Thermaltake Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard Review

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Thermaltake Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard Review
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By David Ramsey

Manufacturer: Thermaltake Technology Co., Ltd.
Product Name: Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard
Part Number: KB-PZP-KLBLUS-01
UPC: 8411630230 EAN: 4717964400420
Price As Tested: $99.99 (Thermaltake Store)

Full Disclosure: Thermaltake’s Tt eSPORTS division provided the product sample used in this article.

As the consumer mechanical keyboard resurgence matures, vendors are looking for ways to distinguish their products. Thermaltake’s “Tt eSPORTS” division has a new idea for a feature: a Bluetooth 4.0-enabled smart keyboard that, in conjunction with an iOS or Android applet on your phone or tablet, tracks and compiles statistics on how you use your keyboard (and your enabled mouse, if you have one) for posting to social media. Benchmark Reviews looks at the Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard in this article.

My first article for Benchmark Reviews, back in 2009, was entitled “Professional Mechanical Keyboards”, and at the time such keyboards were not only unusual, but pretty expensive. Now you can get a good mechanical keyboard that will last for many years for not that much money, with prices for basic keyboards as low as $60 or so. This price drop has been fueled by the expiration of the patents of German mechanical key switch maker Cherry, allowing several Chinese companies to introduce lower-cost clones of the famous Cherry switches.

Unlike most other gaming keyboards, the Poseidon Z Smart Keyboard does not support any macro functionality. In fact there are no special drivers you have to install to use this keyboard: just plug it in and go. You will need to install the appropriate iOS or Android application on your tablet or smart phone to make use of its extra features, though.

Features

• Advanced Bluetooth 4.0 technology
• 4-level adjustable backlighting
• Tactile feedback Kailh blue mechanical switches rated at 50 million actuations
• N-key rollover with anti-ghosting
• Multimedia shortcuts + Windows key lockout
• 5-year warranty

Let’s take a look at this keyboard in the next section.

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Thermaltake Poseidon Z Plus Overview
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While some gaming keyboards adopt dramatic shapes and color schemes, the Poseidon Z Plus is as basic as they come: it’s black. With black keys surrounded by a minimalist black bezel.

The back of the keyboard has a label with a serial number, and two rubber-edged, fold-out feet to change the angle of the keyboard. A cable guide lets you control where on the back of the keyboard the cable exits, but the cable itself is permanently attached.

The keyboard’s USB plug has neither gold plating, a braided cable sleeve, nor a logo-embossed cover. None of these features, of course, provide any real functionality, so you probably won’t miss them.

A quick installation guide, a warranty booklet, and a sparse, multi-lingual installation guide are the only extras you’ll get with this keyboard.

Let’s take a closer look at this keyboard in the next section.

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Mechanical Keyboard Closer Look
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The F1 through F7 keys are overloaded with media controls that function when you press them while holding down the “Fn” key.

The F8 key resets the keyboard’s Bluetooth connection.

The double-arrow key at the upper right of the keyboard latches down to transform the Windows key to a Control key, so pressing the Windows accidentally won’t screw up your game.

The Poseidon Z Plus uses backlit Kailh blue switches (below, right), which are clones of the Cherry MX Blue switches (left). Both types of switches are “tactile”, meaning you can feel a click when the actuation point has passed, as well as “clicky”, which means that you can hear the click as well.

Comparing this keyboard to my Das Keyboard keyboard using genuine Cherry switches reveals that the switch feel of the Kailh blue is virtually identical to that of the Cherry blues; perhaps a very slight amount “heavier” in actuation force. As you can see in this image, each key switch on the Poseidon Z Plus has its own LED for backlighting.

The backlighting is a very deep blue color, but the illumination of the key legends has the same problem as any other backlit Cherry or Cherry clone keyboard: only the legends at the top of the key get any light. However, since the Kailh switches use the same key cap mount as genuine Cherry switches, you can if you wish avail yourself of the many third-party key cap sets and change them out.

So far we have a pretty standard Cherry-type basic mechanical keyboard. Let’s take a look at the software in the next section.

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Tt eSPORTS Application
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Unlike most other gaming keyboards, the Thermaltake Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard doesn’t require any special software…that is, it doesn’t require any special software on your computer. What you do need to do is to download the Tt eSPORTS+ app on your iOS or Android smart phone, and then pair it with your keyboard. Although the keyboard is a Bluetooth 4.0 device, you can’t use it as a remote keyboard connecting through Bluetooth; it’s only for communicating with the smartphone app.

The first thing you have to do once you download and install the app is log in: you can do this either by creating a new account, or logging in with your Facebook credentials (which the app can import automatically if you have the Facebook app installed on your phone). Here’s where I ran into the first problem: every time I tried to create a new account, I saw this:

Presumably this is an error message, but I don’t know what it says. Logging in with Facebook, on the other hand, was easy, although you’ll have to agree to the dreaded “Can we post for you” condition:

Once you’ve logged in, your next step is to pair the keyboard with your phone. Although this should be easy, it proved almost impossible during the course of my review.

When you try to pair the keyboard, the app presents a list of possible devices. In many cases this list is blank, and remains blank, even though the phone and the keyboard are only a foot apart. In the cases where the keyboard actually appears (as shown above), touching the keyboard name to initiate pairing frequently results in a spinning cursor that never goes away.

