Turtle Beach Vulcan II TKL review

Remember when Turtle Beach just made headsets? The days of focusing on making headshots sound orgasmic are over for this company, which has recently expanded its offerings to include flight simulation equipment, controllers, and even direct-drive wheels. After acquiring brilliant German innovator Roccat in 2019 and retiring the brand in 2024, the company now offers gaming keyboard designs like Vulcan under its own name.

This brings us to this Volcano II TKLa full-size keyless board whose look and feature list will be like putting on comfortable ancient shoes for anyone who’s tried the previous Vulcan, and whose Titan HS mechanical switches offer a truly distinctive, linear experience.

Rating gaming keyboards is hard these days because they have become extremely specialized. Manufacturers are expanding their offerings to cater to as many of your preferred tactile sensations as possible, and there really is a lot of personal preference when comparing one to the other. That said, there are some empirical factors, such as build quality, that aid in the plight of impoverished, pushy reviews like mine.

In this case, the Vulcan II TKL makes a great first impression. The aluminum base plate makes this board look and feel much more luxurious than it actually is, and distracts attention from the amount of lightweight plastic used elsewhere.

Not that Turtle Beach skimps on construction materials: when you press a key, you feel the result of hundreds of petite design and construction decisions interacting with each other, and it’s clear that most of those decisions were good ones in this case.

When it comes to the precise feel of the Titan HS switches, that’s true Exactly my business. Smooth, linear, with more resistance than most linear switches, a shorter travel and a wonderfully constant level of resistance that keeps keystrokes stable and consistent. If you prefer a noticeable “click” when you register a key press, these switches are not for you. The same applies to people addicted to this aggressive, rumbling sound.

If not, this is a great option.

The tenkey-less layout is straightforward and unencumbered by media controls, but it does include a clickable volume knob in the upper right corner, which is always a useful addition. In Roccat colors, the top-of-the-line Vulcan came with a clear rubber palm rest that worked nicely with the RGB lighting emitted from the bottom edge of the board, but there’s nothing like it at this lower price point. In fact, because the keycaps on this board are shallow, the RGB gives the impression of an “open plan”, with lightweight spilling between each key.

This may not be to everyone’s taste. Personally, I’m cheerful with it, and the AIMO lighting technology (which allows you to sync with what’s happening in-game via the Swarm app) is a fun toy to play with. At least for the first few hours you get that.

Turtle Beach seems keen to point out in its Vulcan II TKL marketing materials that these switches are hot-swappable, which means you can not only replace faulty switches with the three supplied replacement parts, but also update the board to your preferred switches without having to destroy your soldering iron.

Your mileage may vary on this one, but I personally don’t find it a particularly useful selling point. While the keyboard is technically hot-swappable, which means you can swap out the keys while it’s plugged in and powered on, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea or particularly convenient. The design of this particular board makes prying out the switches quite hard, so I didn’t feel like experimenting too much.

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This is a board that can be customized in other ways as well. Using the (harmless but mediocre) Swarm software, you can save and switch between up to five profiles with macros and RGB schemes attached to them. There is a Game Mode that allows you to set the Shift key specific to that mode and overlay it with a number of additional input bindings. Personally, I never operate features like this last one. I’ve played around with some custom RGB schemes specific to certain games, but having this option won’t be too much of a ripple for me as an avid consumer.

And yet, after a few weeks of operate, I really like this board. This is largely a subjective matter because I click – if you’ll excuse the perfect pun – so well when it comes to tactile sensations. It’s not just that these switches are linear. The point is that they operate smoothly, consistently linearly at every keystroke point, and that they are attached to such a solid frame considering the price.

It may not be a gigantic deal since it’s devoid of any visual standouts, but it’s a shape, size, and feel that I can get along with. While I would be more willing to consider the disadvantages of this mechanical board over an analog board if it were priced higher, at $120 it seems like a reasonable spec.