CM Storm NovaTouch TKL Review

CM Storm NovaTouch TKL Review

Manufacturer: CM Storm
UK Price (as reviewed): £149.99 (inc VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $199.99 (ex Tax)

Personal preference when it comes to keyboards, specifically what happens beneath your finger when you press the keys, is a hugely popular topic. You only have to look at our own forum to find the famous 1,000+ page 'Mechanical Keyboards' thread, which has been viewed over a million times to see the evidence for this. However, there's not just a preference between mechanical switch types, both in terms of colours of Cherry MX switches and between Cherry and the similar Kailh switches too, but membrane keyboards are still popular as well.

Noise is the main issue when it comes to making the move from membrane to mechanical and as the author has already attested to in this blog, some people actually prefer membrane keyboards for the simple fact they're much quieter and possibly easier on the fingers too in some cases.


This is a shame because as the above blog alluded to, most, if not all of the keyboards with the best features such as programmable backlighting, USB hubs or media and macro controls are mechanical. The keyboard we're looking at today, though, aims to bridge the gap between mechnical switch and membrane - meet CM Storm's highly anticipated Novatouch TKL.


We'll get to the switches in a minute but as you can see, while it may aim to bridge the gap between the two keyboard types, sadly there's not a lot else going on. Therefore, with the NovaTouch TKL at least, we're just concerned with the alternate switch type as this isn't something membrane fans with feature-loaded keyboards will likely aspire to own. The only creature comforts here are N-Key Rollover, 1,000MHz USB polling rate and a gold-plated 1.8m braided detachable USB cable. In terms of what's missing, well it's pretty much everything else. The NovaTouch TKL is tenkeyless for a start. In fact it's practically identical to the Quick Fire Rapid-I we looked at recently..
As you can see the two keyboards are all but identical, however the Quick Fire Rapid-I does at least offer backlighting, and it's a decent offering at that. The NovaTouch TKL is one of the most basic keyboards we've reviewed for a while and even more eye-popping is its price tag. At £150, it's actually more than Corsair Gaming's crazy K70 RGB. There's just a basic level of height adjustment too, again identical to the Quick Fire Rapid-I, with single-step flip-out stands on either side. The function key does at least provide some secondary key functions through some of the 'F' keys, such as media controls and repeat rate adjustment, but again there's no macro functions here as with the Quick Fire Rapid-I.