Thank you Turtle Beach for sending us the white version of keyboard to review!

Last year, I was fortunate enough to test my first keyboard with hall-effect switches, the Corsair K70 MAX, and I was very impressed with how smooth the hall-effect switches felt, even if some of the advanced features seemed hard to access (this has gotten better with updates). And while I probably still prefer some important aspects of that keyboard (like the included PBT keycaps), Turtle Beach has released a new and compelling offering into the growing hall-effect keyboard market that makes it pretty great.

The Turtle Beach Vulcan II TKL Pro is the first keyboard released since Turtle Beach decided to retire the ROCCAT name, and therefore has Turtle Beach branding. Putting this next to my ROCCAT Vulcan II Mini Air, the lineage is quite obvious; this new keyboard looks just like a ROCCAT of old. Not that it's bad thing; it's a distinctive look I appreciate. While I like the look, it can be divisive for some. Showing these keyboards to friends and family, the most divisive aspect is the keycaps; they look cool, but not everyone is a fan of the feel, and I can understand that. Regardless, they are stable and have a flatter profile than many. I received the white version to review, and we reviewed black versions of other models in the past, and while I slightly prefer how the black ones look, especially with how darker colors glow through the keycaps, this is still quite sharp (and easy to find in the dark!).

The build quality has always been excellent on the Vulcan line of keyboards, and this one is no exception. There is absolutely no flex or ping, and the stabilizers on this model are even better than their last keyboard with optical switches I reviewed, the Vulcan II Mini Air. While that keyboard is quite good and fairly quiet, those switches have a small amount of high-pitched rattle, despite feeling really smooth. These hall-effect switches are extremely quiet, and make almost no noise in operation. You can hear it when they bottom out, but otherwise they are almost completely silent. They are just slightly louder than a membrane (I checked). If it had full-sized PBT keycaps, I believe the tone of the sound would drop to be much lower making it seem even quieter, but since these use flat ABS key tops and the switches are completely exposed and visible, they make more noise since there is little to hide the sounds from the typist.

I've mentioned hall-effect a few times, but I haven't really explained what makes them unique. There are three main types of mechanical switches (there are others, but let's stick with these for now): standard mechanical, optical, and hall-effect or magnetic.

Standard mechanical switches, or Cherry MX-style, come in several types, like linear, tactile, and clicky. The main thing I want to focus on here is inside the switch, there is a metal point of contact which is touched that activates the switch. This contact point is usually called the activation point, the part of the down stroke which makes the switch close the circuit, activating the switch.

Optical switches are both more complex and simpler. Having a light source and detector is more complex, but the simpler part is the switch is activated by interrupting (or connecting, depending on the design) the beam of light. Since there is no physical contact involved, optical switches are often considered the most reliable and durable of switch types, but they aren't really programmable, as they have a set actuation point, just like standard mechanical switches.

Magnetic switches, or hall-effect (same thing), operate by putting a permanent magnet in the center of the switch, and a sensor at the base of the switch stem. When a magnet moves near a hall-effect sensor, it generates a change in voltage. This change is measured, and the keyboard logic can set a specific point as an activation point. Yes 'an', as there can be more than one; more on that later. One more thing to note - these switches are insanely smooth, because there is no physical contact at any point, as the switch only measures a change in voltage, and only bottoming out the switch has any contact. I can't explain why this switch feels smoother than opticals to me, but it might not be all, rather just how ROCCAT/Turtle Beach implemented it. Either way, I really like how hall-effect switches like these feel, since I prefer light to the touch linear switches these days.

The rest of the build is similar to other ROCCAT/Turtle Beach keyboards in the Vulcan line. That is to say, it has a nice aluminum top plate the switches are mounted to, and a plastic side and bottom. There are rubber feet on the bottom, and they are quite grippy and it is quite stable in its place. Unfortunately, all the screws you would need to open it up are not available and are under stickers or the rubber feet. Thankfully, the way this is designed there is virtually no flex, unless you press hard on the top, which leads to just a tiny amount of give. There is no twist at all of you pick it up. It's really well made, and feels great.

