Author Topic: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard  (Read 4768 times)

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Offline funkmon

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$27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« on: Tue, 16 February 2021, 00:22:35 »


This is a review of the $27 navless keyboard I bought on Amazon.

I was browsing the buildapcsales subreddit and saw a mechanical keyboard for $27. That’s always worth a check, even though I don’t need another one of these things, and I clicked through and it was, amazingly, a 96 key keyboard without a dumbass shortened right modifier cluster. That’s right, it had a numpad, one of the only keyboards I know with a standard layout, just without the nav cluster. If someone can find me a good version of this, I’d love it.

Anyway, I picked the thing up purely based on the layout, and hey presto, it comes with MX blue clones, the best of the MX type switches. They don’t sound as bad as some people claim, and they also don’t feel bad. They all do feel largely similar with very few exceptions. There’s a reason this is the bog standard mechanical keyswitch: it’s pretty bland but good. Like a hamburger. I have had a keyboard with MX Blues as my #2 keyboard attached to my server for approximately 7 years. It’s the same keyboard. It works perfectly, and I can type on it for hours with no issues or any desires to use anything else. The Box Jades? In the box. Box Pinks? In the Box. Browns? In the box. Models M? In the box. Matias? In the box. Omnikey? In the box. Monoprice keyboard with Cherry MX blues? It gets use. It’s just too middle of the road to not.



These ones in particular though are not Cherry or Gateron or Kailh or Outemou or whatever, but one I don’t think I’ve heard of, but seems familiar nonetheless. Someone tell me if these are a major switch name. Jixian switches? They feel, surprise, just like MX Blues. It’s one of those where the switches kinda jut out of the case. This may or may not be to make the colours pop more, but it might be space saving or cost saving. I don’t know and I don’t know what this is called.



The rest of the keyboard build is fine. Modern mechanical keyboards are largely all well built. This uses thick plastic with little, if any, flex. It has drainage holes in the bottom, and a nice cable channel. Also included is a keypuller and spare key. The key is Winkey sized, so what the ****, but that’s nice I guess. Also included are two feet with big fat rubber things on the end. This is nice. This is very nice. They’re a good height and angle and they stick on the desk. Perfect for what they’re supposed to be doing.









The cable is also fake gold plated! Nice!

In terms of size, it’s quite small, essentially the size of a compact tenkeyless, or, if you’re normal and don’t have any of those, take the numpad off your keyboard, and it’s the size of the keyboard from the left control to the right arrow. The bezels and spacing are small enough that it doesn’t take up much more space than that. They shoved the locklights in the top right by escape.



The lighting is real RGB with rainbow effects and ****. It doesn’t let you set the lighting per key, but it does have some features that illuminate certain keys only, or in a different colour, like on the numpad it lights them up like the objectively inferior navigation cluster. More on that dumbass nav cluster later. The lights are fairly bright, and the effects are simple to use with a few key combinations that I didn’t even read the manual for. That’s the test. I threw out the manual, and I don’t have the software that supposedly comes with this thing. Here’s a thing that shows its ripple effect when set to a pink colour for the whole board.









There’s a button on the top right that changes the numpad/nav cluser to standard M type nav cluster only, with the inverted T arrows and so on. That’s kinda nifty if you’re a mentalist. I mean, I wouldn’t have done it this way, but whatever. I’m sure that some of you people would use it. Look how the lights change. Note the arrows are lit but not the above cluster. More on that later.



You can see the lighting through the keycaps because they’re thin doubleshot plastic something or other, and the doubleshotting was done cheaply, so they have that stencil look about them. The crazy part is that they kept the stencil look on the PAD PRINTED SUBLEGENDS. Like, dude, you know you can just print a ****ing circle, right?



Also, the numpad are the default legends on a numpad with pad printed sublegends if you use the top right button, except for 2, which is an up arrow. The only problem is that 2 is a ****ing DOWN ARROW, which is missing. So they appear to have defaulted to the numpad at the top, but the arrow keys on the bottom, but those are mutually exclusive. You can’t use the bottom arrow keys while using the top nav cluster. Also, in pad printing the numpad legends, you can’t see which key is insert and which key is delete. Yes, I know which ones they are, zero and period, but what the hell man. This could be mitigated by using a different keycap set. Luckily, I have such a keycap set, but the next problem is that this **** is nonstandard, so if I want to use SA profile I’m going to have to kludge it a bit. Just make sensible keycaps to start with, *looks at box* Mechanical Keyboard company! I don’t need to get obsessed with keycaps like the rest of the world, I don’t care if they’re good or bad or anything really, but make them make ****ing sense for the love of god.

