r/MechanicalKeyboards Jul 01 '24

Review Cerakey Review: Potentially the worst premium caps money can buy.

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733 Upvotes

I had seen cerakey floating around SM for a good while and didn’t give it too much thought… but then a preorder came out for china blue and they had allegedly fixed issues from their previous sets, double win, I wanted it! So I pre-ordered 2 different colorways so my ex and I could swap and try different color palettes (now I get both of these… “wonderful” sets (and no, it wasn’t a fluke, both sets are awful) 😂).

Fast forward a year and some change and the caps I forgot about were here! Excitement Reignited! And then disaster struck almost immediately. So originally, I guess the stems were ceramic like the rest of the cap, but they couldn’t get the tolerances tight enough, so in the V2, the stems are plastic, and apparently hand glued very poorly. My sets are so horribly snaggletoothed that it hurts my soul 😂 I think it was something like $160 a set… And what I got was $160 worth of disappointment.

It looks ok at a glance, but it’s awful to type on. You fingers can feel that this cap is tilted to the left and the cap next door is tilted to the right, you can feel that the next cap is actually level, but the one right over is not only tilted to the left, but also twisted. Because of this inconsistency, you get caps that come into contact with eachother, which is kind of a pretty sound when you do it on purpose, but to have random caps ringing out while typing gets old real quick. Then to top it off, the low tolerances cause caps to get stuck.

If these were some $30 knock offs on Amazon, then I wouldn’t even bat an eye at the quality, but for a company that is so highly advertised, and a price that is quite premium, I expect these things to have very minor issues at the most, but these things have nothing but issues. I can recommend them to absolutely no one unless you want to use them exclusively for aesthetics on a board you don’t plan on actually using.

This is the worst product I’ve tried in 2024, and if you respect yourself, your board, and your wallet, don’t buy these shit tier caps, I guarantee they’re worse than almost anything else you can get.

r/MechanicalKeyboards Oct 01 '23

Review Diamond Avalon Switch Review

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640 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Mar 01 '22

review Drop Holy Panda X Switch Review

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1.8k Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Dec 19 '22

Review Zuoya GMK67 kit review

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350 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Mar 24 '24

Review Ball Bearing Blue Switch Review

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506 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Oct 16 '22

Review Novelkeys Dream Cream Switch Review

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1.7k Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Nov 20 '15

review [photos][review] i got that chinese keyboard with the hot-swappable switches. it arrived. it is awesome.

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1.1k Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Sep 05 '24

Review Bridge75 gang review

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239 Upvotes

Hello! I'll share my personal experience with these three beauties: the black standard version of the Bridge75, and the 2x Plus models (silver and milk coffee).

For starters, I ordered them all on AliExpress: the black one for $100, the silver for $110, and the milky for $115, all with promo codes. I waited about two weeks for them to arrive in Poland.

The unboxing experience is nice. We get a basic black cable, a branded switch/keycap puller, a few spare switches, and a dongle. I like the acrylic dust cover, but unfortunately, we don't get a proper safety film—just a plastic one that rips off easily and is unusable afterward.

Now, about the boards themselves—I highly recommend paying a bit extra for the Plus version. The deeper, thockier, and creamier sound is much more apparent in the Plus variant, probably due to the additional foam and the FR4 plate. The standard version also sounds good, but it's thinner and a bit higher-pitched. The double battery capacity is another reason to opt for the Plus version.

Build Quality: Look closely at the pictures so you understand what I mean. The coating is not consistent across the colors. The black unit has the smoothest texture—it catches fingerprints and smudges very easily, but the texture itself is the best. The silver one is just a bit rougher, though not significantly, and the milk coffee version is a bit disappointing. It seems to be spray-coated, and what's worse, it has glittery particles. I love its pastel color and overall vibe, but I really wish they would improve the coating quality of this color in the future.

Of course, it's a personal choice, but I think the silver one looks the best overall, as the brushed steel backplate matches the color of the board.

