Das Keyboard DeltaForce 65 Review: A Keyboard With Odd Layout Choices
Alright, squad, let's load up this review of the Das Keyboard DeltaForce 65, and I've gotta say, the initial spawn point had me hyped. Das Keyboard, the OG name you remember from the early mechanical keyboard days when everyone was rocking Cherry MX Blues and pretending they were a pro coder, has finally decided to join the modern meta.It’s like when a classic game franchise drops a long-awaited sequel—the nostalgia is real, the potential for a banger is huge, but then you get hit with a day-one patch that completely breaks the core gameplay. That’s the DeltaForce 65 in a nutshell.The foundation is solid; we’re talking a move to hot-swappable sockets, so you can finally yeet those stock switches without needing a soldering PhD, and the build quality has that chonky, tank-like feel that could probably survive being rage-quit off a desk. But then, the devs—sorry, the designers—made some absolutely baffling layout choices that feel like they were patched in at the last second without any playtesting.The 65% form factor is a sacred space in the keyboard arena, a perfect balance for gamers and typists who want that precious extra desk real estate for massive mouse flicks without sacrificing the arrow keys and a few crucial nav cluster buttons. It’s the meta for a reason.But Das Keyboard decided to get… creative. We’re not talking a fun, custom macro pad layout; we’re talking about moving the question mark and slash key to a completely different layer, forcing you to hit a function key for basic punctuation.In the heat of a gaming session, when you’re trying to type '???' in the chat after a ridiculous play, or when you’re banging out a late-night essay, that’s not a quirky feature—that’s a critical hit to your workflow. It’s the equivalent of a game putting the reload button on a totally unintuitive keybind; it fights against your muscle memory, and not in a good, 'git gud' kind of way.It’s a fundamental misstep that makes you wonder if the people designing this thing actually use keyboards for extended periods. For a company with such a legacy, this feels like a missed headshot.They’ve modernized the hardware—the part that’s expensive and difficult—only to fumble the software and layout, the part that’s literally about the user experience. It’s a classic case of winning the battle but losing the war.You can have the best PBT keycaps and the smoothest linear switches, but if the core layout makes you want to ALT+F4 out of using it, what’s the point? For the price of entry into this particular lobby, you’re competing with a ton of other premium 65% boards from brands like Keychron, Glorious, and a whole ecosystem of custom kit builders who absolutely nail this layout. They understand that the 65% form factor is a refined, almost perfected design language, and messing with its core grammar is a high-risk, low-reward play.It’s a real shame because, with a more conventional, community-vetted layout, the DeltaForce 65 could have been an S-tier contender, a reliable main for both grinding ranked and smashing out content. Instead, it feels like a beta version with some glaring bugs that, for many, will be complete deal-breakers. In the end, it’s a keyboard that makes you work against it, and in a market this stacked, that’s one challenge most players just won’t accept.
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