Let’s look at the box by the by. Is this the most generic looking box you’ve ever seen in your entire life? It definitely is mine.





Okay so I wrote that using the $27 keyboard and it’s been my daily driver for the past 4 days. I just went back to the Model F and it’s good...but so is the $27 keyboard. Is one appreciably better than the other? For me, yes, I think the Model F is a much nicer keyboard to use, but is it so much nicer that I would tell someone to spend over a hundred bucks on it, or even worse, two hundred to three hundred bucks for the AT model? God no. If you’re interested in navless, buy this thing for the cost of a dinner out at Applebee’s with one friend. I'm going to recommend it to everyone who is interested in a nicer keyboard than the one that came with the computer who doesn't want to shell out any money.

Offline Maledicted

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  • Location: Wisconsin, United States
Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #1 on: Tue, 16 February 2021, 14:32:12 »
Nice review, and a nice keyboard for the price. A lot of people seem to be unable to function without the dead space between switches on the nav cluster, otherwise this would be a great gift or recommendation for people you want to indoctrinate into the world of mechanical keyboards.

I wonder how those switches compare with Zorro and Ajazz. All 3 might be made by the same anonymous Chinese factory. The Zorro or Ajazz switches I have feel pretty terrible to me, noticeably worse than MX blue, which is noticeably worse than Outemu or Gateron. I typed happily away on MX blue myself though for years as well without knowing any better, so even these can serve as a nice gateway drug.

Do you have more pictures of the caps, underneath? I would be very surprised if they were double shots for this price. You're sure they're not laser ablated? That would also explain the legends being a little recessed.
« Last Edit: Tue, 16 February 2021, 14:34:57 by Maledicted »

Offline funkmon

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #2 on: Tue, 16 February 2021, 21:25:44 »
You know, I just took that from a comment on it somewhere. I didn't even look.



welp

Offline Maledicted

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #3 on: Wed, 17 February 2021, 10:44:40 »
You know, I just took that from a comment on it somewhere. I didn't even look

welp

I wouldn't have expected anything more for that price. It is a miracle that it even has RGB.

Offline Reimu_64

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #4 on: Wed, 17 February 2021, 11:02:00 »
>> Someone tell me if these are a major switch name. Jixian switches?

I reviewed a keyboard with Jixian switches. They aren't well known at all. I don't even know which keyboards use them. As you mentioned though, they are basically MX Blues, but to my ears they sound higher pictched and less refined.

My review if you're interested:
t

Offline micmil

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #5 on: Fri, 19 February 2021, 12:41:18 »
Aww, that's nice, you did this one so I don't have to.  :))

I'm only now getting into the hobby but even when I was younger I was picky about keyboards. I think I ran our local K-Mart out of business with all the returns. Flash forward to now and I've bought a handful of cheapass keyboards and they're all hanging around. You have to really scrape the barrel to find bad keyboards and this just reiterates that. Sub-$30 and it's fine.

Offline Maledicted

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #6 on: Fri, 19 February 2021, 16:11:07 »
Aww, that's nice, you did this one so I don't have to.  :))

I'm only now getting into the hobby but even when I was younger I was picky about keyboards. I think I ran our local K-Mart out of business with all the returns. Flash forward to now and I've bought a handful of cheapass keyboards and they're all hanging around. You have to really scrape the barrel to find bad keyboards and this just reiterates that. Sub-$30 and it's fine.

Which is great. As many people as can try mechanicals need to. The rubber dome hordes that overwhelmed mechanicals in the 90s must be, finally, repulsed.

Offline micmil

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #7 on: Fri, 19 February 2021, 16:32:03 »
Which is great. As many people as can try mechanicals need to. The rubber dome hordes that overwhelmed mechanicals in the 90s must be, finally, repulsed.

I'd much rather "90's Microsoft" the rubber dome. Embrace and extend. There's nothing wrong with the technology itself, it just got cost-cut into the squishy feedback-deficient pile of ass and weasels that we have now. Damn Dell and HP to beige hell and back. :))

Offline Maledicted

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #8 on: Fri, 19 February 2021, 16:49:06 »
Which is great. As many people as can try mechanicals need to. The rubber dome hordes that overwhelmed mechanicals in the 90s must be, finally, repulsed.

