My keyboard needs are simple but not being met by the market.

[Gibberish]

My use case is a bit niche, but here's my anecdotal experience:

I recently got hearing aids, and as warned, some sounds became quite irritating. Other than my wife's voice (ba dum tss), the worst was pretty much any keyboard I owned (none being mechanical) -- and it seemed like it was the sound of bottoming-out that was the killer. I ended up taking a chance on a refurb Cherry Silent Red keyboard, and am very happy with it.

Too much laser leakage for you, but perhaps something else with Silent Reds might be worth a try?

 

[singebob]

Yeah with enough chassis damping and tight tolerances on the supports, silent reds are actually silent for a mech... even if you're a bit of a hammerer.

 

[CUclimber]

I recently picked up what (for me) is a dream keyboard-- Keychron Q6 HE QMK.

And let me tell you-- these magnetic switches are a joy to use. They're tactile enough so that you know you're not on a laptop, but there's a softness to the sound and feel that's hard to describe. My last mechanical keyboard had some version of Cherry switches that you could hear clear across the house, and it was totally unusable if I tried to type while un-muted on video calls.

This is perfect though, and the chassis is super heavy and feels like a tank; it weighs 4.5 lbs! Can't recommend this thing enough for people wanting something mechanical but without the super clicky keys.

 

[evan_s]

I recently picked up what (for me) is a dream keyboard-- Keychron Q6 HE QMK.

And let me tell you-- these magnetic switches are a joy to use. They're tactile enough so that you know you're not on a laptop, but there's a softness to the sound and feel that's hard to describe. My last mechanical keyboard had some version of Cherry switches that you could hear clear across the house, and it was totally unusable if I tried to type while un-muted on video calls.

This is perfect though, and the chassis is super heavy and feels like a tank; it weighs 4.5 lbs! Can't recommend this thing enough for people wanting something mechanical but without the super clicky keys.

That link says they are linear switches which should have no tactile feedback to them. The Cherry switches were probably Blue switches or some variant of that which are actively noisy as clicky switchest.

 

[lost_packet]

Dumb question, but do you game? A hall effect board literally changed my gaming. I have the madlion 68R and could never go back to traditional switches. Being able to set the actuation point and release is a game changer. Rapid trigger is over rated.

Not sure how many 106 key HE boards are out there.

 

[singebob]

Dumb question, but do you game? A hall effect board literally changed my gaming. I have the madlion 68R and could never go back to traditional switches. Being able to set the actuation point and release is a game changer. Rapid trigger is over rated.

Not sure how many 106 key HE boards are out there.

If you game it shouldn't matter unless you're esports grade and even then it's debatable. It's more likely the deficiencies of the previous keyboard that you thought changed the game.

I'm easily over $15K in keyboards over the last ten years and a pretty hardcore keyboard tryhard/griefer/pilot/racer and hammerer-to-destruction (of especially fancy FOMO'd ones by the theorists in the keyboard community) with a peak gaming >300kpm activation rate sustained over >15 minutes, and for me the most important aspect is the predictable activation progression, and bottomout for when I'm seeing red. And hall effect / analog tech is a gimmick which I had high hopes for, but didn't deliver because there isn't enough movement scope in a keyboard for it to make an appreciable difference.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

Dumb question, but do you game?

Nope.
Thanks, all. But I've found my perfect keyboard:



Psych! I think I'll pull the trigger on the G213 and see how that works out.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Nope.
Thanks, all. But I've found my perfect keyboard:

Psych! I think I'll pull the trigger on the G213 and see how that works out.

Oh c'mon. I'm sure it would only take 9 or 10 inches of daisy-chained adapters to connect it to a USB port. Or maybe you'd need to adapt it to a serial connection (if that isn't what it already has) going to a Raspberry Pi to power it and read the input and convert it to standard PC keyboard data (including translating SUPER to the Windows key, etc.) then a USB PC-PC cable to connect it to the computer. You won't even notice the 2 seconds of input lag; your time will be spent with the key travel.

