Unboxing & Review: Royal Kludge RG-987 Mechanical Keyboard

Royal Kludge, a Chinese made mechanical keyboard that has made its way to the international market through the various channel including Massdrop, is said to be one of the best Chinese made keyboards you can get. We’ve never actually tried one yet, not until today. Special thanks to Novero Gaming Store for providing us with a Royal Kludge RG-987 mechanical keyboard for our review here today.

The Royal Kludge RG-987 retails at RM 250 and it’s probably the cheapest RGB mechanical keyboard we’ve seen to date. Let’s see what kind of quality we can expect from the RG-987, aside from being a surprisingly affordable option for RGB mechanical keyboard.

Unboxing

The packaging is surprisingly simple for its name, unlike most of the Chinese made keyboards with fancy or over-exaggerating packaging.

At the back of the box, you’ll find its prominent features all written in Chinese – NKRO, Windows key lock, ergonomic curve, mechanical switches, Gold plated USB connector, FN function key, doubleshot keycaps.

You’re not getting much from the box, the user’s manual and product certification label is the only accessories you’ll get.

The RG-987 keyboard comes available in 2 colors, black, and white. The key alignment is surprisingly okay, uniform spacing between each key, pretty solid build quality, all the basic requirement of a good quality keyboard can be found on the RG-987.

The ergonomic curve which Royal Kludge claims can be seen from the side of the keyboard, a design that has been around for decades to allow you to type on more comfortably for longer hours a flat profile.

A Ferrite core is attached to the cable to eliminate any potential interference, something that has been done by the majority of keyboard manufacturers for the past decade. The gold plated USB connector gives it a stronger resistance against oxidation, keeps it nice and shiny over time.

The multimedia control keys on the F1~F6 and the LED profile keys on the right of the keyboard can be triggered using the FN key located at t the right of the space bar.

Doubleshot keycaps have becoming more prominent nowadays and it can be spotted on quite a number of Chinese brand keyboards. It’s not the kind of double shot we’ve used to see on Cherry keyboards, but it’ll definitely last a whole lot longer than the usual black paint coated keycaps.

Cherry stabilizers are seen used on longer keys like the space bar, shift key, enter key, etc.

The mechanical switch used, Kailh, one of the most popular Cherry MX imitations, and it has been used by a number of renowned brands i.e Razer, SteelSeries, Tesoro, etc.

The bottom of the keyboard, nice and clean.

The keyboard feet comes with a rubber pad for that extra grip you’ll need to keep the keyboard in place with or without the keyboard feet raised.

While Royal Kludge never specifically mentioned anything about voiding the warranty by breaking the seal, but it’s best to stay away from the seal if you need the 1-year limited warranty from Royal Kludge.

The key rollover is really commendable overall, we’re able to hold down each and every key with no signs of signal blocking and ghosting effect, just wonderful.

Final Thoughts

The Royal Kludge RG-987 has that fancy lighting but limited that’s good enough to impress your friend, the built quality isn’t perfect but it’s surprisingly good, full key rollover (NKRO), double shot keycap, consistent switch alignment. All these qualities are available at the price of RM250, pretty sweet deal indeed and it’s definitely one of the decent budget-oriented mechanical keyboards that we’ve come across so far.

Pros