Another thing—the sound coming from the Plus variants is not consistent among these units. The milky coffee version has a deeper, more thocky sound on the spacebar, whereas in the silver unit, it's louder and higher. The same applies to the other stabilized keys, which is quite odd. Speaking of stabilizers—they could be better. Both of the Plus variants have a slight "pingy" noise coming from the backspace. Overall, they are smooth and work well, but that tiny pingy sound shouldn't be there.

Switches: Mmm Princess linear switches are actually the switches I used to build my first custom keyboard, so it was a nostalgic experience. I still consider them among the best budget switches; they are very smooth and have a nice, deep thocky sound. As good as they are, I wish there were more switch options or a more premium choice, like in the Rainy75, where you get HMX switches. Comparing the two briefly

Some personal thoughts: The ball-catch system works great, and I really appreciate it. The wired/wireless switch is hidden under the top plate, and I thought that was fine because now I don't need a keycap puller to switch modes like in other keyboards, where the switch is often located under the Caps Lock key, right? Well, not quite! The switch is so tiny and low that you still need some sort of tool to flip it. However, what I discovered is that you actually don't need to switch it at all. You can just leave it in wireless mode, and whenever you want to connect the cable, simply use the FN + ~ combination to switch to wired mode. What a relief! I also forgot to mention that it supports VIA, so changing key mappings was easy—just had to download the JSON file.

Overall, it's a fantastic keyboard, and I definitely recommend it. Despite the slight glittering, I love the pastel look and creamy keycaps so much that I'm keeping it!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

r/MechanicalKeyboards May 26 '24

Review Gateron Deepping Switch Review

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255 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Apr 26 '21

review GMMK Pro review from a QMK user's perspective

829 Upvotes

Looks like my post has been shadowbanned from /r/glorious, so I guess I'm reposting it here. Apparently it was caught by a spam filter, the one capture I got on wayback does corroborate this, although for what it's worth when I had initially made the post I couldn't read it in incognito mode, and it didn't show that message.

Long story short, QMK support is barely there and seems unlikely to improve.

EDIT: Glorious has sort of made a response to this post here, see my followup to their post here

Hardware

Overall feels great, there's still room for improvement though:

  • Getting switches to clip into the polycarb plate properly was kind of annoying but I guess that's to be expected with such a flexible material.
  • The PCB has quite a bit of warp when disassembled, but it seems fine after screwing the top on.
  • For a mass market device intended to be disassembled, there could be fewer screw types/lengths
  • Polycarb plate requires quite a bit of force to get the screws to thread. Pretapping the holes a bit would be nice.
  • Admittedly disassembly is fairly straightforward, but the instructions are still pretty lackluster with no images, which is weird considering there's images for other things like swapping switches.

Software

Glorious Core

Honestly the user experience is generally really awful, here's a some of my complaints:

  • Why is the software unsigned? It's pretty concerning to just host some random binary on your website and tell customers to trust that it definitely comes from Glorious and not anyone malicious.
  • The wording on some things is just weird or poor
  • Why are the hotkey combos not configurable? What's even the point of having hotkey combos if I have to look at the manual to figure them out?
  • Why is there exactly 3 profiles and 3 layers?
    • What even is the difference between profiles and layers?
    • The default behavior for a layer is to completely override all behavior of the layer below it, which is no different from what a profile does, except now there's a confusing hierarchy of hotkey combos to find the one you're looking for.
    • What if I want fewer profiles or layers? Most people are probably never going to use more than one or two, I personally want a single profile with two layers.
  • Why do the Fn combos require Fn to be the first key pressed?
  • The exported profile JSON seems to contain quite a lot of settings not accessible through Glorious Core, care to document what those do?
  • Why is there no way to reset a single key to default behavior?

QMK

They really did just the bare minimum for this, it honestly feels like it was just an afterthought to attract keyboard enthusiasts who didn't look too deep into it before preordering like me.

VIA support

Nonexistent, at least from GMMK. I have no idea what the problem is, it's really not that hard

RGB support

This is supposedly being worked on, but given that they didn't even bother to answer this question from a month ago somehow I doubt it.

