It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Happy New Years everyone!

Today, for our last giveaway, we are doing x3 Classic-TKL's. All 3 winners will be picked from this post. The winners will receive one of the following color ways - Tempest, Ironstone, and Regolith.

Now for the promotional material

Our New Years Sale is now live! We have some pretty awesome deals here, and the sale will run until January 10, 2025. See the sale here - https://novelkeys.com/collections/new-years-sale-2025

Some highlights:

• $50 Base Kits
• Buy 2 Get 1 Free on Key Kobo and Dyesub Sets Base Kits
• 50% off most GMK child kits
• $99 B-Stock Random Salvations

How to enter:

• Make a top level comment on this post with your favorite keyboard of 2024. Please do not reply to this comment as it will not be counted.
• We will cover shipping worldwide. Please note that any import/VAT/customs fees will need to be paid by the winner where applicable.
• Winner will be selected on Saturday, December 28, at 9am Eastern using RedditRaffler.

Worthy of an end game board.

Owlab is excited to participate in this festive event and spread holiday cheer with everyone. To celebrate, we're giving away Percent Studio's latest creation: a Volt Plus+ Numpad in random configuration!

Owlab is now the manufacturer and international leading vendor of Percent Studio. We hope this collaboration will create positive synergy and bring more great designs to the market. To kick off the collaboration, we're going to launch their latest works, the Volt Plus+ number pad and Platinum PT750, in the coming January. Stay tuned!

How to Enter:

1️⃣ Comment on this post and tell us which Owlab keyboard is your favorite!

2️⃣ Winners will be chosen using RedditRaffler on December 29th at 00:00 EST.

3️⃣ We'll cover worldwide shipping, but international winners are responsible for any import fees (restricted shipping areas excluded).

Submission Restrictions: Minimum account age must be 14 days

Let's make this holiday season even brighter—good luck to everyone!

First time ever modding a keyboard, but everything went well :D. I did the following mods: Tempest (Painter's tape), case foam (EVA), new switches (Gateron G Pro 3.0 Yellow) and new keycaps

I can't believe the difference it makes when you switch from a full size to just 80%. I feel like there's so much real estate on my desk now and I'm still able to do everything for work and school comfortably. Over the years i have gone from a g710+ to a g810 to a evga z20 and now i have a keychron q3 max qmk. I love it.

Soldered Wired Gazzew Boba U4S Durock V3 stabs - Clear Copper Weight GMK Metropolis R2 + Spacebar Kit Tadpole Gaskets

This photo is slightly crooked. And I even had a grid to work with. Aaaaah. This is the ACR61 , an HHKB-style 60% acrylic board from Akko. Internally dampened with custom poured silicone. Plate is PC. Caps are dye subbed PBT Taro. Artisan is HKP AstronSkull.

Keychron Q5 Max MMD Holy Panda 65g GMK Hallyu Navy Keychron Knob

DISCLOSURE:
I am not sponsored by, was not provided this board, and am not being compensated in any way for review.

January 2024 I joined in the R4 group buy for the Barrett Creations KL-90. I was looking at getting a wood board to try out and I happened to see a post on here talking about it. After going over it a couple times i decided to jump in. Few months down the line, exactly on schedule, i got my shipping update and the board arrived.... warped pretty bad. Thankfully Barrett was able to get me a replacement case but that was just the beginning of the ordeals.

Notes:
This build is the combination of building two of this board. One for my wife, one purchased by her friend, both built by myself.

Style: 9/10
Wood is going to be a naturally unique material to build a board out of. Its going to be naturally imperfect, and the KL-90 layout gives you a semi symmetrical layout with hotkeys on both sides of the central layout and two knobs and or a knob and LCD screen. On paper its exploded layout is great and the natural wood features are absolutely amazing and provide you with a truly one of a kind board.

Build: 4/10
This was definitely a rough one. From USB ports not lining up, terrible cutouts that aren't square, poor instructions on where gaskets should be, to obviously places where improvements could be made, this was easily one of the worst builds of the year for me. When it arrived, it was just the board wrapped in some bubble wrap in a semi beat up random cardboard box with an accessory bag. After getting things open a second time, the gasket location wasn't obvious and was simply a small sticker placed on the bag with the gasket stickers. I had to reach out to see if there was a build guide or anything, which there wasn't. There is no foam kit available directly but i was able to find a PCB foam kit available somewhere else for $10.

Everything in a standard build from here was fine. The KL-90 PCB expects you to solder the encoders and screen which was notated on his website before purchase. What really took the most time was getting the top and bottom cases back together. When putting them together there is no locating key, or notch or anything for getting the case back together. You have to blindly screw in a machine screw into a hole that leaves almost zero play for getting into the hole. It honestly took multiple tries per hole to finally get in there. And with no feedback on if you have reached the bottom because of the thread size and lack of countersinks, i stripped at least one hole on the build. Even a threaded insert or even using wood screws would have easily fixed this.

The second kit i built had the same screw issues, but this kit also had a knob come back without chamfering on the knob and a literal splinter coming out of it. This was replaced by Barrett at the same time as the warped case from the first kit.

Sound: 5/10
Bright and hollow is easily the two biggest thoughts that came to this build. I tried as much as i could to get it to sound "great" but no matter what it always came back as hollow. Wood is naturally going to resonate more and especially in an empty case with zero foam its going to bounce all over the place. 3 foam configurations, multiple keycap sets and half a dozen switches couldn't get the sound to be more full.

Problems:
Not to sound like a broken record, the build of the actual case was the majority of the issues. The KL-90 PCB had no issues.

Value: 3/10
This is rough, because if you take into account the price of the extra components. The case itself makes up over 2/3 of the price of the kit, and it feels very bla in its finish. It easily could have gotten $10 worth of hardware and been made to feel like it was so much of a better build. From sharp edges to splinters, it feels unfinished.

Overall: 5/10
I was really looking forward to this build, but it ended up being such a letdown. Though Barrett was able to get me a replacement case in under two weeks, it cant make up for what a lackluster built it was for the staggering $300 price. For now its going to sit on the shelf as a display piece, as i cant see myself actually using it for the time being.

Supplemental:
I want to give an amazing shutout to Barrett himself as he got replacement parts sent out extremely quickly and didn't require sending parts back. His customer service is a pure 10/10 and it deserves the utmost respect.