RECCAZR R66 Mechanical Keyboard Review

Until recently, I’ve been primarily using medium-size keyboards, ranging from 75% (84-key) to 80% (87-key). The few full-sized keyboards I’ve used have been great for working, especially for inputting numbers into Excel and adding some additional buttons for casual games that didn’t require mouse input. The 65% and under keyboard territory has been largely foreign to me. I’ve been hesitant to test out these compact/miniature keyboards because of how they would impact the gaming experience as well as how my large hands would navigate attempting to use the keyboard.

When it came time to review the RECCAZR R66 mechanical keyboard, I will admit that I had a large degree of hesitation and concern. This keyboard is so small! There’re no function keys! The tilde ~ key is missing! Whatever should I do?

After a week of use, many of my concerns dissolved let’s dive in.

For those who haven’t heard of RECCAZR, they’re a smaller peripheral company that specializes in more than keyboards. As of now, the R66 is not available on RECCAZR’s website but is available from distributors like Mechlands. Thus, it may be difficult to secure this $99 mechanical keyboard, but if you look hard enough you should find it.

Click here to check out the RECCAZR R66 at Mechlands!

While the R66 claims to be a 68% keyboard, its 66 keys put it under the 65% standard of 68-key keyboards. I guess the metal knob (for controlling volume) in the upper right hand corner counts as an additional percent, but that’s just me being nitpicky.

The R66 has a very unique design, however. At the top of the keyboard is a row of LED lights while the legends are side-printed on the keycaps. When looking at the keyboard from the top down, it looks like the keyboard contains a uniform monochromatic design save for the black LED strip at the top. It’s quite a sophisticated look, which I appreciate.

Moving onto its internals, the R66 contains a Gasket Mount structure to ensure that keystrokes feel cushy while creating a plucky sound when typing quickly. If you haven’t used a gasket mounted keyboard yet, the best way to think about it is as such: Imagine having a cushy material between the base of the keyboard’s circuit board and the frame of the keyboard. The gasket material will absorb the harsher, clackier, sounds and make the keyboard sound closer to being thocky.

This all makes the R66 have a thocky sound. Thanks to the gasket mounting and the PBT keycaps, it sounds great to quickly type on the keyboard (assuming your hands aren’t too big, like mine). At higher speeds, it sounded incredibly satisfying to type on the R66 because of how it didn’t make sharp sounds and consistently leaned thocky.

The rest of the keyboard’s construction utilized white plastic, which made the keyboard feel light when held in-hand. I pressed firmly down onto several keys, leading to a light amount of give. The metal knob is firmly set in the keyboard, too. When turning the knob, each degree of being turned yields a tactile response rather than smoothly rotating. This is especially great when wanting to slightly bump up the volume. I’m not concerned about the keyboard’s build quality given that it held up under a good amount of stress in my testing.

The R66 comes with one of two types of switches, a Phantom Purple (Linear) and a Jasmine (Tactile) switch. My review unit came with the Phantom Purple switches, which are better for gaming. I am not 100% sure who makes these switches, but I was able to pull them out for closer examination as well as review the specifications listed on Mechland’s website. The switches have 5 pins, meaning that the keyboard can support switches up to 5 pins. The phantom purples have a good pre-travel distance of ~2.0mm, bottoming out at 3.5mm. The stems are not too tall, either. When the caps are on the switches, there’s no wobble at all. I loved the sturdiness of the switches, but I would have preferred a slightly greater total travel.

I love the side-printed keycaps. The keyboard’s height and angle (which cannot be adjusted) makes it so that they’re perfectly visible even when my hands are covering most of the keys. This is the first time I’ve ever used side-printed keycaps they add a nice touch to the keyboard’s aesthetic. If you don’t like the switches or the keycaps, both are hot-swappable, so there’s quite a lot of freedom to be had with this keyboard on the customization side of things.