At a glance they look like SK6812MINI-Es, if QMK support was the goal these would have been a no brainer, as they are already natively supported. However, they're actually generic common anode 6028 RGB leds, which require an external controller to drive them. I have no idea why these were chosen, except for maybe they happened to be a lot cheaper than the SK6812MINI-Es. QMK does actually have support for driving a common anode RGB array with an IS31FL3733. However, it looks like GMMK has again cheaped out and used what I assume is some random obscure driver chip. Searching up the markings on the chip don't bring up anything useful. The footprint looks like QFN-44 (5x5mm), which curiously seems to only match up with IS31FL3237. It's unlikely that this is the case however, since the IS31FL3237 only has 36 channels, which means with the two chips in the Pro could only drive the leds for at most 2(chips)x36(channels)/3(r,g,b) = 24 keys. In any case, this chip doesn't have QMK support either.

Batch 3 QMK incompatibility

This tweet is pretty concerning. It is actually possible to use STM chips not officially supported by QMK without any modifications if the chip happens to be similar enough to a chip that already has support. However since there's no mention of the actual chip they intend to use as a replacement, I imagine their confidence in this being possible is fairly low. In the event that they actually need to add support for a new chip, getting it to happen will probably take quite a while, since QMK requires new ARM chips to be first supported by ChibiOS-Contrib.

Reverting to stock firmware

I specifically bought this board for the LEDs assuming it was using SK6812MINI-Es, and personally prefer having a backlight over QMK, so I am currently back to the stock firmware.

Of course, for anyone who wants to actually do that, there's no documentation on how to do so other than just "flash the Glorious Firmware .bin file" at the bottom of the QMK installation guide. In order to actually find the stock firmware, you have to go and dig through their subreddit to find this random direct link to Glorious Core's CDN. Another thing that isn't being hosted on the download page or the product page, which seems like it would be a pretty helpful thing for anyone facing issues with flashing through Glorious Core.

Conclusion

Given that GloriousThrall's Github has been dead for over a month as of Apr 25, 2021, I find it hard to believe that QMK support was ever intended to be anything more than a marketing gimmick. There seems to be very little interest in actually providing support for QMK users, and if anything it seems that they have actively made decisions to make QMK support harder except for the initial choice of MCU.

To be clear, I have no intentions to return mine, I do actually really like the way my setup feels to type on (Polycarb plate, Zilent 67g, some random cheapo keycaps cause I couldn't find black doubleshot sidelit ones). I do however think the lack of transparency and shadowbanning is concerning, and probably would have cancelled/not made a preorder had I known all of this beforehand.

r/MechanicalKeyboards Apr 10 '16

review [review][not mechanical]Please edongt get tgis keyboard

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1.4k Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Jan 01 '23

Review Novelkeys Cream+ Switch Review

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774 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Dec 04 '22

Review Cherry MX 'New Nixie' Switch Review

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829 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Sep 04 '20

review Glorious Panda Switch Review

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902 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards 18d ago

Review Neo75Cu Review - The Endgame Neo

10 Upvotes

EDIT:
This is not an ad. This is an honest review. I have been a part of the community for the last year, but have decided to put full reviews under this account instead of my main account. Though it might read like an ad, its not. Its my belief WHY the Neo75Cu is such a good board. HOW the company learned from their previous releases and improved on each one after another.

DISCLOSURE:
I am not sponsored by, was not provided this board, and am not being compensated in any way for review.
I would be more than glad to provide proof of purchase if necessary to the mods if it is believed that this is a sponsored ad post. I previously posted a short version of this review on the QK discord one week ago on 12/2/2024, with notice that i had a full version coming out this week. This is the full version of that review.

Neo75 Full Review:

The Past:
The Neo75 is the culmination of a solid year of improvements for QK and Ne0's ongoing collaboration for the Neo series of boards. It takes lessons learned from the Neo65, Neo70, Neo80, and Neo Ergo, and all the feedback from thousands of customers to form what to me, is the best Neo board to date.

