Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro L White
It will shine on any desk.
CoolerMaster has designed a ‘ board with very bright, plain white backlighting, rather than sporting millions of colours (although these are available, too, if you must). Those large, bright LEDs come as a result of a redesigned PCB. The microUSB cable is a removable affair and the Windows key has been rebranded the CoolerMaster key. Nice.
The Pro L gives the impression of having a lot of keys but not much board. The keys on our model had Cherry MX Brown switches (Blues and Reds can also be fitted). Above the numeric keypad (a tenkeyless ‘S’ version of the keyboard is available), there are four P keys, while at the right of the space bar, you’ll find a Fn key very much like that found on laptops. Using this as a modifier, the F keys control every aspect of the keyboard, without needing to go into the bundled software, enabling you to alter the lighting and repeat rate, and record macros, along with switching profiles. Holding down Fn gives a readout of the keyboard’s current settings, too — a thoughtful addition.
Inside the Pro L sits an ARM Cortex M3 processor, a 32-bit chip, ticking along at 72MHz. It’s not hugely powerful, but it’s enough to make the Pro L feel snappy in use, with no lag.
The Pro L is well built and looks the business with its matte-black exterior pierced by its brilliant white LED lighting, but its main problem is the competition. It’s priced in a bracket that puts it up against keyboards from the likes of Logitech and Razer, and sadly, the CoolerMaster is likely to be overlooked.