Tesoro Durandal Ultimate Keyboard Review

Overview

 

A month or so ago I took a look at the Lobera Supreme, a top of the line back-lit RGB mechanical keyboard from Tesoro and it earned itself a well deserved Silver Dogtag award. Today I will be looking at another keyboard from Tesoro aimed at the more budget concious Gamer, enter the Tesoro Durandal Ultimate (G1NL). The Durandal Ultimate is a fully mechanical, backlit Gaming keyboard with Cherry MX switches, four key switches are available (Red, Brown, Blue & Black) this is the Brown version. The keyboard has 128KB of on-board memory and is fully programmable with macro support. There’s a full length wrist rest as well as a USB 2.0 hub and on-board audio ports. The Durandal also supports Full N-Key Rollover via USB.

Please note that this review sample features a US layout, a UK layout is available though.

 

 

As is the norm for Tesoro the Durandal Ultimate came in a black and purple box (it’s actually quite a striking colour scheme), with a large Tesoro logo shaped window on the right allowing you to see a section of the keyboard within. The front of the box gives very little else away…

The back of the box shows a large picture of the Durandal Ultimate highlighting the following features:

 

 

The sides of the box highlight other features of the Durandal Ultimate as well as show the switch designation (in this case Cherry MX Brown).

 

 

As you can see the Durandal Ultimate was well packaged with the keyboard sitting in a plastic cover and further protected by soft-cell foam.

 

 

Within the box other than the keyboard itself we find a Tesoro wallet. Within the wallet we find a Quick Start Guide, a Tesoro catalogue and a Utilities CD.

At the time of writing the Tesoro Durandal Ultimate keyboard is retailing at for approximately £80 on Amazon and comes with a 1 year warranty.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Tesoro

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

First impressions of the Tesoro Durandal Ultimate are very good, it’s a good looking, well made mechanical keyboard. This time around Tesoro has opted for Cherry MX (Brown) switches an upgrade to the Khali switches used in the Tesoro Lobera Supreme. The keyboard is a nice size too, there’s no additional keys around the edge of the board keeping the board nice a compact. The inclusion of a wrist rest is, as always a welcome sight too…

 

 

Looking at the back of the Durandal and at the USB hub we see a warning sticker warning us that the maximum current for the USB ports is only 100mA, perfect for USB devices and USB drives, not so good for charging.

With the label removed we can see the two USB ports and the Headphone and Microphone ports, the two USB ports are very close together though, meaning that once you have one thing plugged in it’s difficult to insert another…

 

Looking at the back of the Tesoro Durandal Ultimate there’s not too much to see, other than the model details. There are four rubber feet though, one in each corner.

 

Looking at the side of the Durandal Ultimate we can see the nice gentle increase in height from front to back, as you can see the profile of the keyboard is really rather nice.

If you wish, the back of the keyboard can be lifted by around 12mm courtesy of two rubber tipped feet, this particular angle worked well for me when combined with the supplied wrist rest.

 

The supplied full length wrist rest is also rather smart, and it just clips into place on the base of the keyboard, allowing the silver Tesoro logo to still shine through. 😉

 

 

At this point I’m rather impressed by the Tesoro Durandal Ultimate, it may not have all the ‘Bell ‘n Whistles’, but what it does, it does right. So far so good…

 

Hardware Installation

 

The Tesoro Durandal Ultimate requires just a single USB socket for full operation of the keyboard, including its two USB ports. Should you wish to source your audio from the keyboard (not something we would recommend), then you’ll need to plug those 3.5mm Jack plugs (Headphone/Microphone) into your sound-card. All of these plugs sit at the end of a 1.5m braided cable; it’s a little heavy duty, but this is a common problem with high functionality keyboards.

 

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

The Tesoro Durandal Ultimate was tested on my Intel Test Rig, a fresh installation of Windows Home Premium 64bit (service pack 1) was performed prior to testing.q

 

The following games were used during testing:

• Survarium (BETA)
• Metro 2033 Redux
• Betrayer

 

Hardware Performance

 

With the Tesoro Durandal Ultimate powered up we can take a look at its lighting, you cannot change the colour (red), but there are some predefined Profiles for you to choose from, these are detailed below:

These Profiles can be accessed by holding down the FN key and using 2 & 8 on the number-pad.

 

 

 

SOFTWARE

 

The software that’s supplied with the Durandal Ultimate is pretty basic, but again what’s here works well, once you’ve worked out how to record a Macro that is. Although software is supplied with the Durandal, the latest version of the software was downloaded form the Tesoro website (here). Version 1.0.0 was downloaded and used throughout testing.

 

 

The main screen (shown above) allows you to setup and manage up to five Profiles, these Profiles can be accessed by FN + F7 – F11. Macros can be assigned to any key (just select Macro M1 – M10) and then assign to the key of your choice. Once this is done you can simply assign (via the dropdown box) a simple Windows function (Cut, Copy, Print etc) or record a Macro. Unfortunately Macros can only be recorded at the keyboard level, this I feel is a shame and this functionality should really be on any Gaming keyboard with Macro ability…

 

Final Thoughts

 

The Tesoro Durandal Ultimate (G1NL) may not have the fancy lighting of its big brother the Lobera Supreme, but it does feature Cherry MX switches and pretty much everything it does, it does well…

As we have come to expect from Tesoro the Durandal Ultimate came very well packaged and protected. There’s not much in the box, but everything you do need is present, including a Quick Start Guide and Drivers on CD. A single USB socket gets the keyboard up ‘n running and there’s additional audio ports should you wish to connect them. Although I found that due to additional interference via the keyboard, your headset is better plugged directly into your PC.

The Durandal Ultimate has a good set of features, and other than the aforementioned Cherry MX switches it has full LED backlighting (red), features a USB hub, a wrist rest, is programmable and supports up to five Profiles. Unfortunately the Macro recording doesn’t support mice, which IMHO is a definite oversight for a Gaming keyboard.

From a performance point of view the Tesoro Durandal Ultimate performed extremely well, no doubt courtesy of its Cherry MX Brown switches. In Game the keys were very responsive and I didn’t find that my fingers suffered any fatigue, even during the longer Gaming sessions. The wrist rest also provided an decent amount of support again ensuring that my hand and wrist suffered no discomfort. I would have liked the wrist rest to be a little deeper, but to be fair I’m nit picking now…

The software performed well and even looks a good too, it may be basic but what is there is easy to use and functions well.

Overall the Durandal Ultimate is a great keyboard from Tesoro it features Cherry MX switches (available in Red, Blue, Black or Brown) and it features pretty much all of the functionality you would need as a Gamer. At approximately £80 at the time of review it also offers more for your money than its bigger brother the Lobera Supreme. Given the choice I’d take this one… 😉

 

Verdict

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Many thanks to Tesoro for providing this sample for review