August of 2023, QK officially launched the first board in its Neo series, the Neo65. At the time, there were few if any other mid-premium 65% layout boards with full aluminum frames that were going to be offered in stock for shipping without group buys and months of waiting. All while keeping a shockingly low price of just $80 for the lowest configuration. With a rather simple design, but amazing typing feel and affordability. The Neo series started to take off in popularity with its premium feel, but entry level price, driven lower than imaginable by QK and their rolling in stock preorders to get custom configurations ordered, produced, and shipped out to customers in just over a month. Since then, their rolling preorders have been a staple for Neo boards with customers reaping the benefits of it for over a year now.

A few months later we have the launch of the Neo70. It was another simple classic design for a case with Gaskets or O-Ring mount that felt just like an extended Neo65. However, it had a trick hidden away in its bottom case. This was their first board to feature a magnetic connector instead of using a traditional ribbon cable. This was a game changer for a custom keyboard and to this day is one of the best features added to any custom board. There was no more struggling to fit in a small ribbon cable or struggling to get some pins lined up for a small connector. Just drop the PCB stack in and let the magnets align everything with pogo pins. It made the board sound great and made it even easier to build. Less than a month later, they launched what I would have called their previous flagship product, the Neo80.

The Neo80 is almost design perfection. It features a full standard TKL layout, with the magnetic connector from the Neo70, but adds on the next best feature to be added to custom keyboards. The Ball-Catch top case. Seven sets of spring-loaded balls, catch onto sets of retaining standoffs that allow the top case to removed and reattached with zero screws. Just pull it off with a little force and you’re ready to swap things out. Combined with the existing magnetic connector, it was officially the easiest custom keyboard to build on the market, again with a shocking price of just $110-$140. Custom boards had never seen prices this low for the features customers were getting. Following the Neo80, Neo released the Neo Ergo, a tented ergonomic modeled after the TGR Alice. It was built on the same features of the Neo80 showing us that the tech that they were putting in their board was here to stay.

On the heels of the Neo Ergo, there were rumors of what Neo was going to release next. Was it going to be bigger, smaller, or something in the middle. We had rumors of a Neo60, Neo98, and Neo75. But QK and Ne0 pulled something out that not many of us expected and shocked everyone once again. Introducing the Neo75Cu, the first board in their Cu line of boards.

The Present:
The Neo75Cu is one of the disruptions to a market that I have ever seen a company do in the custom keyboard space. It takes everything they have learned from the last year of producing amazing products for their customers and crams it into a single board. If that wasn't enough, they decided to one up everyone, and i mean everyone. They made the entire bottom plate from a single piece of machined copper.

Cu is the elemental symbol for copper, which in the custom keyboard market has been one of the most prized materials for making plates and weights out of. It’s one of the densest metals used in custom boards and often sees a huge price hike because of the cost of machining it compared to things like Aluminum. Copper is almost 4 times as dense as Aluminum, which from an audiophile perspective is going to even out the overall sound of reverberations. Typically, this has been offered by other vendors, but at a massive price increase of sometimes 150-200% the base cost of the board. It has held itself as one of the most premium features to have on your custom board because of its increased price, but the truth is, Copper isn't that expensive. Enter the Neo75Cu, the new flagship of Neo Studio. Featuring a magnetic daughterboard, ball-catch top case, and a 1500g machined copper weight, or 1400g machined brass bottom weight. There are literally thousands of ways to build this board with 12 launch colors, 9 accent badges, 5 plates, and 3 PCB options. All again for an industry shocking $190-$230.

The Product:
For the last two weeks I have daily driven the Neo75Cu for 10+ hours a day. My personal build is an Anodized Black with Copper bottom and Tri mode PCB. One of the biggest reasons I have stuck with Qk/Neo in the last year is the feature set of their PCBs. Their Tri mode PCBs, while can sometimes have quirks, have some of the best layout supports for whatever style you want. Their single PCB supports ISO, ANSI, 6.25u/7u, Split backspace, and Split left shift. The board also features a 16.8mm front height and 7 degree typing angle, which is perfect for me. It’s a soft incline with a low front angle keeping your hands in an amazingly comfortable typing position without stressing your wrist too much.

