Mechanical Keyboards |OT| Once More, With Feeling

Mivey · May 5, 2024

Zissou said:
First new keyboard in a long time. Been wanted to try and alice layout, and also wanted to to a simple/clean black build:

Switches have improved a lot since I last paid attention to this stuff as well—these xinhais are amazing.

Very nice and clean, no frills and functional.Perhaps a little bit boring. Very suitable for the office. I'm imaging an accountant or a lawyer using this.

Zissou · May 5, 2024

Mivey said:
Very nice and clean, no frills and functional.Perhaps a little bit boring. Very suitable for the office. I'm imaging an accountant or a lawyer using this.

I was rocking GMK Belafonte for a couple years prior to this, so I think I might've been due to for boring lol

Fox318 · May 5, 2024

I have 2 GMK kits I need to make builds for.

Need to get something for GMK Fox and GMK Norse

less · May 10, 2024

taco543 said:
Yeah I'll wait for some reviews but I love the halo96 so much I bought two, one for the office and one for home. I may get it or try and get a keychron and mod it a bit

I was going to wait for the reviews...but I decided to get another keyboard instead. Went for the Luminkey80 and god damn is this on an entirely different level than the Halo 96 V1. Only used it for a short while today but this easily is the best prebuilt I've ever used by a wide margin. Can now truly experience why so many are willing to shell out so much money to build custom keyboards. The sound truly is different on a more premium keyboard. Went for the E-Retro White version for that delicious retro feel. Will probably look into getting a different keycap set at some point down the line happy with the look and feel so far.

Nappuccino · May 10, 2024

I finally got around to doing a tape mod to one of my keyboards. At first I didn't think there was much difference, but honesty the key presses are slightly lower register in a nice way, and it feels a little softer to type on for some reason.

XShagrath · May 10, 2024

I know the offerings are slim, but are there any suggestions for a 100% wireless keyboard? Ideally looking for something that's all black or mostly black.

All I've really been able to find is the Keychrons, and their offerings are kinda ugly (at least in the keycaps). I currently have a Steelseries that I really like the look of, but it's not wireless, and they don't make a wireless version of their full-sized keyboard.

Lemstar · May 10, 2024

XShagrath said:
I know the offerings are slim, but are there any suggestions for a 100% wireless keyboard? Ideally looking for something that's all black or mostly black.

All I've really been able to find is the Keychrons, and their offerings are kinda ugly (at least in the keycaps). I currently have a Steelseries that I really like the look of, but it's not wireless, and they don't make a wireless version of their full-sized keyboard.

get a Keychron and then a set of keycaps
if you're looking for white text on black, cheap ones are easy to find in the $20 range

less · May 10, 2024

XShagrath said:
I know the offerings are slim, but are there any suggestions for a 100% wireless keyboard? Ideally looking for something that's all black or mostly black.

All I've really been able to find is the Keychrons, and their offerings are kinda ugly (at least in the keycaps). I currently have a Steelseries that I really like the look of, but it's not wireless, and they don't make a wireless version of their full-sized keyboard.

What is your price range? Are you also fine with low profile/96% layouts?

Otherwise, check the following site: https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/collections/full-size-keyboards

Casper · May 10, 2024

XShagrath said:
I know the offerings are slim, but are there any suggestions for a 100% wireless keyboard? Ideally looking for something that's all black or mostly black.

All I've really been able to find is the Keychrons, and their offerings are kinda ugly (at least in the keycaps). I currently have a Steelseries that I really like the look of, but it's not wireless, and they don't make a wireless version of their full-sized keyboard.

Royal Kludge has a newer compact 96% if you are at all interested. I think this model came out 5-6 months back. RK S98

I still use my RK100 and love it.

Just tossed some new keycaps on it yesterday!

PBTFans - Kabuki Cho

Cup O' Tea? · May 10, 2024

Got a Keychron V1 Max the other day. Massive improvement from the Logitech G613 I was using. Those Romer G switches were so unreliable. I hope Logitech ditched those.

The V1 Max has a pretty great feature set for the price. I looked at the Q1 Max but it was more than double the price for pretty similar features. Enthusiasts would prefer the Q series for it's metal casing etc. but the V1 Max is a solid budget option.

