WOW! Nice!
Okay, let's back up a little. It arrived in its box without double boxing, but seemed to survive well enough. It's a DE layout, so QWERTZ, small left shift, double height enter, etc.. OS X does its keyboard detection routine, and chooses ISO European. The OS takes care of turning it back to QWERTY for me when I use Canadian English as the input language. This causes the labels not to match but I don't need them anyway. In the keyboard settings, it's identified as "Unknown external keyboard"
Key caps
Speaking of labels, wow, the lettering on the keys is pretty 3 dimensional. If my fingertips were a bit more sensitive I could probably identify the letters by feeling the labels. Nice large lettering. The home row identifiers are not bumps but use the more cupped keys for F and J. It's subtle but comfortable. I like it. I wish more of my keyboards used this style. The key caps have a slippery feel to them. There's a texture on top but it's pretty minimal and feels smooth. As with any board mounted switch, be careful when pulling caps! Don't pop the switch body off! The key caps are also quite thick, 1.3 mm according to my cheap-o-calipers.
I'm having a bit of difficulty lifting the shift caps off. Right shift, enter, backspace, and space are the main stabilized keys. You've seen the stabilizers before. I guess they're standard Cherry.. you've seen them in the Leopolds as well. They do make a difference in feel going down and when you bottom out, but in this case, they don't make a big difference. I imagine if they add a lot of friction, then you'd notice them much more with brown/blue/red switches.
Quality
Every once in awhile complaints pop up here regarding Cherry quality and board flex and whatnot, and having now tried this I think it's not an issue. I don't have an older Cherry board to compare with, but so this is my impression versus the Filco tenkeyless that I have. Yes, the case can flex if you flex it, the board can flex if you type harder, but with normal usage I can barely tell. It's just a touch less solid feeling than the plate mount. This is a pretty well built keyboard! Typing on this board yields a much deeper sound than the Filcos. I can't make a direct comparison because my desk space only has room for the Filco. I'm typing with the Cherry on top of the Filco. I hear that keycaps can make a large difference in sound too, so many factors are involved here.
Clears!
Yes, this keyboard uses Cherry clear switches. I like them but my fingers have to get used to them. They have a nice tactile bump that's pretty high up on the downstroke, similar to the browns, but you feel it a bit more. It's a lot less subtle but not as finger stopping as the blues click. It's still a much "rounder" feeling bump. It's smoother feeling than the black alps AT101W that I have.
I'm making a lot of typos more due to the layout than the key switches. I'm used to typing on blacks. The blacks have a stiff spring and are linear so they actually feel easier to press. They're more lively than the clears because they're linear. Your fingers tend to dance along the keys, being popped up by smooth linear action, whereas with the clears you're feeling the force bypassing the tactile bump. The keys take a momentary pause as they come back up past the bump as well. My most missed key is the space bar.
TL;DR summary
I love this board! The clears are a joy to type on and are still quite smooth even with a tactile bump. The board is well built and even sounds great to type on. I enjoy this more than the black alps AT101W.
