Performance
This is a tricky one to test, as it’s nothing like the normal “gaming” keyboards we review, this is a professional use keyboard for a fairly broad, yet specific task. If you’re working as an operator for something like the emergency services, it can be vital that you can transcribe lots of information efficiently, so there’s a real benefit here to never having to take your hands away from the keys. If you’re dealing with data entry, you may be dealing with multiple systems, such as a tablet device and a desktop system, perhaps you have a Linux database and a Windows PC, it doesn’t really matter what, but if you need to jump from one to the other without skipping a beat, the Falcon is one of the most efficient solution.
Question is, does it work? Yet it really does work well, the hot swapping of paired devices is absolutely fantastic and it’s very handy for someone like myself who may be managing a couple of hardware test benches at any one time. I can switch over to the other system, run some benchmarks, flick back to my main PC and write in the results, then flick over to my HTPC to put on an album to keep myself entertained; it’s a very cool feature.
The keys are quite responsive and certainly accurate to type on, but I just don’t like the feel of them. They’re rubber dome keys with no hard key caps, so they feel a little wobbly under your fingers and that’s a far cry from my personal mechanical keyboard. I couldn’t work from this all the time, but then again it’s not designed for the kind of work I do, nor is it designed for PC gaming.
If I were to use this at home, it would certainly be as a HTPC keyboard, as the thumbster optical mouse works surprisingly well, meaning I can browse websites on the big screen via my HTPC. In an office, where you manage multiple systems, or in an environment that requires something water and dust proof, such as medical and possibly military scenarios, you’ll be very happy with what the Falcon has to offer.