The default key caps are flat as previously mentioned, and do not have sides. They do shine the RGB LED lighting through them pretty well, and you can easily see the switch glow itself since the switches are not covered unless you replace the key caps. There is a volume wheel on the top right corner of the keyboard, which I love; you can press in to mute if you like. I love knobs or dials like this on my keyboards, and I'm grateful it's there. There are lots of Fn+key options for things like lighting controls, media, profile switching, and even bringing up Swarm II or taking a screen snip. I was surprised the number pad is actually hidden under the Fn layer also, in the 'uio/jkl/nm,' group of keys that maps to '789/456/123', mostly mapping to the number pad, except for the 0; you'll have to reach the top row for that one.

Once I launched the Turtle Beach Swarm II software, I quickly realized a couple of things. One is this software is a massive jump over the original ROCCAT Swarm. I never thought Swarm was bad, but wow is this one so much better. It looks great, and the powerful functionality is just so much easier to use, and that's really evident when programming this keyboard. The other thing I discovered is this is by far and away the most programmable keyboard I've ever seen. Perhaps keyboards supported by QMK can do as much or more; I can't say as I do not (yet?) have one. But even if that's the case, I suspect a few of these features go past even what that can do.

Unlike previous Vulcan series keyboards I reviewed, this one lets you program and remap almost every single key, with the exception of the chord keys themselves. Chord keys are keys you hold to do another thing. While 'shift' might be a classic example of that, in this case I mean the special keys for this keyboard. For example, Fn is a chord key, because when you hold it, the rest of the keys do something else. Many keyboards have this. But in this case, you can do almost anything with it.

Every main primary key can be remapped if you want. The only exceptions are the Fn key, the Windows key, and the volume wheel; these cannot be remapped. The entire keyboard can have an alternate Fn+ function. This is the first keyboard from Turtle Beach like this; on previous ones, it was only a portion could be remapped. You also get an entirely new toggle layer called Game Mode.  (Previous keyboards have allowed you to remap extensively in Game Mode also.)  To activate it, you press Fn+Windows key, and it activates an LED and you are in Game Mode. Here, a whole bunch of new options are available. This includes a new chord key, the caps lock key. Rather than caps lock, here it's called Easy Shift, and can also be used to remap any key except itself, and also the Fn and Windows key, just like in the main layer. The reason caps lock is used instead is because most of the main set of gaming alphabet and number keys can be easily reached while you hold caps lock down. So you have two full layers of keys to remap, and two full chord layers to remap. And all of the changes, assuming they are functions that don't require Swarm II to be running to change, can all be stored on the keyboard. Oh, and did I mention you can also store up to five profiles on the keyboard also? So you can have five profiles, with four different layers of key programmability each profile. So, I guess technically, the possibilities aren't endless, but they are pretty close and more than I could possibly ever use.

As I mentioned before, magnetic switches have a special power. The first is simple: in software, you can set the global activation point of the keyboard. (The Corsair K70 MAX I mentioned earlier actually lets you set the activation point per key, while in this case the primary layer all has to match.) The following features are only available in Game Mode and the Easy Shift chord of that, but they are wild. They are Rapid Trigger, Multi-Input, and Controller emulation.

Rapid Trigger is a feature where you can allow a key to reactivate without letting it return to fully extended again first. In other words, you can press the key down enough to activate it, and at any point in the stroke, wiggle your finger up and down in place to reactivate that key repeatedly. Even just a little bit, kind of like mashing on an old Nintendo controller back in the day for certain button press challenges. This Rapid Trigger mode is only possible on hall-effect switches, and is a major selling point for most if not all of them. The Corsair mentioned also has it; though it wasn't ready at launch, it works now. Rapid Trigger is nice because while gaming it all but guarantees your input will be seen, even perhaps along with some ghost inputs, but in those cases that rarely matters.

