The Drevo Calibur V2 Pro (catchy name) is the keyboard I’m currently using with my desk setup. I’ve been through a small number of keyboards, mostly cheap Chinese off-brand ones because I’m cheap. To be fair to them I’ve never had any issues with them, but this Drevo Calibur has definitely been my favourite. I was looking to move to a wireless keyboard to tidy my desk up a bit since the only things that really cluttered the desk were the mouse and the keyboard wires. So now that I’ve upgraded to wireless for both peripherals I think my desk looks a looot nicer. I never realised how irritating those wires were.
So, the Drevo Calibur. Though not a particularly high end keyboard I think the Calibur provides the perfect level of build quality, design and typing experience. My experience with mechanical keyboards had previously been only with blue switches, all from Ouetemu I think. From my experience, blue switches were actually quite enjoyable to type on. They were nice and clicky, giving you the right response to ensure you were certain you pressed a key, but now that I’ve tried brown switches I don’t think I can ever go back to the loud clicking of blue switches. The Drevo still uses Oetemu switches but just in their brown variant. They still provide a nice click when they hit the bottom of the board so it feels satisfying to type on but it doesn’t make quite as loud a noise. Less of a high pitched click and more of a low pitched clunk. This is far less distracting and makes typing more relaxed.
The variant I purchased also comes with individual RGB lighting with a variety of effects, as well as RGB lights on the side that can be set to a couple of effects and static colours. I prefer to stick with a static colour most of the time as the effects are usually a bit distracting, and the lights on the side aren’t particularly bright so I prefer to leave them off unless I’m trying to make the keyboard look nice for a picture. The lights seem fairly bright, I’ve never had any issue with reading the legends on the keys so I don’t think there’s any problems there either. I think having the RGB on all the time does knock the battery life down quite a bit however, as the keyboard does seem to run out of charge at least every couple of days, but having a USB C charger means it’s super easy to just plug it in while it sits overnight.
The keyboard has a slightly unconventional layout. Nothing too crazy though, just a few keys removed here and there to save on desk space. I think the official name for this size is 65%, but I think there is a few variations of this size. This one has the function row removed, and the navigation keys like home, page up, page down, etc… have all been pushed beside the standard qwerty keys and the arrow keys to reduce the horizontal space taken up. This does take a little getting used to as you may end up tapping navigational keys when trying to hit enter or arrow keys but you pick up the layout pretty quick. The function keys are accessible by holding Fn and pressing the corresponding number, for example Fn + 9 = F9. This slight irritates me for the shortcuts I used regularly like Alt + F4 since I now need to press Fn + Alt + 4, so I’ve essentially stopped using that shortcut as it ends up taking longer. But overall, I do enjoy this size, not too big that it takes up the entire front of my desk and not missing so many keys that basic functionality is lost (looking at you keyboards without the arrow keys).
The Bluetooth has occasionally decided to start going extremely slowly for me as well but simply switching the board from wired mode back to wireless fixes this issue so it could in fact be an issue with Windows rather than the board itself.
Overall, very glad I bought this keyboard, looks super minimal, feels nice to type on, and doesn’t set fire to your bank account.
If you’re interested in buying the keyboard I’ve put the link below for Amazon, who seem to have all the options available for switches.
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