Calvin's Musings: Keyboard Endgame?

Please please please let this be the end of my keyboard follies. At least for a few years.

A quick recap, more for my own recall than anything.

My first mention of a keyboard on this blog is back in 2014 when I was building my new computer (first new computer as a nurse!). I'd recently, in the last year or so, bought a Logitech G710+ keyboard. It already had the basics of what I'd want going into the future. It was a mechanical keyboard with backlighting and media keys. It wasn't wireless and it wasn't RGB.

Sometime between then and 2016, I bought the Logitech G810 Orion Spectrum RGB. It was the 'next generation' of the G710+. I really liked the more professional look even if it had RGB lighting. It's only issue, compared to now, is that it wasn't wireless.

I next mention keyboards in 2020. I mention in passing that I'd replaced that Logitech with 'a couple different Razer keyboards'. One I know was the Razer Blackwidow Elite. I learned to hate the Razer software, but like the physical keyboards themselves.

I'd also got a Roccat Vulcan AIMO keyboard. To this day, I think this is the best lighting I've ever had on a keyboard. I loved the look of the thin keycaps and it's probably the reason I got into low profile keyboards, even though this wasn't technically a low profile keyboard. It's biggest problem was the lack of media keys. It had a volume knob, but not the play/next/previous buttons I wanted.

At that point, in 2020, I went with the last major gamer keyboard company. I got a Corsair K70 RGB MK.2 with the Cherry MX Blue switches. I remember it being VERY clicky. While I wanted that clickyness, it proved to be TOO clicky. It was obnoxiously loud. Fun for gaming, but not for typing. There were other little problems that added up. I didn't like the font on the keyboard. The software ran mostly fine, but it was a HOG on resources. And finally while it was 'thinner' than most of my other keyboards, it was still pretty damned big.

I think this is where I flip between the 'old' keyboards and the current search for a keyboard. 2021. It's then that I found the Logitech G915, my first low profile keyboard. I wrote an entire post about it here. That was early in the low profile keyboard days but I fell in love. That keyboard is still talked about today as it's one of the most expensive out there but one of the consistently best low profile gamer keyboards.

In 2023 I got a Corsair K100 Air Wireless. Technically it was the Corsair K100 Air Wireless Full-Size Bluetooth RGB Mechanical Cherry MX Ultra Low Profile Tactile Switch Gaming Keyboard. I replaced the Logitech because I was bored with it and the spacebar was sticking a bit. Unfortunately the choices for low profile keyboards with what I wanted... wireless was now required... I was limited to Logitech, this Corsair, and Razer. And at the time I was still in the 'Fuck Razer' camp. The Corsair only lasted a few months though. It's major downfall wasn't the font (though I still didn't like it) or the software... it was the fact that it didn't like to go to sleep. As a wireless keyboard I kind of NEED the damned thing to sleep.

So after dumping that money down the drain, I ditched the RGB and went with the Logitech MX Mechanical. I really didn't have this long enough to evaluate as it had a feature that sounded great but was just awful. It'd turn off the lights when you pull your hands away and turn them on when you put your hands in the 'typing position' above it. But it didn't work. This was in the middle of my migraine time and my room at its brightest was dim. I NEEDED the keyboard to be lit. So... it got replaced.

I won't go into too much detail but I ended up getting the Razer DeathStalker V2. You can read about it in its own post here. The software at this point was much improved since I'd last used it in 2019. It still wasn't good, but it was better. I did give up wireless, just to make sure I wouldn't have the same sleeping issue. It's one big problem was the media controls, or rather media control. it was a dial and a single button that controlled play/pause/next/previous.

This past September, I got another keyboard. That means the Razer actually lasted two years! While there were a lot more low profile options out there, most were from companies I hadn't heard of. But one that I'd been paying attention to for years was Keychron. For 'custom' keyboards they're considered one of the worst, but that means they're heads and shoulders above most main line keyboards. And they finally had a line with 2.4GHz wireless and RGB that shone through the keys and not just around them. You can read all the details in a post here, but I got the Keychron K1 Max, my first TenKeyless keyboard and the Keychron K0 Max, a wireless RGB keypad.

The Keychrons worked fine for a while, but the battery life on both was pretty terrible. And they didn't have good software to warn when it was getting low. I ended up plugging both in which was a pain. And then just a few months later, the i key started to wonk out. I was so disappointed by the whole experience that I didn't even think it worth trying to fix. So I replaced it with... the Logitech G915X. The newer version of my original low profile keyboard. You can read the whole thing here, but basically it comes down to this new version now having a USB C cable.

I honestly thought that would be the End Boss. I even called that post the Keyboard End Boss. But then the problems came less than two months later. Certain keys started double tapping. Not just one or two, but the i, d, h, t, and spacebar keys were all doing this at different times. That more or less catches me up to now.