And look! It even has built-in Like/Dislike buttons! Plus "I'm with Stupid" buttons for either direction.

 

[singebob]

Psych! I think I'll pull the trigger on the G213 and see how that works out.

Are there even any good domes out there anymore? I loved the Sidewinder X6 but the search for a replacement high-performance dome did not go well and I eventually gave up, with many proving to be bind-prone or the action being too long-travel / latency prone to be effective.

Seems like with the G213 you're mainly paying for the lights.

 

[methinkgud]

Are there even any good domes out there anymore? I loved the Sidewinder X6 but the search for a replacement high-performance dome did not go well and I eventually gave up, with many proving to be bind-prone or the action being too long-travel / latency prone to be effective.

Seems like with the G213 you're mainly paying for the lights.

A Topre board is your best bet for something similar to a dome but of higher quality. They cost a kidney and a half, but they last forever and are the closest thing to a high-end rubber dome that exists right now.

The market moved away from rubber domes for most mid-range and low-end boards since a bunch of companies raced toward the bottom in terms of pricing. The market got flooded with enthusiast-grade mechanical boards after a boom in the industry in 2020, it's hard to sell a rubber dome at a premium when you can get a budget hot swap mx board for 25 bucks. I'd recommend a mechanical keyboard with low-actuation distance switches, but that might involve changing your muscle memory to avoid bottoming out the keycaps, or fiddling about with o-rings.

 

[singebob]

A Topre board is your best bet for something similar to a dome but of higher quality. They cost a kidney and a half, but they last forever and are the closest thing to a high-end rubber dome that exists right now.

The market moved away from rubber domes for most mid-range and low-end boards since a bunch of companies raced toward the bottom in terms of pricing. The market got flooded with enthusiast-grade mechanical boards after a boom in the industry in 2020, it's hard to sell a rubber dome at a premium when you can get a budget hot swap mx board for 25 bucks. I'd recommend a mechanical keyboard with low-actuation distance switches, but that might involve changing your muscle memory to avoid bottoming out the keycaps, or fiddling about with o-rings.

In case it wasn't obvious, in his spoiler he said he was getting a dome. Hence my reply.

 

[Drizzt321]

Not reading through the entire thread...but is a non-10 key keyword + a 10 key side as an extra USB device workable? Maybe you can find some combination of that. And you can probably end up buying double shot keys for standard mechnical keyboard switch types, so that could be a (somewhat more expensive) option as well.

 

[iljitsch]

I don't like the light leakage either. I have some ideas on making the various things that reflect light darker / less reflective, but so far I haven't actually taken any action yet.

I rarely look at my keyboard so in practice it's easy to ignore for me, though.

And soon we'll be in the "it only gets dark pretty late" part of the year over here anyway.

If you only need to look at your keyboard in the dark occasionally, you could program a QMK or similar powered keyboard to only light up when you press a certain key.

 

[iljitsch]

(ba dum tss)

Moderators, please admonish Gibberish for failure to us the appropriate emoji.

 

[iljitsch]

Would having ultra-violet LEDs and then have a phosphor in the keycap be a good step in avoiding light leakage?

(Alternatively, my 2016 MacBook Pro manages to have very minimal light leakage and the laser ablated keycaps have held up perfectly. But... those terrible scissor switches.)

 

[Lord Evermore]

Would having ultra-violet LEDs and then have a phosphor in the keycap be a good step in avoiding light leakage?

If you like your eyeballs being sunburned all the time from the UV that is leaking. (Assuming it reflects upward from the keyboard material around the caps.)

 

[iljitsch]

People walk around in skin-burning sunlight all the time without going blind...

But a risk to be evaluated for sure.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

People walk around in skin-burning sunlight all the time without going blind...

In the sun, you have a lot of visible light cueing your pupils to shrink. In dim lighting, your eyeballs don't have that cue and relax to let it more light.

