The day before Christmas eve my dad decided to surprise me. I woke up and on my night stand there was a paper with an order description.
The keyboard finally arrived after the Swedish post messing around for roughly a month.
Now onto the keyboard itself.
I got the keyboard in the maple wood and a Swedish-Windows layout in the Walbaum font. It’s almost a standard layout but with a few differences. It doesn’t have the large ISO enter key, ESC and the F keys are smaller than usual. Now the biggest issue for me is the FN key.
WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU PUT THE FN KEY WHERE THE CRTL GOES, AND WHY THE RIGHT CTRL?! I just can’t get it to make sense, it’s so stupid, and I know that a few laptop manufacturers do this too, but Christ, if you’re going to have it there at least give me the option to switch the keys…
While it isn't an issue for me I know that some people prefer to swap the caps lock key with ctrl, it would be nice to be able to swap little things, I know the keys won’t correspond but if you sell a blank version it’s one of those thing that show that you want to cater to everyone.
The keyboard looks pretty alright. I’m a little concerned on how the keys will hold up, it seems like the coating is very minimal. I don’t know how maple deals with finger grease/oils, but I can’t imagine it looks great…
The key height is fairly different, the keys also look a bit misaligned, imagine you’re soldering something like a techkeys business card for the first time with no prior experience to soldering. It might work fine but the keycap height is a bit variable and might be slightly crooked, a great attempt but you can see that’s it’s not done by a “pro”.
It’s a similar situation with the “Keycap paths” (I’m not sure what to call it(Channels?), the area between the switch and case.) Some of the woodwork is great but it’s missing a few details, it looks like they rushed some of the sanding or need to adjust their routing machine.
I would expect a bit more for 150€.
Something I really miss is a usb port, I ordered a USB dongle so I can use it on my desktop, but I have a couple of mini usb cables and a micro usb cable or two. Why can't I use those?
As you may have guessed this keyboard uses membrane/chiclet switches. How do they feel? Well not fantastic… To be honest the switches feels pretty subpar, it’s nice and springy on the up stroke but it feels very mushy for a chiclet keyboard. The keys themselves wobble a lot too and they’re a bit inconsistent in terms of travel distance and just general key feel.
The Bluetooth functionality isn't well implemented, if I block the back of the keyboard it wont send any signals, Also it ocatioonally be every slow and unressonsive, I'm nnnnnot sure if itf caused by theeee bluetttttttttttttooth adappppppppppppppppter I'm usiiiiiiiiiing but I bought afairly hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiggggggggend onee, itttt doesn'tttttt ssssssssseem to appreciate fassssssssssssssssssssssssst typing(NNNot that I'm fasttt.) Leaving the errors in to show how bad it is. Seems like it was caused by the placement of the dongle, I can replicate the issue by blocking the back of the keyboard.
Overall, it’s a nice looking keyboard. It’s not a mechanical keyboard, it’s missing a few details. I don’t think it’s marketed towards a “keyboard connoisseur” or as an amazing typing experience. It’s more like a piece of furniture.
Would I recommend it? Probably no. Depends on what you want to use it as.
Let me know If you have any questions, I know the "review" is very basic. Also no pictures because I'm lazy and lack decent cameras. Might add things that bother me that I learn via use.