Style: 9/10
What can I say. The Neo75 has struck it out he park with this one, a solid non-exploded 75%, with clean bezels and an optional F13 key or matching accent piece for your choice of bottom plate. A thin line separating the top and bottom case showcasing your choice of bottom plate, with subtle indents to help you lift the board from the sides. The separation line between the two-color plates continues to the head of the case where they form around the USB C port. We get a small glimpse where QK had some involvement with the design with the front edge having a small section showing off the bottom plate, which is reminiscent of the QK65V2 series. Overall, it’s an amazing design, that isn't overly flashy but allows you to see how premium it is if you look in the right places.

Build: 9/10
QK has been amazing at having some of the best build guides around for a while. With the ball catch system returning like the Neo Ergo and Neo80, building in the 75Cu is as easy as ever. I did find that due to the weight of the bottom plate, the ball catch is much heavier of a catch this time to keep the bottom case attached when moving it around. A simple build process with pretty much everything you could want is provided in the box. All the foams you could want, a set of Neo Stabs, all the tools required to assemble it, and easily one of the best hard-shell cases we have been provided.

Sound: 9.5/10
Currently I have mine built with HMX KD200's on an aluminum plate and GMK Pharaoh keycaps. It’s bright and clacky and everything that I wanted it to be. I'm sure that there is more that I will have to say as I use the board more and more. But for now, I can say that without a doubt. This is the best board that Neo has ever released and it’s going to be hard to one up this one for a while. This should send shivers down the spines of their competitors.

The Problems:
I would consider myself a rather hefty power user when it comes to my daily use and abuse of my keyboards. I have several macros and custom key configurations to meet my everyday needs and the Neo75Cu has stood up to almost all of them. The VIA compatibility is perfect, however there are keys that you cannot get back if you replace them in the configurator. There have also been hotkeys on previous boards that have been completely removed on this iteration of the firmware that i would love to see back. The only major complaint that I have had is using the Macro's on Bluetooth can sometimes be hit or miss depending on the length of the macro. These were cleared up when swapping over to 2.4Ghz so it hasn't directly impacted me anymore. Bluetooth is naturally a less high-speed data transmission protocol, so it’s expected to have some drawbacks.

Value: 10/10
I can’t underestimate how amazing this board feels when you compare it to other boards in my collection. Neo has once again shown up to the table and taken a swing at everyone and came out on top.

Comparisons:
In the market there are two very different camps that have appeared in the last six months or so. Mass market OEM boards like the Rainy75, Chilkey ND75, and Womier SK75, which almost all feature thocky deep profiles with flex cut PCBs, and the continuation of super premium group buy boards. Having tried them, the Neo75 stands heads above them all. Its true its double the price of them, but you get so much more than double the value. While the quality of OEM boards has been going up and up, they have all chosen to remain right around the $100 mark and have been scared to go above it. The average consumer is not going to pay upwards of $250 for a single custom keyboard, while the gaming market has pushed Hall Effect boards as the pinnacle of gaming for the last year or so since the release of the Wooting 60HE. The Neo75 sits comfortably in the Mid-Premium tier as the king of custom 75's, easily beating out some of the much more expensive brands such as Mode and their Copper backed Sonnet, which comes in at a staggering near $600+. Very few other companies have anything remotely close to the value you’re getting with the Neo and it really doesn't look like anyone else is for a while.

The Future:
Today Qk/Neo announced 4 new Neo boards and don’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. I can only imagine what they have in store for us next time and honestly can’t wait to see it. Neo has continued to disrupt the market at every turn and other vendors should be shaking in their boots with how many people have turned to QK/Neo in the last year. Price, Performance, Value, QK has beaten everyone at every turn.

r/MechanicalKeyboards Aug 03 '24

Review The most complete review sheet for Hall Effect keyboards

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145 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Jan 07 '24

Review Cherry MX Purple Switch Review

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530 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Jul 02 '23

Review Huano Fi Switch Review

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385 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Nov 25 '24

Review English review of the madlions mad60 HE

12 Upvotes

Hey!

