AZIO Cascade Slim Mechanical Keyboard Overview
Taking a first look at the Cascade Slim it has an interesting form factor of 75%. The 75% layout will work great for both gaming and work. It is basically a tenkeyless (TKL) design with all of the keys sort of smushed together with no spacing like you would see on a TKL board. With this layout you are still getting your arrow keys as well as the full function row. You also are getting quite a lot of alternate functions on this keyboard by holding the FN key down like multimedia controls, shortcuts, lighting controls, and more.
Lets talk about the colorway on this keyboard, we received the bronze version with Forest Dark keycaps. So we have a bronze chassis and the Forest Dark is a combination of grey, white, and green keycaps. Overall I think these colors go pretty well together. The Slim version of the keyboard is also available in a space grey chassis and there is also a Forest Light set of keycaps which basically swap the grey keys on the dark version with white ones.
Talking about the keycaps they have a low-profile design with see-through legends. The keycaps have a slightly concave design, but are more on the flat side for sure. They are your standard ABS keycaps, but AZIO will be offering PBT designer keycaps for an extra $30 on their Kickstarter.
Removing some of the keycaps we can see that we indeed do have low-profile mechanical key switches. These are Gateron low profile switches, our sample came with Brown’s, but they are available in Red and Blue as well on the Slim version. One thing that is really cool about this keyboard is that the switches are hot-swappable, so with the Slim version you can swap out for any Gateron low profile switch.
Looking at the top-edge of the keyboard we can see just how thin it really is! At its tallest point it is only 28 mm tall! You can also see that the bronze color wraps all the way around the keyboard and for those wondering this keyboard does have an aluminum top plate. Under the hood there are built-in silicone and foam dampers for reduced vibration and rattle. Towards one side on the top-edge of the keyboard you’ll find a USB-C connection, Mac/PC switch and USB/Off/Bluetooth switch. The Mac/PC button will of course switch between Mac and PC keyboard layouts and the other button will switch between USB and Bluetooth connection modes.
Looking at the keyboard from the side we can see that by default it sits at a slight angle. If you want more of an angle the pop-out feet give you two more levels.
Flipping the keyboard over there are only two rubber feet on the bottom of the keyboard. It seems there is a place in the chassis for two at the top, but they aren’t there. There is however rubber feet on the pop-out feet.
