When an input device sports an authoritative name like "Das Keyboard," you have to wonder if something so generic can actually be as definitive as suggested. Short answer: yes.

Sporting best-in-class switch technology, German-engineering, gold-plated mechanical keys and the heft of a small industrial anvil, Das Keyboard really is all that.

Weighing in at 2.6 pounds and complimented by slim rubber feet (and retractable kickstands), Das Keyboard practically defies you to send it squirting out from under your palms, even under duress, be that mad flurry of inspired typing or after a particularly exuberant whack on F3 to bring up your RPG launcher followed by a shift-D-double-space crouch/lean bunny hopping charade in your first-person shooter game of choice.

The USB connected Das Keyboard also features n-key rollover functionality which, in layman's terms, means it can register up to 12 simultaneous key strokes (regular keyboards can only handle 3 or 4 concurrent strokes), which is especially appealing for caffeinated speed typists and/or Red Bull gamers with a wicked multi-key move or two up their sleeves.

Those aforementioned, best-in-class mechanical key switches, meanwhile, make for amazingly responsive typing, providing just the right amount of tactile squishiness and spring-back. No lie, Das Keyboard will make a better typist out of you.

But so much for Facebooking in the wee hours while the house is asleep: those said same mechanical keys also come part and parcel with that old school, telltale "wet clack" sound favored by Foley artists and circa 1983 computer programmers; it's the sound of indiscreet, professional grade typing.

The affirmative and unavoidable audibleness may also make all but the typist wince and cringe as aurally, listening to someone type on a Das Keyboard is not at all unlike listening to someone chew Corn Flakes with their mouth open, but there it is.