Since there is a lot of Questions surrounding the Mad60HE i decided to type out an English review. I bought the Keeboard with my own Money, and the Company has nothing to do with my review. You will get a totally objective review of the keeb with everything i noticed.

  1. Ordering the Keeboard.

I ordered the Keyboard through Aliexpress .The Seller was helpful, as aliexpress somehow displayed my adress incorrectly. After the Order ( i chose the mad60he ultimatemagnetpro) i waited, and after 8 days it arrived. The box was battered in on one site (looked like it got hit by something) so i was a bit worried, especially since the inner box was also hit by that. But everyhting out of the box looked flawless.

  1. Unboxing the Keyboard.

Out of the Box, you get the Keyboard in some super cheap feeling plastic material, a usb c cable and the strap to put on the Keyboard. First impressions: the board weighs very little (without the strap: 479 g), feels very plastiky and looks very similar to the Wooting.

  1. First tryout:

The first proper typing was done cold without plugging the keyboard in. For reference, iam taking my TGR x Monkei Tomo, with MX Blacks on an aluminium plate, no foams.

The Mad60he has very decent stabilizers. There was barely any rattle for me, and minimal wobble. They are defintely the strongpoint.

The switches have quite a lot of chatter. They sound fairly hollow, and frankly not very good. Where the tomo is suave and fairly muted, the Mad60he sounds more like a angry woodpecker. The stabilizers make up for that a bit at least. The keycaps are okay for the price, although i swapped them out twice: once for some xmi beige with runic sublegends, and a genuine gmk set, gmk Beige norDE. The xmi sounded better then stock, the gmk improved on the sound too, but still: i wouldnt buy this board for the sound. To describe it: its fairly "clacky" with a certain hollowness and a undertone that sounds like bubblewrap getting smushed. Its okay, tolerable with headphones, but nothjing to write home about. It could be fixed with a tapemod + polyfill or added foam, although i have yet to test that. I will update the review once i have.

  1. The software

After plugging the board in, you are greeted with rgb goodness - or the try atleast. Its not very bright, and not very nice to look at. It was the first thing i turned off. If you are sitting a bit further away from the board, you also get a bit of led spillage onto your desk. In short - not good, not needed.

The software can be found on their website and instantly recognized the board. After an update to the newest firmware ( which was fairly easy, although the menu for it was only partly translated) the board showed up again and was ready to be personalized.

If you have a bit of understanding on he keyboards, the process is fairly easy. You set the keys you want to the actuation that you like, activate the deadzone and rapid trigger and you are set. I recommend to do their calibration - it works well, and afterwards every keypress feels like it should.

The update ( which i did earlier) also made it possible to activate socd ( or snappy tappy). The stuff works like a charm, and is definetly working as it should. All the features are, for that matter. The keys activate rapidly fast ( compared to the tomo) and reset just as fast as pressed. All in all, the software works. Plus: it just runs in the browser, and doesnt bloat your pc.

  1. Is it any good?

Before writing the review i played multiple rounds of different games. Valorant, league of legends, counterstrike 2 and cod 6. The shooters definetly benefit from the keyboard, as i was noticably smoother and "snappier" for a lack of a better word. In league, the difference wasnt as noticable. If your focus is fps shootergames, and you dont want to spend a shitton on a wooting, i would go with the mad60he. Its cheap enough to get the board, some nice keycaps like xmi and a tofu60 redux and still have money for some other stuff. In its base form, it feels cheap yet sturdy, the stabilizers are very nice, the switches are okay, the led is awful, the box was meh, and the software good.

On a scale from 1 to 10, i would give it a solid 8. Its very good for what it is, but you can feel some shortcomings related to the budget. Once the foam is filled in, i will give you the second audio of it.
Here is the Audio without Foam, No mods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fBBkEMfFt8

I hope you found this review useful! Best wishes,

Balancing

r/MechanicalKeyboards Aug 04 '24

Review DK Creamery Red Velvet Switch Review

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223 Upvotes

r/MechanicalKeyboards Sep 29 '24

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199 Upvotes

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r/MechanicalKeyboards Oct 31 '21

review Novelkeys Cream Tactile Switch Review

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776 Upvotes