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Vortex Core Review

Anthony Nguyen
8 min readJan 21, 2017

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…

Anthony Nguyen
Anthony Nguyen

Written by Anthony Nguyen

I'm a designer and coder of sorts. I also sometimes write review of stuff that I buy.

Responses (3)

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Nice article! Did you use this keyboard with a Mac or a Windows machine? I just picked one up, but I can’t get my Macbook to recognize it.

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How do you type a tilde or dollar-sign with this keyboard… I’m wondering how you would program software with this keyboard.

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Thank you for your very detailed and helpful review.

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