NZXT Function Elite MiniTKL

NZXT has the ability to both miss the mark and miss the mark badly, especially when they offer premium features and build quality at a lower price than their equally established competitors. Recently, they've even demonstrated the ability to do both in a row, with the Lift Wireless Elite mouse failing to reason when the Capsule Elite microphone did.

So, in which camp can we place their latest keyboard, the Function Elite MiniTKL? As the name suggests, it's a serious, performance-oriented, and space-saving keyboard that ditches the ten numpad keys in favour of a slimmer look, but beyond that, what sets it apart from the rest of the fringe that makes up the market right now?

We might as well address the elephant in the room first. This £170 keyboard has no wireless functionality whatsoever. That's despite the fact that competing keyboards with the same 8000Hz polling rate can offer some form of 2.4GHz connectivity for even less money (you can get a Corsair K70 Pro, a Lemokey P1 Pro, and a number of others, just to name a few). Now, it's not that NZXT is skimping on several essential features, but for this price, you as a consumer deserve to get pretty much the whole package.

That said, it's the same 75% layout that so many love, and with pretty precise and intelligent placements all around. That said, there are no "toys" here. There are no macro keys, no scroll wheel, everything is cut to the bone, and it would make sense if the keyboard arrived at a really competitive price, but it just doesn't really do that. The base is solid plastic, but the frame all around is heavy aluminium. There are knurled surfaces on the sides, which don't really do anything functional, but help to convince that we're dealing with quality here.

We have, of course, double-shot PBT caps, and under them we find NZXT's own "Dual Rail Adjustable Magnetic Switches". It's a very long name, but they are super responsive, tactile, and well-designed, there's no way around it. You can determine the activation point yourself, from 0.6 millimetres to 0.16 millimetres, and activation requires 30 grams, so they are quite light, but without losing the aforementioned tactility.

This is combined with an 8000Hz polling rate. It's very impressive, and now that the keyboard only works with cable, there's no option to... well, not use it. This means that if those tiny, granular nanoseconds matter to you, this keyboard can keep up.

There's nothing really wrong with the performance itself, and what's more, thanks to the extra focus on strong RGB all around the edge, the RGB lighting is actually extra prominent here. It's all set up with CAM, which is still a slightly heavy software suite, but is now much more user-friendly than before.

No, it's more in contextual, broad analysis of what else the market can offer that it all falls apart a bit. You can get a Keychron K2 HE, or MAX, for significantly less than NZXT is asking here, and that's with wireless functionality and Bluetooth. It lacks a scroll wheel, it lacks a little extra flavour to justify a keyboard that's super nice, but it stumbles in comparison and when it comes to an actual recommendation.