Palisade 75 review: returned it after nine days

The only one that went back

Nine days. That is how long the Palisade 75 lasted before I packed it up and used the retailer’s return policy.

It is worth being precise about why, because no single fault here is dramatic. Individually every problem is the sort of thing you would shrug at. Together they describe a board that was assembled without anyone at any point checking whether it was any good.

The enter key

This is what did it.

From the first day, the enter key ticked. A metallic click from the stabiliser, arriving fractionally after the keypress, on the key I press most often after space. Not loud in absolute terms — the board measured 61.2 dB overall — but distinctly separate from the sound of the switch, and consistently present.

I pulled the keycap, cleaned the stabiliser, applied dielectric grease properly to the wire and the housings, and reseated it. The tick was quieter for about a day and then came back. That points at the housing rather than the lubrication: a stabiliser insert with too much clearance will tick regardless of what you put in it.

I could hear it through a podcast. That was the point at which the board stopped being a thing I was testing and started being a thing I was tolerating.

Inconsistent switches

The switches are unbranded tactiles and they are not the same as each other. Pressing across the home row, some keys are noticeably heavier than others and the tactile bump arrives at slightly different points. It is most obvious on the left hand — A and S feel light, D and F feel heavier.

Measured actuation averaged 58.2 g against a 55 g rating, but the average is hiding the problem. The variance is what you feel.

Because the board is hot-swap this is fixable by buying a set of switches, which is a strange thing to have to say about a $64 keyboard.

The wireless

22.6 ms over Bluetooth. That is the worst figure recorded on this site, roughly three times what the Ferrule manages, and far enough out that it is perceptible on fast repeated inputs rather than merely measurable.

Wired it measures 9.7 ms at 500 Hz polling, which is poor rather than bad. The pairing was at least reliable — it connected quickly and reconnected without fuss, which is more than some boards manage.

The small stuff

Two keycaps arrived with moulding flash on the underside — thin ridges of excess plastic left by a worn mould. They seat, but not flush, and one of them rocks slightly. This is a five-second quality check that nobody performed.

What it gets right

VIA works, fully, which at this price is more than the rest of the board suggests. The hot-swap PCB is properly made. The Bluetooth reconnects reliably. And the retailer processed the refund without argument, which is worth recording in the board’s favour even though it is not the board’s doing.

Why this review is still here

Leaving a bad review up costs money. This page will earn approximately nothing, and the affiliate link on it will be clicked by almost nobody.

It stays because the nine days I spent with this board are precisely the information that someone considering it cannot get anywhere else. Spec sheets do not record a ticking enter key. Star ratings from people who have owned a board for three days do not either.

The verdict

At $64, no. The Ferrule 75 is better in every measured dimension for about $25 more, and the Quarry TKL is better for $8 more.

If it drops below $35 it becomes an interesting donor: a working hot-swap PCB with VIA support, inside a case whose stabilisers you were going to replace anyway.