If you're just wanting a TKL with hot swap off the market. I'll vouch for the Keychron K8. 79-99 bucks, and you can test all the switches you want on a budget with 5.1 bluetooth. To be honest, My Keychron K6 sounded better out of the box than my DROP ALT after I lubed the stabs and tossed in the switches. Stay away from the optical, at least for the meanwhile. They are very, very nice to type on, but you just limit yourself to around 3-5% of the switches on the market. You definitely want a cheap hot swap to test switches, size and price doesn't matter. You just don't want to be hot swapping a 300+ driver frequently unless you're capable of reapplying hotswap sockets. On another note, it's often better on your sockets to pull out the PCB and push the switches out through the back instead of pulling up on them in your main driver. I wish someone had told me that at some point.
I think KBDfans will start offering the 8X MII in a hot swap option, if not by the next run, I would bet money on the following run. They've converted the rest of their bestsellers into having hot swap option. I don't don't see them stopping with 8 since dozens are asking them for it in the forums and on their Discord. I guess it depends on if you're willing to give it about 6 more months, give or take. You're going to have about 375-500 dollars in it by the time you get it build, so you may as well have what you want. If you're worried about the price, unless the r/mechmarket crashes, you can typically get most of that back, sometimes even make a slight profit if it isn't working out for you.