The first research I did was to see if the issue I was having with my Logitech was common or not. Sadly, it IS common. I'm not sure if its from changing the keycaps or not, but a LOT of people complain about the same issue. Evidently Logitech will honor the warranty on it, but customers told the annoying story about their replacement keyboards coming with the very same problems. What really pissed me off is that they Keychron I had before this Logitech was hotswappable. If I had that keyboard I could pull the 'bad' switches and just replace them. The Logitech on the other hand is hard soldered.

So, you've seen a few times where I listed what I wanted and what I was willing to sacrifice. Let's try that again.

Here's what I want in a keyboard

Mechanical switches
Low profile
RGB
Wireless
TKL (ten keyless since I'd be keeping my Keychron numberpad)
Hot swappable switches
Small (no media keys means no need for extra space around the keys)

I've JUST looked through all of this without including hot swappable and failed miserably. So, something has to go. I'm not going back to a membrane keyboard, so that's out. I've been on low profile switches for years and am not sure I could return to full height keys. I need the lights on my keyboard, so RGB is a must. Technically it can be a single color, but I don't know of any keyboard that has single color lights. Wireless is important, but it needs to have a big battery. TKL is important as I no longer want to return to a full size keyboard but also don't want to lose any keys. No 75%, 75%, 60% or smaller crap. The hot swappable switches are VERY important at this stage. And the small... that's pure aesthetics but it's where my mind is right now.

So, I started looking around. I probably looked at a couple dozen different keyboards. Oddly enough, the hardest thing to match was the lighting. Most keyboards do include lighting but not many have the shine through lights. Most of the good keyboards have lights that just shine around the keys, which doesn't work for me.

I eventually found a keyboard that hit almost every want. The Cherry XTRFY MX 8.2 PRO TMR TKL. Yes, that's the same Cherry that makes the switches. These particular switches are TMR, or the newest type on the market. They're magnetic which makes them far more customizable. This board in particular is also ten keyless, hot swappable with both magnetic and mechanical switches, RGB with shine through, wireless with a big battery (and the knowledge that TMR switches use less power), and has almost no space around the keys meaning it's very small. It's only 'downfall' is that its not low profile.

When the new keyboard got here I set it up and gave it a try. I found a couple things that I didn't like and a couple things that had to change, but mostly it was good news. The typing sound is good. It's not incredibly high end 'thocky' or 'creamy' but it's better than most keyboards. Better than both my recent Keychron or my Logitech.

The "don't like" side is simple. It's gamery. In the above picture there, look at the spacebar. Does it REALLY have to have the line and say DualMaster? The same on the front, that red line. Having a line there isn't bad, but red? The rest of the graphics on the keyboard don't bother me as much as I don't see them, but it's more gamery on the back (facing the monitor) and the bottom.

I could live with those. But on the keycap front, the shine through lights work great but on the number row, they light up the secondary characters. Like the exclamation point instead of the one and the percent symbol instead of the five. That won't work. But that fits into what I wanted anyway; something more custom, something more 'mine'. Watching a lot of videos on keyboards means I see a LOT of different keycaps. With that in mind, I started learning more about keycaps and what I'd want.

The first thing I learned was that shine through keycaps are, for the most part, considered 'bad' by the custom keycap people. I could go into more detail on profiles (Cherry, OEM, XDA, SA, DSA...) plastic materials, and other things, but the shine through feature is going to be the immediate limiting factor. Looking through hundreds of sets of keycaps I might only find one or two that are shine through.

The first set I found that were acceptable (and not just another set of black keycaps) was this gradient set. It's nothing too fancy but it does give it a visual flair:

Yeah, that shows them on a 75% keyboard, but it had all the keys for my TKL.

One of the sets of keycaps that I looked at for a VERY long time were all metal keycaps. I forget what metal they used for the core, but they were coated in actual gold, silver, or copper. I thought they looked fantastic:

Ultimately reason won out though as without shine through, I'd get pissed at them sooner rather than later. BUT, they did have some accent keys. These are ones that I could use to replace just a few keys to make them special. These were their 'Periodic Table' keycaps. They didn't have the full periodic table of course, but they had 16 keys. 12 for the top row (the function keys) and four for the arrow keys. I didn't want to replace all of my function keys, so I picked Titanium for an escape key and the four arrow replacements which are Gold, Silver, Rhodium, and Platinum.

Having this setup for about a week now and even typing out two chapters of my story, I can say that the typing feel is good. I do still feel that the low profile is better, but they don't have a keyboard with all these features in low profile so it's a moot point. I've had to charge it a few times and maybe I just have the lights too bright, but the battery is just fine. The way they talked about it, I thought it would be great, but it's still at least okay.

I also know that if I have a problem with these key switches, whether it's that I learn to not like the TMR style or want something that sounds different, I can get new switches. And if I get a problem with one particular key, I can pull the switch and flip it with one that I don't use all that often (like the home key or scroll lock) or just buy a replacement switch.

With the new keyboard, the gradient keycaps, the titanium escape key, and the other metal arrow keys, I give you photos of my set up.