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.
(Image credit: Future)
Vulcan II TKL specs
Size: full size (tenkeyless) Connectivity: USB-A wired Keycaps: ABS Switches: Turtle Beach Titan HS linear mechanical Hot-swappable: Yes Media controls: Yes, clickable scroll wheel Lighting: Full RGB per-key Software: Swarm Price: $120 | £90 Buy if…
✅ 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.
Don’t buy if…
❌ 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, with more resistance than most linear switches, shorter travel, and a wonderfully consistent level of resistance that makes inputting keystrokes feel stable and consistent. If you prefer a discernible ‘click’ when the keystroke registers, these switches aren’t for you. The same’s true if you’re addicted to that aggressive, thwocky sound.
If not, this is a great option.
The tenkeyless layout is simple and un-burdened by media controls, but it does feature a clickable volume wheel on the top-right corner which is always a handy addition. When it wore Roccat colours, the top-line Vulcan came with a clear rubber wrist rest which interacted nicely with the RGB lighting emitted from the bottom edge of the board, but at this lower price point there’s none of that here. In fact, since the keycaps on this board are shallow there’s an ‘open plan’ look to the RGB, with light spilling between individual keys.
That might not be to everyone’s taste. Personally, I’m happy with it, and the AIMO lighting tech (which lets you sync with what’s happening in-game via the Swarm app) is a fun toy to mess around with. At least for the first few hours you have it.
Turtle Beach seems keen to get across that these switches are hot-swappable in the Vulcan II TKL’s marketing materials, which means you can not only replace any faulty switches with the three supplied spares, but upgrade the board to switches of your preference without needing to bust out the soldering iron.
Your mileage may vary on this one, but personally I don’t find this a particularly useful selling point. While a keyboard may technically be ‘hot-swappable’ in that you can replace keys while it’s connected and powered, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea to, nor particularly convenient. The design of this particular board makes it quite tricky to actually prize the switches out, so I wasn’t moved to experiment much.
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(Image credit: Future)
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(Image credit: Future)
It’s a customisable board in other ways, too. Using the (harmless but mediocre) Swarm software you can save and swap between up to five profiles with macros and RGB schemes attached to them. There’s a game mode, which allows you to set a shift key specific to that mode and layer on a bunch of extra input assignments too. Personally, I never find myself using features like the latter. I did play around with some custom RGB schemes specific to certain games, but having this ability isn’t going to move the needle much for me as a gaming keeb consumer.
And yet after a couple of week of use, I really like this board. And that’s largely a subjective thing, because I click—if you’ll excuse the excellent pun—so well with the tactile feel. It isn’t just that these switches are linear. It’s that they’re so smoothly, consistently linear at each point of the keypress, and that they’re attached to such a sturdy frame, when you consider the price.
It might not be big on the cool factor, being devoid of any standout visual differentiators, but it’s a shape, size, and sensation that I get along with. While I might be more inclined to weigh up the downsides of this being a mechanical board versus analogue if it were priced higher, at this $120 mark it feels like a sensible spec.
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