However, after many tries, I was able to get the phone and keyboard paired (you would think that once paired, you wouldn’t have to worry about it again, in the same way that you only have to pair with a Bluetooth headset or your car’s hands free system once. You’d be wrong: I had to pair, or try to, every time I ran the app).

The next step is to choose the type of game you’ll be playing from the list presented by the app.There are a total of eight applications types in the scrolling list, which aside from the four shown below include FPS, SPG, AVG, and SLG. There’s also a button with five dots on it, which perhaps means “Other”.

Once you’ve selected your game type, you can start playing, and the app will collect statistics on your keyboard use. When you’re done, you can view these: stats collected include duration, total number of “clicks” (key presses, presumably); clicks per minute, and number of times each key was pressed. Here are my statistics from a hot 7-minute session of Wofenstein: The New Order:

You can even see the data graphically.

OK, let’s post this to Facebook– sharing on social media is the entire point of the Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard:

And that’s where things stand. Thermaltake says that they have submitted a new version of the application to the Apple app store, but it will likely be a couple of weeks before it’s approved. At that time I’ll check back and update this review with the new information.

I’ll present my final thoughts and conclusion about this keyboard in the next section.

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Mechanical Keyboard Final Thoughts
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The Thermaltake Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard is an interesting innovation that stands out in the gaming keyboard universe. The use of Kailh switches provides the equivalent feel of Cherry switches while enabling Thermaltake to keep costs down, and if you’re worried about the quality of a Chinese clone of a German mechanical switch, Thermaltake covers this product with an exceptional 5-year warranty.

The use of “blue” switches, with their added noise and clicky feel, is an unusual choice for a gaming keyboard (Thermaltake also offers this keyboard with Kailh brown switches, which retain the tactile feel but are much quieter); most gaming keyboards use linear, non-tactile switches like Cherry MX Red or Cherry MX Black, and Kailh offers clones of these as well. Now personally I prefer the blues, even for gaming, but I’m in the minority.

As a basic mechanical keyboard, the Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard acquits itself well. If you’re new to mechanical keyboards, you’ll be very impressed with the feel of these high-quality switches, although you’ll want to keep the noise thing in mind if you’re the kind of person who might game while someone’s trying to sleep one room over– in this case the version that uses the much quieter brown switches would be preferred.

The keyboard is bereft of higher-end features such as USB pass through ports and dedicated media and macro keys, but that’s not what it’s designed for: its signature feature if the software for collecting and sharing statistics, and this is where the problems occur. I see two main issues:

• The existing version of the software is all but unusable. Thermaltake has a new version ready that should be available for download from the Apple and Google app stores in a week or two, though.
• The concept strikes me as weak. You’re not posting your game scores; you’re posting how many times you hit a particular key, and with what frequency. You could rack up amazing keyboard statistics while still losing the game badly, while someone else with much lower keyboard stats could actually be a much better player.

Now, the latter point is arguable, since we’ve seen many silly features that are nonetheless popular on other gaming peripherals. The new craze for RGB keyboard lighting with programmable animations is one such example: it’s fun to look at, but I’m not looking at the keyboard when I’m gaming. Still, the attraction of glitzy visuals is easy to understand; the attraction of the Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard’s statistics collection is less so.

But there’s a simple solution if you don’t care about the software: Thermaltake offers the exact same keyboard without the Bluetooth feature as the Poseidon Z for about $25 less.

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Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard Conclusion
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Thermaltake’s eSPORTS division offers something new with the Poseidon Z Plus Smart Keyboard, but while its mechanical quality is impeccable, the software isn’t there yet. I hate having to lower the keyboard’s score so much, but the brutal fact is that the keyboard’s signature feature– the Bluetooth connectivity and supporting smart phone application– that distinguishes it from the plain Poseidon Z version simply doesn’t work. And even if it worked perfectly, I’m not sure how interesting North American gamers would find it.

That said, I can see the stats-and-social-networking thing being more attractive in Asia, where gaming is taken Much More Seriously than it is here. And my opinion might change once I have a chance to work with the corrected version of the software.

But I can only review the product I have in hand, not a version that might fix some of the problems in a few weeks. Again, I will download and test with the updated software as soon as it’s available, and amend this review when I do.

If the social networking feature is something you think you’d like, you’re buying into potential right now. For most people, though, I think the plain, non-Plus version of the Poseidon Z is a better choice.

UPDATE: A new version of the iOS application has been released, and it seems to have fixed the non-localized (i.e. Chinese) error messages. However, I’m still unable to post anything to my Facebook account, so while the app’s no longer showing error messages you can’t read, it still doesn’t actually work.

At the time of this writing, the Thermaltake Poseidon Z Plus smart keyboard was available online for $99.99 (Thermaltake Store).

Pros:

+ High quality Kailh key switches
+ Beautiful and adjustable deep blue backlighting
+ 5 year warranty

Cons:

– Supporting smart phone software deeply flawed in its current iteration
– Key press statistics sharing on social media a dubious feature

Ratings:

• Performance: 8.00
• Appearance: 8.00
• Construction: 9.50
• Functionality: 7.50
• Value: 7.50

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Final Score: 8.1 out of 10.
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