geekhack
geekhack Community => Reviews => Topic started by: ms264556 on Fri, 06 October 2017, 11:35:55
-
I've been using Tai Hao Cubic at home and work for a month now, so I thought I'd give some thoughts / a mini-'review', since they're nice and cheap.
I've got a some earlier Tai Hao ABS and PBT sets. These were cheap but very thin (I crushed a PBT space bar by accident trying to straighten it a bit), with not-great texture and finish, in my least-favourite profile... so that I never used them much before I went back to an SA or GMK/JTK set.
The new cubic keys subjectively feel thicker, but visually they look similar (the angles are different so I can't be sure this isn't my imagination without buying a micrometer).
The new sets have a better texture than anything else Tai Hao have produced lately. This looks and feels much nicer than I expected, so that I actually prefer to almost everything else I've got: they have a great satin texture which is less textured and glossy than GMK or even JTK, but not quite a smooth as MaxKey SA.
The quality of the doubleshot legends is outstanding too - everyone raves about cherry/gmk legends but I think they look too blotchy, whereas these have beautiful sharp corners and straight edges.
I'm a terrible human being hunt-and-peck typist (or whatever you call a six finger typist, who likes to pound on the keyboard), so I find OEM less satisfying than SA (which sound sublime when you thump the hell out of them) or cherry (which are, for some reason, harder to miss than OEM from a great height) profile. The squarer shape with larger tops on Tai Hai cubic make a big difference accuracy-wise, so that I'd be happy to use these long-term. They don't sound as nice as good thick cherry or SA caps, but are miles nicer sounding than thin OEM or DCS caps.
One thing I noticed, which I hadn't before, is that OEM stems end further inside the key than cherry stems. I couldn't use these keys on a Plum electrostatic board, because the keystem can't be pushed down far enough to seat properly before the outside of the key hits the baseplate.
The concrete colourway is, for a change, not too offensive to use at work (but not perfect - if you look closely then you can see the dark grey keys have purple text). I'd love Tai Hao to release a super-boring Cubic colourway - I'd snap up a few sets of white on black for work.
-
I like the look of cubic - I kind like squarish things like that.
Might get a set when I find a colourway I like.
Thanks for the review and pics!
-
Ordered some Concrete a while back. Still waiting for them to arrive. I would love to see a plain white on black Cubic set.
-
Will definitely have to check out some of these sets. Thanks!
-
Wider key surface means more unwanted presses.
-
Thanks for the review! It's very helpful. I know there's a very interesting colorway on sale that 00Zero talked about in another thread (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=91913.0;topicseen) and since these sets are still selling at the typically low Tai-Hao price point, I imagine I'll be picking up a set to try out sooner than later.