The next mode is even crazier, and it's Multi-Input. With this mode, you can set up to three activation points, where when you press the switch, it presses one or more additional keys as you go farther down. Imagine a shallow press of 'w' pressing, well, 'w', but as you press farther, it activates sprint. This way you can save a keypress. And if you can think of a third input to activate, you can do that, too. (The Corsair supports two levels of Multi-Input; this supports up to three.)

If that insanity was not enough, oh there's more. That this exists blows my mind, but it's pretty awesome. Now, imagine your game supports mouse, keyboard, and gamepad simultaneously. If you wanted to, you might be able to buy or build a custom controller for your left hand while using the mouse to aim. But some players might prefer to stick with the keyboard controls they are used to, but still desire analog stick levels of control. Well, this keyboard can do that. It's absolutely insane. What you can do is, map controller axis to individual keys, and depending on how far you press, that's how far the stick is pressed. Even Steam sees the 'controller' as an XInput controller (not DirectInput) and you can test it and it behaves exactly like you would want it to. It absolutely blew my mind. And you can map every other button on a standard controller to any key on the keyboard. And the best part is, you don't even need Swarm II running to use this. I proved it by taking my keyboard and connecting it to a laptop without it installed; Steam still saw the input just as it did on my desktop. (This part did not work on Linux in my testing, only Windows, but who knows - maybe someday.)

Suffice it to say, my mind is blown. The feature set of this keyboard is beyond anything I've ever seen. Of course you can do all of the custom RGB lighting you expect in a modern keyboard, including setting individual key colors or various patterns like colorwave, snake, heartbeat, and more. There is also a wacky hall-effect mode where you can have the keyboard light up the number key row based on how far you pressed the most recent key. It's cool looking and shows off the magnetic sensing feature well but likely to distract after a while.

I have long felt the ROCCAT guys put a remarkable attention to detail in their products, especially over things like Fn+ key chords and stuff like that. But the Turtle Beach Vulcan II TKL Pro has taken this care to the next level. It's programmable unlike any keyboard I've ever seen, and then some with a wacky controller emulation mode like nothing else. Did I mention you can emulate both analog sticks and both analog triggers? So yes, you can play racing games, with analog acceleration, with your keyboard. This is wild. Perhaps this isn't the only, or first, keyboard like this, I don't know. But for the asking price, you are getting an insane amount of functionality. And, unlike some vendor's software, Swarm II runs just fine in a virtual machine, so you can configure it that way if you prefer to game Penguin-Powered (aka Linux).

The one area this keyboard is behind some of the competition is in polling rate. Turtle Beach has not yet made the leap past 1000Hz. Does that actually matter? Probably not. But the competition is up to an 8,000Hz polling rate, so if you want the absolutely fastest keyboard, this might be a tiny bit behind. One other thing to note: wrist rests have never been a strong suit of ROCCAT's, and while this Turtle Beach one is a big improvement, it's still not quite there. The main reason? It uses a foam and cloth material that seems like it won't last too long, but the bigger issue is the white version has white cloth on top. I am sure you can imagine what happened the first time I ate chocolate near my desk. I now have a nice stain that's likely there for the long haul, forever reminding me when I snuck in that piece of chocolate to my desk.

If you are in the market for the advanced features of a hall-effect keyboard, and you prefer to type without a number pad, then please take a good, hard look at this Turtle Beach Vulcan II TKL Pro. The way they implemented these switches is so revolutionary that it really deserves almost an entirely new model name, perhaps the Vulcan III, but II Pro will have to do for now. Whatever the good folks at Turtle Beach decide when it comes to their product names, I really hope their next full-sized and smaller 60% and/or 65% keyboards come with these amazing switches and are just as configurable as this one. As just a regular keyboard, it feels like a nice and quiet, smooth, linear switch. But if you need the programmable features on offer, there's nothing like it I've ever seen. I'll be thinking long and hard on where I want to keep using this keyboard, because it's quite special. If it stays on my desk, I might need to upgrade the PBT keycaps. Either way, strongly recommended if this feature set seems exciting to you!