Question: is this a good keyboard to get someone started in the mech keyboard game?... Basically: is this cheap "Chinese" crap that's gonna literally fall apart in a month or should one spend a little more on a first mech keyboard?
It's hard to tell without actually ordering and using one. If something
does turn out to be "cheap crap", Amazon has a
comprehensive money-back guarantee designed to make people feel more confident about ordering things online that they can't examine first.
That said, mechanical keyboards are built to be durable—that's the whole idea. And nobody (except Cherry) makes their own keyboards; they buy mechanical switches from switch-makers—and even the cheap knock-off brands like
Gaote and
Gateron have shown such high quality standards that some people actually prefer their switches to genuine MX's.
This is quite interesting and literally a steal for the price. It seems more like a 'we wanted to get into this market so we made this product, but it didn't sell so we're just dumping it at cost to get our money back'. Win for the consumer though... The only other boards I've bought in this price range that I found pretty nice were monoprice ones.
Indeed. It's also important to realize that while $20 may be pocket change to us, it's worth many times that in China—where labour is so cheap, and the standard of living so low, manufacturers can make things for pennies on the dollar.
Until recently, we weren't buying merchandise directly from Chinese vendors. It was always through one or more middle-people and distributors, who marked everything up to Western prices. Now Chinese sellers have had enough experience to sell through Western online outlets, and even build online sales structures of their own, like
Alibaba.
Unfortunately, they're also finding out how much Western customers are willing to pay for items essentially being sold wholesale. When you pay a Chinese vendor $50 for a set of keys that cost them less than a dollar to produce, you can imagine they're pretty happy, and the overall effect that has on pricing. And how much of that new wealth makes its way to the common people—people who can't vote, and are thrown in prison if they demand better working conditions or protest government policies? But I digress, I guess.
