IOGEAR Kaliber Gaming HVER Stealth Keyboard Review

A Closer Look & Performance

There’s no doubt about it, this is a nice looking keyboard. IOGEAR has done a fine job on the design, and really, they’ve managed that by keeping things broadly simple. There are no outlandish styles here and I suspect that simplicity will keep the manufacturing costs and time as low as possible. You can really drive the price down with tried and tested manufacturing processes and I bet even the tooling for the design was either already in existence somewhere. That’s no bad thing though, keyboards are all broadly the same anyway, that’s the nature of their design.

What I do love is the finish, as it’s got a gorgeous brushed aluminium top plate. This gives the keyboard a more premium look overall, and it feels good too. Furthermore, it provides a stable mounting platform for the switches and makes the keyboard considerably more rigid overall, preventing any wobble and flex while you’re rage typing into game chat.

It’s a nice looking keyboard, and while it’s cheaper, I don’t think it looks particularly “budget” to the eye. That being said, I’d say it doesn’t look as “premium” as the top modes from Corsair, ASUS, Razer, etc,. either, but at 1/3rd the price, it can be forgiven for that, let’s be fair.

It’s a fairly lightweight keyboard, therein lies some of the truth of its price. It doesn’t feel badly made or fragile though, but it’s clear there are fewer raw materials on the underside weighing it down. Again though, this is reflected in the price, so I’m hardly going to mark it down for that! On the plus side, if you plan to travel with it, lighter isn’t always a bad thing.

The keycaps are nice enough, with a light textured finish and a double-shot design that gives them a nice quality look and feel. The font size is nice enough, with everything clear and easy to read.

There are some built-in features too, such as the CM1-5 buttons here, allowing for various profiles to be toggled on the fly. Of course, you can customise these in the desktop software, but once that’s done, it all saves to the keyboard anyway.

The top row has the F-keys, of course. However, they also have some simple program launchers on F1-F4.

There’s a set of media controls on F5-F8.

And some audio controls on the rest. I prefer dedicated keys, but hey, I’d rather have these than nothing! You just need to hold Fn Shift to access them.

However, the End key also has an Fn Shift toggle, so you can keep the secondary functions just a single key-press away.

The ergonomics of this keyboard are nice, as the body is actually fairly slim and the keys aren’t mounted too high. I do like a wrist rest, but even without one, the overall height feels comfortable. If you need to make some angle adjustments, there are two sturdy feet on the underside.

The switches are a boxed Cherry MX stem compatible design, and much like Cherry switches, they’re a copy of brown, which is why they’re brown. I’m not exactly having to channel my inner Sherlock to conclude that one. Alas, they feel like they promise to, with a nice tactile bump, but otherwise, still a quieter switch overall.

Powering on the keyboard, I leaned over it to take a photo and the num lock light shone in my eye like a laser pointer. OK, maybe not that bright, but it’s certainly surprisingly directional for an LED. With a low ceiling in a dark room, expect to see a light red glow 6ft above you on the ceiling.

The RGB is really nice though, and it defaulted to a nice effect that was halfway between twinkling stars and a rainfall effect. Of course, it’s packed with other effects to choose from. You can completely customise the lighting in the software, but honestly, there are so many built-in profiles you likely won’t need to.

I quite like these more focused gaming modes too, they look great in a dark room and help you see just what you need at a glance. The keyboard is great for gaming too, and a cheaper keyboard it may be, but once you’re up to your neck in hackers and griefers in GTA Online, it performs as well as any other mechanical keyboard really.

The typing action is nice and smooth, the keys don’t bottom out, and the switches are surprisingly quiet overall for a mechanical keyboard. The spacebar is a little clunky sounding, but again, that’s a trait that’s true of virtually all keyboards.