THE HAILSTORM

Measuring 478mm in length, 216.5mm in width and 42.2mm in height the 1.4Kg heavy Sandberg Hailstorm is not a small keyboard.

The floating key design makes it easy to clean the keyboard so this was a good move by Sandberg.

Sandberg has also placed their logo on the upper far right corner.

From the escape key you can reset all lighting options and typically F1 through F8 also act as media navigation keys with the help of the function key (launch media player, decrease/increase volume, mute audio, previous/next track, play/pause and stop). Also worth pointing out is that via the 1 through 5 keys (and the FN key) you can create your very own lighting effect (or just choose specific keys to light up with specific colors).

F9 through F12 can also be used to launch the email program, internet browser, open my computer and launch the windows calculator.

You can turn off the lighting of the keys entirely from the Print Screen key.

Switching modes and colors is very easy and can be done via the insert and delete keys (with the FN key of course).

Brightness levels are controlled via the up and down keys (increase/decrease) while the speed of the effects is controlled by the left and right keys (slow/fast).

There are several LEDs placed around the keyboard which unfortunately feature a single color, blue.

Here we see the Outemu Blue clicky switches.

Moving at the base of the keyboard we see 4 rubber feet and two rubber coated height adjusters.

The hailstorm height adjusters raise the top end of the keyboard 14mm from the desk.

Sandberg has used a 1.8 meter long braided cable with a gold plated USB plug.