The lovely people at Redragon have sent me one of their Penumbra Pro keyboards to try out. It is an absolute slab of a board, weighing 1.8 kg, with a CNC aluminium body. “Tank solid”, Redragon call it, and they are not wrong. This feels like a military-grade piece of kit. Also, it has a very cool name:
The penumbra (from the Latin paene “almost, nearly” and umbra “shadow”) is the region in which only a portion of the light source is obscured by the occluding body.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbra,_penumbra_and_antumbra
The Penumbra Pro is an 81 key / 75% keyboard. It has an ANSI layout, is compatible with Windows, and Mac (two-position mode switch at the rear). It connects wired via USB-C or wirelessly via Bluetooth or 2.4G wireless (a three-position switch, and dongle at the rear of the board). Up to three Bluetooth devices can be stored/switched between using FN + 1/2/3. It also has a vol knob which doubles as a brightness control for the RGB backlights.
The Penumbra Pro is black with keys which grade from dark grey to battleship grey, top to bottom. The keycaps are PBT with transparent characters on the front (not the top) of the keys. Shamefully, I must admit that this always slows my typing down a little, making me realise that I must be sneaking a subliminal peek at the keys more often than any self-respecting professional should be. They do, however, fit perfectly with the aesthetic of the board, so it’s me that’s in the wrong here.
The Penumbra Pro comes loaded with custom Linear Hi-Fi Switches. I can’t find any extra info online about these switches. They are clicky but in a tiny way (if that makes any sense?). Redragon say that they provide “faster, creamy and elastic typing feedback” and that’s a fair assessment. They feel fast, but they have enough feedback not to make it feel like your fingers are running away with you. The switches are hot-swappble, of course.
As I mentioned at the top of this review, the Penumbra Pro weighs 1.8 KG, so it’s very much a desktop board rather than a take-anywhere one. As you would expect, it is very stable and it’s also gasket mounted, so there is pretty much zero transference of keystrokes into the desktop. There are no flip-down feet to adjust the typing angle, but the board has enough of an angle to it in order not to feel too flat.
The Penumbra Pro has RGB backlights, with 16+ preset patterns and onboard colour, speed, and pattern adjustment. It also has side lights whose settings can be tweaked independently. There is no software for the Penumbra Pro on the Redragon site currently, which means that you are limited to onboard customisation using the keyboard shortcuts. This has presented me with the biggest obstacle where the Penumbra Pro is concerned.
As I mentioned earlier, the characters on the keys are transparent and on the front of the keys, which means that you need to have a backlight on to make them visible. The problem I have had is that, try as I might, I have not been able to find a setting which keeps the RGB lights on constantly. They are always blinking, and this is a little distracting; making me realise that instead of glancing down at the keys for a fraction of a second without even noticing it, I’m spending just a sliver more time consciously checking keys. It’s a tiny complaint, but it has made a difference to me. Maybe this is a defect with the specific board I was sent, maybe it’s just me being dense but, either way, it’s the only thing that has really put me off a little bit.
The Penumbra Pro is a clean, understated, heavy-duty tech board. Tweaking the backlight settings can transform it from a rainbow-hued gaming keyboard to a cyber-punk terminal interface to something that’s going to look the part on an ultra-minimalist office desk. It feels and sounds great to type on and it is also very, very heavy.
The Penumbra Pro is available to purchase now directly from Redragon for £73.00 GBP / $89.99 USD