If you’ve looked into buying a mechanical keyboard, you’ve probably heard of the name “Poker”. The Poker is a 60% mechanical keyboard by a small Taiwanese company called Vortex. This keyboard has been very popular among the mechanical keyboard community and has been through 3 generations including an RGB variant. Just when you think keyboards couldn’t get any smaller, Vortex has introduce the Core, a 40% mechanical keyboard.

Unboxing the Core and Examination

“Find our Latestphilosophy and Enjoy Your Feeling” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The unboxing experience for the Core is probably one of the best unboxing experience I’ve had on any product. Vortex has really stepped up on the unboxing experience from their last keyboard, the Pok3r. The box has a really nice texture on it. The box is held shut by a pair of magnets, it really feels really satisfying to open. Once opened, you are greeted immediately by the Core keyboard itself along with the mistranslated phrase, “Find our Latestphilosophy and Enjoy Your Feeling.” The keyboard sits in really dense foam. Underneath the foam is the included no-frills USB-A to Micro-USB cable along with the instruction manual.

The keyboard is housed in a CNC Aluminium case. Along the bottom of the case are 4 rubber feet. At the side is one Micro-USB port

The keyboard itself is housed in a CNC Aluminum case. The switches are mounted on a steel backplate, making the typing experience feel solid. There is no top casing, giving the keyboard a “floating key” design, similar to what you find on Corsair keyboards. On the bottom of the Core, there are 4 rubber feet, but nothing to raise the keyboard at an incline angle. The keyboard uses Micro-USB, which you’ll either love or hate. Many mechanical keyboard uses Mini-USB because it’s more rigid, but it’s harder to find high quality replacement for. Micro-USB on the other hand is easy to find on sites such as Amazon and you most likely already have a spare cable that you use on your phone.

What’s a 40% Keyboard?

Small form factor keyboard have been becoming more popular recently due to their portability, comfort, and minimal looks. Tenkeyless is the most popular as it brings your hands together for better posture when gaming or typing, but there are even smaller size keyboards. 60% keyboards like the Poker have been becoming more popular due to their portability. And then you got the 40% keyboards, a new size that’s probably the smallest size possible for a keyboard (without making the keycaps smaller). There isn’t a standard 40%, each keyboards in this size have different layouts.

As you can see, the Core is really really tiny

How Usable is a Keyboard of this Size?

You’d think that a keyboard this small would have to give up a lot of functionality, but surprisingly this keyboard comes with a lot of features. The number row has been moved onto a secondary layer and can be access by holding Fn1 and a key from the home row. The function keys are also on this layer, they can be access by holding Fn1 and a key.

Secondary and tertiary functions are labeled on the side of the keycaps

You might be asking, where is the symbols? Well, they’re not labeled on the keys, but you can access them by pressing Fn1+shift and a key from the home row (and some keys from the second to bottom row). The manual states that the symbols are located on the top, but this is not the case. Vortex told me this is an error within the manual rather than an error with the keyboard itself. The position of the Fn1 key is brilliant as it makes holding shift along with that key easy while still allowing you to reach for keys across the entire keyboard. The only problem I’ve come across is that accessing the plus symbol (+) is difficult because it’s right above the two keys you need to press to access it. The backspace key has been reduced to a square key in the top right corner. This allows the keyboard to also include a dedicated delete key, a compromise that I really like, but many won’t. The rest of the keyboard is surprisingly standard, making the learning curve not too difficult. I still haven’t exactly gotten used to the symbol locations, but I’m slowly getting faster for sure.

The backspace key has been reduce to a 1x1 key along with the shift key being shorten to include a Fn1 key beside it

The Typing Experience

Cherry MX Clear Switches

My Vortex Core has Cherry MX Clear switches. You can buy the Core with Cherry MX Black, Blue, Brown, Red, and Clear switches. While I like the clicky noise of MX Blues, I wanted to use this keyboard outside of my home. I went with MX Clears because of their tactile bump and soft landing when bottoming out. It’s one of the heavier switch, so it certainly won’t be for everyone. The keycaps are dye-sublimated DSA profile. Dye-sublimation is my favorite printing method on keycaps because the letters don’t fade away and you don’t feel each letters under your finger unlike some other printing methods. Since these are DSA keycaps, all the keys are low profile with more spacing in between the top of each keycaps. The color scheme is one that you’ll either love or hate, personally I dig it.

Where are the home row indicator on ‘F and ‘J’? Believe it or not, they’re still there! Those two keycaps has a bigger dip and smaller tops compared to the rest of the keys. You can feel how the your fingers settle into those keys more than the rest of the keys. I really like this since it makes all the letter keycaps look the same at a glance, but you can still align your finger without looking at the keyboard first.

Typing on the keyboard at first was rather slow and somewhat painstaking. Often times I was reaching for a non-existent number row or stumbling around to find the symbols. After a week of use, I’m still getting used to the keyboard, but my speed has improved significantly. In preparation of using this keyboard, I spent the previous week trying to learn to space words with my right hand rather than my left. I did this because I thought the left spacebar looked like it wouldn’t sit underneath my thumb, but to my surprise it did. It’s shifted just over enough so that I can still use my left thumb to space without any issue. Why didn’t vortex just go with one big spacebar instead of 2? Well, that would make the spacebar the size of 4.5u, which is not a standard size. A spacebar that size would make it hard to find custom keycaps for this keyboard. Within one or two more weeks, I can see myself typing at full speed on this keyboard. Kudos to Vortex for making a practical layout on such a small keyboard.

Can you game on this keyboard? The short answer is yes, but the longer answer is a bit more complicated. Because there is no number row, games such as FPS may require you to reprogram the keys to fit the game (more on this later). I don’t do too much gaming myself, but in the games I do play, I found the keyboard to be just fine despite its size.

Programming the Layers on the Core

The Core has 3 programmable layers. Each are indicated by a light between the spacebar and Pn key.

One of the big seller point Vortex keyboards are their programmability. The Core is no exception, it has 3 programmable layers. To switch between each layers, you hold Fn followed by ‘m’, ‘,’ ‘.’, or shift.

To go into programming mode, you press Fn and Ctrl together, pick a key to program, press the functions you want it to perform, and finish by pressing Pn. It sounds complicated, but it is probably one of the easiest method for programming a keyboard. Other 40% keyboards such as the JD40 require you to put the keyboard into firmware flashing mode, open up a python app to configure the keys, the flash the firmware, then put the keyboard into input mode. If you have no idea what any of that meant, the Core is probably the way to go if you’re looking for a keyboard of this size and is programmable.

Some use for programming is having the keyboard type long or complicated passwords for you (not recommended by many, but it’s something you can do regardless), remap keys to work with games, etc. Without this feature, the keyboard would be less useful or even worth the price it is.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts