For those of you who don't know, the original Happy Hacking Keyboard was more similar to the modern Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite than it was to it's more popular child, the Happy Hacking Keyboard Pro. I haven't seen a ton of these pop up recently, so I thought I'd do a little review of it.
First off, I want to say thanks to jalaj and
his little contest that let me get the keyboard to review.
External Build
As you can probably tell, the board is a little old (14 years) and a little dirty, but it still bears that hallmark HHKB layout.
In the same fashion as the HHKB Pro, the HHKB uses rubber dome switches. Unlike the HHKB Pro, they're not the ultra-refined Topre switches, but they are a nice rubber dome nonetheless. The design of the switches and the caps makes for a very stable switch with no wobble. The switches also have a fair amount of lube on them if you can't tell from the pictures.
The caps for it are almost Alps like in that they're rectangular and fit snugly into a rectangular hole. The stabilizers are interesting to me since they're your standard Alps style stabilizers with a thin wire that mounts to small clips on the plate, but instead of the standard square peg that most older Alps style stabilizers have, they have a cross mount.
When you feel the board, it's pretty solid feeling given that it's a rubber dome board. There is a fair amount of torsional flex to the board when you twist it, but it feels solid when you do so. It's not like some keyboards where it feels and sounds like you're breaking it when you flex it. On the other hand, it's not solid like a Model F or AT101W or the Wyse Alps board I've got a review of coming up soon. Given what it is though, it's a pretty nice board with regards to external build quality.
Internal build qualityThe keyboard wasn't exactly the easiest to open up. Where I normally use a putty knife to pry open a case, the HHKB required a small flat head screwdriver and patience.
When you open it up, you can see it's fairly well constructed. It has a nice backplate, though I wish it was thicker, and some well thought out layouts in the interior of the case. If you look closely, you can see that they thought about cable stress and deliberately designed the way the cable lies inside of the case to put less stress on the internals if you accidentally snagged the cable on something. It's also nice to see steel screws instead of rivets inside the case.
Typing on the HHKBSince I don't have a PS/2 extension cable on hand, I can only give you an idea of what it feels like without actually typing with it. I wish I could say that this review was written with it, but that would be a lie.
Overall, the keyboard feels surprisingly good to type on for it being a rubber dome keyboard. There's a nice tactility to the switches that some rubber dome keyboards are missing, instead resulting in a mushy feel, and it's miles better than any pure membrane keyboard I've ever tried. Unlike Topre switches, it's not a nice crisp tactility at the top of the switch that then gently bottoms out. Instead, you get a tactile bump that's toward the top of the bump, but not always at the top, that's lacking that crisp defined feel and then it falls all to quickly to a hard springy bottom out. It's almost the feeling that I feel when I bottom out a switch that has o-rings, just a slight mushy sponginess to the bottom that's not terrible, but not pleasant either. They also feel like they have an incredibly short throw to them, much shorter than an MX switch, similar in throw to Alps, but longer than scissor switch. And, sadly, the spacebar feels spongy and mushy. The spacebar on the keyboard is just terrible.
In short, while it's better than many rubber dome keyboards out there and any membrane board I've tried, it's still nowhere near as nice as MX switches, nice Alps, or my T500's scissor switches. That said, I wouldn't feel bad tossing it in a bag and using it when I need a small keyboard with me instead of using my laptop keyboard.
The slope of the caps is also weird. They just feel too low and like each row blends into the next. Using the legs on it doesn't really help either.
Lastly, the layout. You either love or hate the HHKB layout. In my short time with it, I can say that I don't love it. Maybe I could get used to it, but just playing with it is not fun for me.