This keyboard also has some features that are increasingly becoming standard on premium pre-built mechanical keyboards, such multiconnectivity (wired, Bluetooth, and 2.4GHz), south-facing LEDs that can be configured by pressing FN buttons and/or using the driver, as well as a 4000mAh battery. No complaints from me: All of these features should be standard in the $100 range for a mechanical keyboard.

Now, let’s chat the light strip at the top of the keyboard. It’s one of the most unique things about the keyboard when I first took it out of the box: the light strip looked quite futuristic even without the LEDs being activated. I was under the impression that this LED strip could be treated as its own discrete set of lights. This was unfortunately not the case: The LED strip extended the lights to add more color to the keyboard. This isn’t an inherent negative, but it would have been nice to directly customize the LED strip as an independent unit rather than have it mirror the rest of the keyboard’s lights. The unit supposedly has voice-activated LED support, but I couldn’t properly set up the keyboard and/or the driver to have it react to my voice. This may be fixed in a future firmware update, so don’t take my word for it not working for me.

The rest of the keyboard’s lights can be customized by using function key combinations without any driver, which is great. I know that this nonunique for most keyboards, but I want to drive home that you shouldn’t need a driver to customize it to the degree that you want it to look. That said, there is a keyboard driver that can be installed to set up things like macros, granular color settings, and granular key settings. It’s a pretty barebones setup, but it gets the job done.

The R66 is not the most customizable keyboard. Sure, it supports hot-swapping keycaps and switches, but the rest of the unit doesn’t support additional customization that you might expect from something like Chilkey ND75’s mounting options or even Turtle Beach’s Vulcan II TKL Pro LED options using the Swarm II app. Instead, the R66 has a light amount of customization – good for folks who want to make a few changes and then call it a day.

At this point, you’re probably assuming that I didn’t enjoy using this keyboard: That’s not entirely true. The best aspects of this keyboard are its acoustics and the general typing feel, both of which should be given the greatest consideration when making a decision about which keyboard to buy. However, at the $100 price point, I struggle to recommend this keyboard when other keyboards at similar price points have a greater degree of customization and/or slightly more premium build quality.

Let’s talk about the R66 as a gaming keyboard. I will admit that I am biased in considering anything less than a 75% keyboard to be fit for most gaming needs given that I have spent most of my life using 75% and 98% keyboards as my daily drivers. As someone works full time doing data analysis and gaming at night, the more keys I have, the better. All of this said, it’s difficult for me to recommend this keyboard for anything beyond casual gaming. Let’s discuss why:

I began testing the R66 in casual/low-intensity games, such as Teamfight Tactics, Athenian Rhapsody, Stardew Valley, and Civilization VI. These games did not require a variety of inputs, so I didn’t need to worry about losing access to Fn keys that I assign for some higher-intensity games. The keyboard wasn’t too compact, so I didn’t have any issue reaching the staples, like WASD, arrows, and QWER. Nothing too crazy, it worked great.

Issues began to emerge when I moved up into the medium-intensity games. I don’t think this keyboard has anti-ghosting, meaning that frequent inputs in things like League of Legends, platformers, Astral Ascent, Realm of Ink, and Turnip Boy Robs a Bank were occasionally not being recognized. I had to rebind several keys in League just so I could communicate. My issues were exacerbated when I pivoted to higher-intensity games such as VALORANT, Counter-Strike 2, Starfield, and ROBOBEAT. The smaller quantity of keys gave me less to work with while the lack of anti-ghosting made it so that my inputs were far from precise.

I won’t go so far as to say that the R66 is not a suitable gaming keyboard. It can be used for gaming, albeit more casual gaming that requires less precision and a smaller quantity of inputs. However, the R66 shines in other departments given how it feels overall, how it sounds, as well as how it works for general use outside of gaming. The LED strip is a cool addition and will complement your desk setup quite nicely, too. You should consider the R66 if you want a no-frills mechanical keyboard that feels and sounds divine without feeling bulky or over-the-top.

A review unit of the R66 was provided by MechLands for the purpose of this DigitalChumps review.