I actually like how the Keychrons look but I can understand how the colour scheme might be a turn off. With the V1 Max, they did include some extra keycaps to replace the orange escape/enter keys with blue ones that match the rest. I'm okay with it stock though.

Nappuccino · May 10, 2024

XShagrath said:
I know the offerings are slim, but are there any suggestions for a 100% wireless keyboard? Ideally looking for something that's all black or mostly black.

All I've really been able to find is the Keychrons, and their offerings are kinda ugly (at least in the keycaps). I currently have a Steelseries that I really like the look of, but it's not wireless, and they don't make a wireless version of their full-sized keyboard.

What about getting a separate, dedicated numpad? That might open up your options and let you simplify your desk when you don't need it.

XShagrath · May 11, 2024

Thanks for all the replies. I definitely have some more resources to check out now.

Lemstar said:
get a Keychron and then a set of keycaps
if you're looking for white text on black, cheap ones are easy to find in the $20 range

This is definitely an option. Was ideally looking for a solution right out of the box. I like the one I have now, but I'd also like to just be able to move it out of the way easily, and a corded version doesn't really facilitate that easily.

less said:
What is your price range? Are you also fine with low profile/96% layouts?

Otherwise, check the following site: https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/collections/full-size-keyboards

Thanks for the link. I don't think I'd like a 96% layout. I very much prefer the separation of keys. Although that is probably just familiarity, I don't want to spend $100-200 to test something out for a while and realize I don't like it.

Nappuccino said:
What about getting a separate, dedicated numpad? That might open up your options and let you simplify your desk when you don't need it.

I use my numpad almost every time I'm at my desk, so a separate one off to the side wouldn't really be that useful. Whenever I type numbers, I almost always default to going to the numpad unless it's just a single digit.

Zissou · May 11, 2024

XShagrath said:
Thanks for all the replies. I definitely have some more resources to check out now.

This is definitely an option. Was ideally looking for a solution right out of the box. I like the one I have now, but I'd also like to just be able to move it out of the way easily, and a corded version doesn't really facilitate that easily.

Thanks for the link. I don't think I'd like a 96% layout. I very much prefer the separation of keys. Although that is probably just familiarity, I don't want to spend $100-200 to test something out for a while and realize I don't like it.

I use my numpad almost every time I'm at my desk, so a separate one off to the side wouldn't really be that useful. Whenever I type numbers, I almost always default to going to the numpad unless it's just a single digit.

You could grab something like this, and then grab switches and keycaps separately. It's obviously a bit more work than just taking a thing out of a box and using it, but putting in the switches and then putting on keycaps would take you a half hour or something, and you could pick the exact switches and keycaps that best suit you.

less · May 12, 2024

XShagrath said:
Thanks for the link. I don't think I'd like a 96% layout. I very much prefer the separation of keys. Although that is probably just familiarity, I don't want to spend $100-200 to test something out for a while and realize I don't like it.

That's fair. My experience was that it was a nearly friction-less switch from a 100% layout to a 96% layout which the only issue being the "0" key as that took some time to get used to. But yeah, $100-200 is a bit too much to spend on something that you might not end up liking.

Icarian · Monday at 8:18 AM

After looking and always finding stuff I like being Out of stock or in the process of being funded/group buys, I finally pulled the trigger on a Keychron Q1 HE, I really like the "plain" look on the white shell one with the white and black keycaps, many of these keyboards have a very distinct design choices but they don't really fit what I'm going for.

I've been using mechanical keyboards for well over a decade now, but they've always been on the "cheaper", branded side like Steelseries or Logitech.

The only issue is that it's US layout only and I'm not in an English speaking country, I type mostly in English and I've used a US layout keyboard before (Steelseries one, from like 2011 to 2018) so I don't think it'll be too much of a problem, bit of an inconvenience when trying to type in my native languages as it'll be missing characters for both of them.

It is also going to be my first non-full keyboard but I haven't used the numpad in forever so I won't miss it.

Does anybody have any experience with Keychron keyboards? I've read a few reviews and they seem to be well built from what I gather.

Orayn · Monday at 11:16 AM

Splurged on the Yunzii AL66 on Drop because it was very reasonably priced and I wanted something to go with my iPad Pro. Sounds really good for $80 based on early impressions.