DROP's Lord of the Rings Keyboard is for Newbies, not Nerds - Gizmodo

When I first received my DROP x Lord of the Rings keyboard, it was one of those packages that you come home to after a trip: a delightful surprise, and one I had been looking forward to since I had first agreed to write a review of the new Lord of the Rings special edition.

The tippy tappies were tip-tapping, and for a full 12 hours I remained delighted, so pleased with this neat little keyboard that was aesthetically pleasing, gave me so much room and allowed me to write quickly and with the deep-seated satisfaction that comes from hearing keycaps go clicky-clicky.

The DROP x Lord of the Rings keyboard also has some cute little extras—an illustration of the twin trees of Valinor over the arrow keys, a broken Narsil on the enter key, the One Ring on the command key, the eye of Sauron on the the escape key—charming additions that made my little nerd heart go pitter-patter as I, wonderfully besotted with the beautiful mint green base, ivory keys, bright orange additions, saw nothing amiss.

This originally assured me that all was well with my cute little keyboard.

(A fun fact! Elvish math is developed on a base-12 system, which is reflected in the function keys.) What I didn’t notice the night before was that the number keys directly below the function row did not correspond to the Tengwar numerical system, and were entirely different symbols.

I pulled up a Sindarin translator (some of the keycaps had Sindarin phrases, so I assumed the keyboard would use the Sindarin-Tengwar transliteration) and to my growing dismay I realized… none of these Tengwa legends matched the Latin keycaps.

But besides the fact that Beleriand-style Sindarin is again, utterly without a usecase, I love little dots and swirlies and will not give them up.

This keyboard, for all its delightful presence, its charming mein, its wonderful sounds and well-translated Sindarin phrases, ultimately fails in what should be the basic consideration of this keyboard: to match up similar sounds within phonetic alphabets.

Why structure the letters to align with the constructed sorting of the phonetic breakdown of the Tengwar alphabet, a detail maybe three people will notice, and not align the Tengwar to the QWERTY keyboard.

The QWERTY keyboard is, after all, not an alphabetized keyboard; why then did these keycaps come, more or less, alphabetized according to the Tengwar.

If this was truly meant to be a usable Tengwar keyboard, there are options for space-saving within the keyspace provided, especially considering that there are some punctuations that English uses that have never been recorded in Sindarin or Quenya.

So what I have is a phenomenal little keyboard that is delightful to use and cute to have on my desk, but if I were to attempt to transliterate anything from English into its phonetic match in Sindarin, I would have to go through a whole song and dance to attempt to find the temar and teyeller, attempt to use a chart to find the correct glyph on my keyboard, and then figure out whatever English letter in any given font corresponds to the Tengwar I’ve found on my chart, rather than just referencing my keyboard itself.

There is a version of this keyboard that might exist in another timeline that is innovative and clever, utilizing both the Tengwar and Latin glyphs to create a usable Elvish keyboard that you could use to write in Sindarin, should you have the alt/command control to adjust the vowels or indicate whether you wanted the numen-n or the ñoldo-n.

Essentially, this cute little clicky-clacky mechanical keyboard is great for anyone who desires the Elvish aesthetic, with no way to use the keyboard efficiently to imitate Sindarin, either in translation or transliteration.

It is, however, pretty well made (I did notice a little bit of separation between the metal chassis and the cover, but it’s minor), and has a bunch of cute additions in different colors and fun designs.

I received the standard version (with both the Latin and the Tengwar legends) but I’ve requested the hardcore version to see if I can program this keyboard to write in a transliterative Sindarin--we’ll see when that gets here.

Various Lord of the Rings keyboards, including Elvish, Dwarvish, and Black Tongue (Quenya but worse) are available from DROP