Cheap mechanic with “not RGB”. KFA2 Stealth STL-03 – review

My first meeting with KFA2 was extremely successful. All because I tested the KFA2 Slider-5 mouse, which turned out to be a great mouse for little money. One for which you could charge yourself at least twice as much, and would still sell. My second approach is with the KFA2 Stealth STL-03 keyboard and I can tell you at the very beginning that it will be completely different than with a mouse.

Cheapness, cheapness I can see

Let’s make an agreement, if something costs PLN 129, and then the price drops to, say, regular PLN 89 and that something is a gaming keyboard, we can safely call it a cheap product. There were even promotions where the price was even lower and amounted to fifty zlotys. I would not say that it is a budget product, but still one that is close to this category. Usually, these cheaper products look better in the pictures than in real life. The KFA2 Stealth STL-03 is an example of this, although it is a bit better than I assumed at the beginning. It is a classic gaming keyboard with a traditional 104-key layout, solid construction and key backlighting. But as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. It turns out that all this gray body only pretends to be something metal and at the first contact we find out that it is cleverly painted plastic. It even has this characteristic rough texture. I won’t say, I was fooled and had to touch it a bit to turn the guess into certainty. The keyboard weighs about 670 grams and feels lighter than other metal mechanics. It also loses slightly in stiffness, but it is still better in this respect than most keyboards from a similar price range.

Seriously, despite the fact that there is a lot of plastic, I expected something worse

KFA2 Stealth STL-03 Together with the keyboard, we get a simple and very plastic wrist rest, rubberized on the bottom. A very nice addition, especially for the price. It is a pity that somehow the workmanship is not the best and it looks as if someone quickly stuck it on it and ran the tapestry around. So far, it keeps its shape, doesn’t stink and most importantly, it supports your hands well while playing or typing. We have a numeric keypad, separated arrow keys, a long space bar and a single-row Enter. Well classics as you look and a layout similar to what was in the first IBM keyboards. I have no objection to the quality of the buttons, they are black and well made. But there are two things that irritate me a lot. First of all, the keys have a very unreadable, even complicated font, which is often the case with gaming keyboards. Secondly, I noticed that the keys (except for the spacebar) don’t have any brackets / stabilizers and they move in every direction like stupid. When typing quickly it is not so visible and felt, but when we grab and move such a key, we immediately know that it was not meant to be like that. This is especially noticeable on longer keys such as Shift or Enter.

KFA2 Stealth-03 is a mechanical keyboard that is based on blue switches

Rather, it could not be otherwise, to keep the price low and at the same time affordable. What can I say, you can immediately hear that he is a mechanic, because the blue switches are loud and have a characteristic metallic tone. The specification states that the activation level of such a switch is 2.2 mm. I, in turn, can write that we will immediately sense the moment when there is a click and you do not need a lot of force to do so. The good thing is that the switches can be easily replaced, because we have special pliers included in the set. With a decisive move, we can remove the entire mechanism from the socket and insert another one. When I write another, I mean the black one that comes in the box with the keyboard. We have 8 spare switches that are quieter and don’t make the usual noise.Interchangeable switches allow for greater personalization possibilities. Nobody said that instead of blue you can not put red, at least in the keys that we use when playing.The keyboard can be used flat or tilted, using fold-out feet. Everything is nice, but it is incomprehensible to me that the KFA2 Stealth STL-03 has only two rubber stickers on the bottom to keep it in one place. Let’s say it works, but the savings should be found elsewhere. The cord is plain, without a braid and is only 1.3 meters. I’m sorry, but I have to connect it to my laptop? It is obvious that half a meter is missing to connect the keyboard to the PC in a classic arrangement without stress.

Permanent “not RGB” backlight

The gaming keyboard could not run out of trinkets and in the KFA2 Stealth STL-03 we have them in the simplest possible form. The backlight is permanent and zonal. This means that each key has a single, predetermined color that cannot be changed. For example, WSAD and the arrow buttons have purple illumination, and the number keys have red illumination. It cannot be changed, because the keyboard, unlike the mouse I tested earlier, does not have any software. Everything changed directly from the keyboard, so this may indicate very limited possibilities. There are several light effects like “breathing” or “snake” and we change them with the buttons above the arrows with the Fn pressed.KFA2 Stealth STL-03 The cool thing is that under the numeric keys (from L1 to L8 with Fn) we have profiles for specific types of games, where only selected keys are highlighted. There are also a lot of multimedia shortcuts under the function keys. We can, among other things, quickly start the music player, turn on the calculator or lock the system. There is also Anti-Ghosting, but I haven’t found information on how many buttons at once.

It all depends on the price

How satisfied we will be with the KFA2 Stealth STL-03 depends mainly on the price at which we buy this keyboard. If we pay the regular price, we have the right to turn our nose and complain even more about what I don’t like about this keyboard. But if we find an onion and lower the price by at least half (or as it used to, when it was possible to get it for 55 zlotys!), Then we will use such a cheap mechanic with a little bit of satisfaction. I do not mind the zonal, so slightly limited backlight (which it makes up for with profiles) or the fact that the cable looks as if it was pulled straight from the 90s (although it is too short, that’s a fact). Some people report that they have problems with the keyboard after a few months, which manifests as the keys double-clicking. I did not notice it, but only because I use this keyboard too shortly. I do not like this gaming font on the keys, which is unreadable, but everything beyond what I mentioned is quite acceptable. A keyboard strictly for gaming, because I can’t imagine anyone using it all day to write when in the next room I’m trying to focus on the robot.