Turtle Beach KB5 Puts a Touchscreen Where the Numpad Lives

A Numpad That Does More Than Type Numbers

Turtle Beach has spent years building a reputation in gaming headsets, but the company has been steadily pushing into keyboards and other peripherals. The Command Series KB5 might be its most ambitious swing yet. According to a review published by Tom’s Hardware, the KB5 takes the space traditionally occupied by a number pad and fills it with a touchscreen instead, one that apparently functions as both.

That is a genuinely strange idea, and strange ideas in PC peripherals tend to go one of two ways. Either they solve a problem you did not know you had, or they remind you why keyboards looked the same for forty years. Tom’s Hardware put the KB5 through its paces to find out which category this one falls into.

What Turtle Beach Is Actually Selling Here

The concept is straightforward enough to explain, even if the execution is anything but simple. The touchscreen panel on the right side of the KB5 sits where a standard numpad would normally live. It can display information, accept touch input, and presumably serve the numeric entry functions a numpad handles for spreadsheets, data entry, or the kind of game where you are frantically typing coordinates.

Turtle Beach is a brand that has historically positioned itself as accessible rather than ultra-premium, so a keyboard with an integrated touchscreen raises immediate questions about price, software support, and whether the screen itself is sharp and responsive enough to justify the concept. Those are exactly the kinds of questions a Tom’s Hardware review is built to answer.

Gaming keyboards have gotten increasingly feature-heavy over the past several years. Per-key RGB lighting became standard. Dedicated media dials showed up on boards from Logitech, Corsair, and others. Small OLED displays started appearing on high-end options. The KB5 pushes that trend further by making the display large enough to actually replace a hardware input zone entirely.

Why Gamers Might Care

For PC gamers who already game on a tenkeyless layout, a traditional numpad is dead real estate. But for players of strategy games, MMOs, or simulation titles, that numpad cluster gets heavy use for hotkeys and quick inputs. A touchscreen in that space could theoretically let users customize the layout on the fly, swapping between numeric input for productivity and a macro grid for gaming.

That kind of flexibility is genuinely appealing on paper. Whether the touchscreen is accurate enough, fast enough, and tactilely satisfying enough to replace physical keys is a different question. Touch input on a flat glass surface does not offer the same feedback as pressing a mechanical switch, and for fast-paced gaming that distinction matters.

Turtle Beach would need the software ecosystem around the KB5 to be robust enough to make configuration feel easy rather than like a chore. Gaming peripheral software has a mixed track record on that front across the industry.

A Crowded Field With High Expectations

The gaming keyboard market is genuinely competitive right now. Boards from Keychron, Corsair, SteelSeries, and Logitech cover a wide range of prices and feature sets, and enthusiast-focused boutique options have raised the bar on build quality considerably. Turtle Beach is entering that conversation with a concept feature rather than a traditional spec sheet, which is a risky but interesting bet.

The Tom’s Hardware review of the Command Series KB5 represents one of the more thorough evaluations the keyboard is likely to receive, given the publication’s track record with peripheral hardware testing. For anyone seriously considering whether a touchscreen numpad hybrid belongs on their desk, that full write-up is where the real answers live on build quality, latency, software, and long-term usability.

When a peripheral brand takes a swing this unusual, the result tells you a lot about where that company thinks PC gaming is headed.