Thermaltake Challenger Gaming Keyboard and Mouse Combo Review

A Closer Look & Performance

First impressions go a long way, and honestly, the Challenger Combo makes a strong one. It’s a nice looking keyboard and mouse. Nothing crazy, nothing too flashy, but certainly presentable. You wouldn’t feel the need to hide them under your desk when you had guests around, put it that way. Both come hard-wired with a USB cable, no software is needed (or available), so just plug in and play.

The keyboard looks neat and tidy, with no real surprises to the design. It’s a matte finish which looks smart enough. There is a bit of a wrist rest there too. However, it’s quite short, but still surprisingly comfortable to use overall.

Caps

The key caps are tidy enough and have a nice clear font on them. They’re fixed keys though, as this is a membrane keyboard after all. However, at this price, I’m hardly going to moan about not being able to add custom caps, which would likely cost twice the value of the keyboard.

Added Features

The keyboard may be affordable, but it’s far from basic. It features volume controls up on the top row. As with all the other added features, these are accessed using the FN-Shift key.

Further along, there are some built-in multimedia controls too. These are fantastic, as I listen to a lot of music throughout the day and while I’m gaming. No one wants to tab out of their online game to change tracks, so thanks Tt for including these.

There are some basic windows shortcuts too, albeit I’m not sure many people need them, but it doesn’t hurt to include them.

Lighting

The built-in lighting is a fixed RGB rainbow layout, it doesn’t flow or anything. However, you can turn it on and off, or adjust the brightness to three levels using Page Up and Page Down if required.

Check out those funky arrow keys! They look like little space ships or arrow heads; or both.

The keyboard is full-size, so you get a full number pad on the right. Again, not really a big surprise here, but it’s still worth pointing out.

More!

There’s the FN-Shift tucked down here next to Alt. However, there’s also a flip key to turn the keyboard to left or right handed use. This will flip it so that WASD become the UDLR arrow keys. I’m not going to use this feature, but honestly, I can see this proving quite handy to a lot of people.

Finally, we have the Windows Lock key, so you don’t accidentally open the start menu while you’re gaming; a simple but effective feature.

Build Quality

Honestly, it’s pretty basic but fairly decent too. It’s a plastic frame and quite light. However, it didn’t feel like it was poorly made. It’s a cheap keyboard though, so it’s unreasonable to expect heavy-duty construction.

There are two large kickstands on the base, giving you some extra angle should you desire it.

Plus some thick rubber grips help keep it firmly planted on your desktop.

The Mouse

It’s a pretty cool mouse design actually. It’s built for right-handed ergonomics, with a deep cut-out on the side so you can really get your thumb in there for added grip.

There are lots of grooves and lines cut into the design. This helps with grip too, however, the rearmost grooves are actually housing some LED lighting.

You’ll find the same on the right side too, with more grip lines and more LED lighting.

It’s a six-button design. That includes the LMB/RMB, two side buttons, mouse wheel clicker and the DPI toggle. The mouse is fairly light to handle, so feels fast and nimble enough for twitchy shooters. However, since you can drop the DPI down to 800 DPI, it’s plenty smooth and accurate when you need it.

The optical sensor will max out at 2400 DPI, which is plenty fast for 1080/1440p resolutions. The optical sensor is pretty decent too, it feels smooth and accurate, and honestly, it’s surprisingly good given how affordable this bundle is.

RGB

The whole thing lights up with some lovely colours. I should point out again that this isn’t a colour flow pattern, it’s fixed like this, with green on the left, and blue on the right. Again, it’s nothing “fancy” but it looks cool and is as much RGB as I would expect for a product in this price range. It’s a cheap way of giving it a premium look and it works surprisingly well.

The mouse only has four colours, which change as you change the DPI level. However, just like the keyboard, it can fade on and off for a little added visual flair.