I'd much rather "90's Microsoft" the rubber dome. Embrace and extend. There's nothing wrong with the technology itself, it just got cost-cut into the squishy feedback-deficient pile of ass and weasels that we have now. Damn Dell and HP to beige hell and back. :))

I don't disagree, there are plenty of good dome with slider boards around. I just resent the wild west of wonderful switch designs being toppled by cheap dome boards, which itself made non-dome boards fade from the public conscience. I should not have been able to be into computers for a whole decade without ever having heard of a mechanical keyboard until I stumbled upon "gaming" keyboard marketing.

Offline micmil

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #9 on: Fri, 19 February 2021, 18:46:18 »
I don't disagree, there are plenty of good dome with slider boards around. I just resent the wild west of wonderful switch designs being toppled by cheap dome boards, which itself made non-dome boards fade from the public conscience. I should not have been able to be into computers for a whole decade without ever having heard of a mechanical keyboard until I stumbled upon "gaming" keyboard marketing.

Don't blame the dome. It's harmless. It's the CFOs and bean counters that are to blame.

As far as hearing of mechanical keyboards... I owned a Model M back in the day and had no clue what a "mechanical" keyboard was until the Razer Black Widow came out. Did you know about dome and slider? Or foam and foil? Nah, there were good keyboards and crap keyboards. The exact way they worked was meaningless, as it still is. For most applications a basic rubber dome is fine. For everything else, there's buckling spring.  ;D

Offline Maledicted

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #10 on: Mon, 22 February 2021, 08:43:44 »
I don't disagree, there are plenty of good dome with slider boards around. I just resent the wild west of wonderful switch designs being toppled by cheap dome boards, which itself made non-dome boards fade from the public conscience. I should not have been able to be into computers for a whole decade without ever having heard of a mechanical keyboard until I stumbled upon "gaming" keyboard marketing.

Don't blame the dome. It's harmless. It's the CFOs and bean counters that are to blame.

As far as hearing of mechanical keyboards... I owned a Model M back in the day and had no clue what a "mechanical" keyboard was until the Razer Black Widow came out. Did you know about dome and slider? Or foam and foil? Nah, there were good keyboards and crap keyboards. The exact way they worked was meaningless, as it still is. For most applications a basic rubber dome is fine. For everything else, there's buckling spring.  ;D

You're lucky. If I had any mechanicals, I wouldn't know it. I think the best I had was dome with slider (like an old used Dell QuietKey). At the time, domes were domes. My first desktop computer even had a scissor switch dome board ... which I liked at the time.

Offline funkmon

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #11 on: Mon, 22 February 2021, 09:32:56 »

As far as hearing of mechanical keyboards... I owned a Model M back in the day and had no clue what a "mechanical" keyboard was until the Razer Black Widow came out. Did you know about dome and slider? Or foam and foil? Nah, there were good keyboards and crap keyboards. The exact way they worked was meaningless, as it still is. For most applications a basic rubber dome is fine. For everything else, there's buckling spring.  ;D

Boy that's a good idea and mindset. They're good or bad; switch technology doesn't matter, per se, as long as it feels good. My Quietkey, like maledicted's, was pretty good. It was sufficiently good that I didn't use the "better" keyboards in my possession because they lacked the Windows key feature.

Offline micmil

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #12 on: Mon, 22 February 2021, 12:16:47 »
You're lucky. If I had any mechanicals, I wouldn't know it. I think the best I had was dome with slider (like an old used Dell QuietKey). At the time, domes were domes. My first desktop computer even had a scissor switch dome board ... which I liked at the time.

I only knew it in hindsight. In the mid to late 90's my aunt bought and sold older 286/386 computers. We ended up with a couple along with a bunch of peripherals. A couple of the keyboards stood out, one being the Model M. I cannot for the life of me pin down what the other one was but it had a ridge like you see on some Chicony models. All I knew is that the IBM one was loud AF and annoyed everyone so obviously I used that one a lot.

Offline Maledicted

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Re: $27 Victsing full RGB mechanical keyboard
« Reply #13 on: Mon, 22 February 2021, 13:03:22 »
You're lucky. If I had any mechanicals, I wouldn't know it. I think the best I had was dome with slider (like an old used Dell QuietKey). At the time, domes were domes. My first desktop computer even had a scissor switch dome board ... which I liked at the time.

I only knew it in hindsight. In the mid to late 90's my aunt bought and sold older 286/386 computers. We ended up with a couple along with a bunch of peripherals. A couple of the keyboards stood out, one being the Model M. I cannot for the life of me pin down what the other one was but it had a ridge like you see on some Chicony models. All I knew is that the IBM one was loud AF and annoyed everyone so obviously I used that one a lot.

If it was a Chicony board, it could have had almost anything in it.