounded, tactile keyfeel and deep typing sound
  • Ergonomic weighting
  • Strong build quality

Against

  • Highly divisive--love it or hate it
  • Lack of extra features
  • Extremely expensive for what it is

Introduction & Specifications

Topre, a contraction of its former company name “Tokyo Press Kogyo,” is a Japanese engineering company that has been making plastics and metal components since 1935. However, it also makes electronics, and the company has made a name for itself in the keyboard community for the Topre capacitive switch. These are famously used in the Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) and Realforce lines of keyboards, the latter of which we’re looking at today.

The Realforce comes in tenkeyless (87U) and full-size (104U) form factors, and in white (UW) or black (UB). We have the white, fullsize version (104UW) on hand.

Specifications

*During this review, Topre stopped responding to our requests for information.


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22 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Xeres Forteen 22 December 2017 14:07
    Wow. I like the retro look. Does it have an AT connector?
    Reply
  • dark_lord69 22 December 2017 15:17
    Look an early 90's keyboard with a 2017 gamer hardware price!
    HA! If I knew I would have kept hundreds for those crappy keyboards!

    Don't let the price fool you... It's just a keyboard.
    Reply
  • therealduckofdeath 22 December 2017 16:58
    Why not got full-tilt retro and make one with the super high keys of a VIC or a PET? They could charge 4-500 bucks for that, I bet...
    Reply
  • toddybody 22 December 2017 17:27
    Coming from a CM Storm Quickfire Rapid TK...now on the Logitech G810 Orion Spectrum, I can't see the value of these 150.00+ keyboards.
    Reply
  • Co BIY 22 December 2017 17:49
    Keyboard reviews need a Price/performance graph. Something to help the average reader find the "sweet spot" where good performance meets reasonable price.

    I'm on a Microcenter Inland DK-3001B - It's an obvious step-up in keyfeel from OEM boards and has nice LED mono-blue through key backlighting. All that for $25.
    Reply
  • husker 22 December 2017 18:16
    Nice article, but I thought listing "Highly divisive--love it or hate it" on the Final Analysis page as a con is not fair. This seems to be saying that "you might love this!" is a negative. Agreed, you might hate it, but listing it as a con is pre-supposing you will hate it. With any product you have to determine whether or not you like it, but listing the fact that you might not like it as a con seems a bit unfair.
    Reply
  • techy1966 22 December 2017 18:26
    They are kidding right over $200 for a keyboard that looks like it was made back in 1993. This is a flat out copy of the fujitsu keyboards from back in the day even the same color design. I know this because I still have one of them laying around which I paid a lot less than $200 for it at the time and it is most likely built a lot better as well since the thing weighs a fair amount and has a metal bottom and mech keys since back then that was the thing. O got mine back I think in 1991 maybe a bit older I used to have several of them but over the years they got lost or borrowed. Good to see they want to bring the retro look back but at least do not try to charge prices that are way above what they should be for it.
    Reply
  • Timothy_11 22 December 2017 19:38
    >$200 for a keyboard that's made essentially the same as the $5 Dell/HP rubber dome keyboards? I'll pass.
    Reply
  • Rock_n_Rolla 22 December 2017 22:30
    5 words for this Keyboard.

    "Wolf in a Sheep's Clothing"...
    Reply
  • daglesj 22 December 2017 22:42
    I'll just get a Cherry keyboard instead.
    Reply