 

[Lord Evermore]

We also have eyebrows and eyelashes helping to block the sunlight that is coming down, and most people squint in bright light. Less protection from anything coming upward, but I don't know how much UV reflects from the ground and other surfaces when we're outside so it could still be worse. An individual LED is probably a tiny amount of UV, but a hundred of them might matter.

It seems like it would be easy to just surround the LEDs (UV or visible) with black plastic so that the only light escaping goes upward, and the blocker reaches all the way to the keycap. I haven't examined the way any of these are actually designed. I assume the makers think people want bleed around the keys rather than just lit lettering. I can't imagine why but most of the cosmetic stuff on PCs makes no sense to me.

 

[cogwheel]

(Alternatively, my 2016 MacBook Pro manages to have very minimal light leakage and the laser ablated keycaps have held up perfectly. But... those terrible scissor switches.)

That uses an island-style laptop keyboard, though. Between the much smaller clearances compared to a standard-travel desktop keyboard and the fact the island style creates a reasonably effective light baffle, light just doesn't have as much chance to escape around the keycaps.

AFAIK there's no such thing as an island-style standard travel keyboard.

 

[iljitsch]

My 2013 MacBook Pro, with very similar looking keys, does have noticeable backlight leakage, though. That 2016 definitely does more than just having tight clearances.

 

[Mental Gear Reduction]

I have an older Corsair K70 with red lighting (using MX Red keyswitches), and it's not too loud. The lighting on my (very old) model is controlled with a button on the keyboard, cycling between off and various light levels. Being red, it won't mess up your night vision, and at something like fifteen years of use, the keycaps are all perfectly legible. The light shines through the keycap, so the numbers and letters are lit.

Something else you might consider are Topre switches. These are rubber dome keyboards, but the best that exist. They're very thick rubber and have springs underneath, and use a capacitative sensor; when the spring is sufficiently compressed, the key activates.

When you first get a Topre, it feels awful, like a normal crappy rubber dome keyboard. But after you've been using it a few weeks, the rubber breaks in and becomes extremely comfortable. Between the rubber and the spring underneath, your fingers don't bottom out nearly as hard. There's a subtle ache that I always feel when I'm typing heavily, where my fingers hurt a little. Normally I don't even notice it, but I sure notice when it's not there. Topres might be the most comfortable keyboard for heavy typing you can buy. And they don't click, they make a thwock sound that's fairly pleasant, at least once they break in. For the first few weeks they don't make much noise. The thwock develops as the rubber softens.

The main problem I had with mine, and the reason I ultimately abandoned it, was that the keys activate only near the bottom of the stroke. That made them feel pretty sluggish for gaming. The Reds I'm using now activate just a little below the top, so they feel a lot faster.

Because of the heavy rubber sheet under the keycaps, they're very resistant to spills, and also have no RGB lighting, since there's no way it could shine through.

 

[Ardax]

So I recently replaced my K845 with a Logitech G413 because I wanted a TKL keyboard. (I know some of you are recoiling in horror, but I've made my peace with it and my brain is so happy with my desk now.) But! It has a lot less light leakage from the keys, and might be of interest to @Wheels Of Confusion -- and there's a full size version if desired. Pictures below. The Pixel's night picture mode is making the backlight bleed look much worse in these photos that it is in real life.

Spoiler: Dim

Spoiler: Bright

 

[continuum]

Glad you like it! IIRC the G413 does get some mention so it should be a decent keyboard.

 

[PsychoStreak]

Curious as to where this wound up. I'm happy with the G213. It's not loud, and there's little to no bleedthrough.
Honestly, if they had a wireless version I'd get two or three of those, but as it stands the wired version works just fine.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

Apologies! I have a newly built PC MOSTLY done except I got hung up on the optical drive. I should really power it on and make sure it POSTs but life has been getting the way. I have the G213 still boxed up just waiting for a chance to, heh, shine. Or not.

 

[kperrier]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2o8UhCjdnU


For when you want that extra, extra large THUNK when you press a key