The Vulcan II TKL is pretty, well-built, and hot-swappable. The linear switches are on the softer side, but they're still great for gaming.
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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.,
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