Breaking Turtle Beach Vulcan Ii Tkl Review

A sensibly specced board to keep the cost affordable, with a great linear sensation and a few bonus features whose value varies from fun to forgettable.

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Remember when Turtle Beach just made headsets? The days of focusing on making headshots sound orgasmically thwacky are behind this company though, which has expanded its range to flight sim gear, controllers, and even direct drive wheels lately. And, after having acquired the quietly brilliant German innovator Roccat in 2019 and retired the brand name in 2024, it's now putting out gaming keyboard designs like the Vulcan under its own name.

That brings us to this Vulcan II TKL, a full-size, tenkeyless board whose design and feature list will be like putting on comfy old shoes to anyone who tried the previous Vulcan, and whose Titan HS mechanical switches offer a really distinctive, linear sensation.

Appraising gaming keyboards right now is tough, because it's become extremely specialised. Manufacturers are broadening their ranges to cater to as many preferred tactile sensations as possible, and weighing one up against another really does involve a lot of personal preference. That said, there are a few empirical factors like build quality that help the plight of poor, put-upon reviews like myself.

In this case, the Vulcan II TKL makes a great first impression. The aluminium base plate makes this board look and feel much more premium than it is, and distracts you from how much lightweight plastic is used elsewhere.

✅ You want a consistent, high-resistance linear feel: The Titan HS mechanical switches under these keycaps have a very distinctive feel, which you'll love if you generally prefer linear switches.

❌ You're looking for a cheap barebones board: Yes, the switches are technically hot-swappable, but it's fiddly in practice to do so, and as sturdy as the base chassis may be, it's not ideally suited for your experiments in different switch types.

Not that Turtle Beach has scrimped on construction materials: when you press a key, you feel the result of hundreds of tiny design and construction decisions interacting with each other, and it's clear that the majority of those decisions were good ones in this case.

As for the precise feel of those Titan HS switches, they're exactly my thing. Smooth, linear,

Source: PC Gamer