On beforehand, I apologize for eventual grammatical errors occurring in the following piece of text - I am no native English speaker, and I'm still getting used to my brand spanking new keyboard!
Take this as a sort of 'first impressions' on the Ducky Shine 3 TKL, from a guy with a fairly limited experience with mechanical keyboards (and keyboards in general).
Pics in the next comment
A short walk down memory lane with the keyboards I've had over the past years (and please mind, this is certainly no impressive list!), without further ado, in chronological order: Logitech G15, Logitech DiNovo Edge (returned due to faulty everything), Corsair K90 (with blue O-ring dampers from WASD), Apple wireless keyboard, and now the latest replacement; the Shine 3.
I ordered mine from Finland, I'm an ISO Nordic user (makes it hard to find keycaps, and I hate that..!
), and the company I ordered from appears to be the main distributer for Nordic ISO Ducky's.
International orders were via email, and a fantastic effective and fast customer service set me in a good mood.
Track&Trace stalking commenced, and after only 4 days, the mailman rang my doorbell.
I got the MX Brown version with orange backlight.
The reason for switching to brown being, that linear switches just aint my cup of tea, and I wanted a change - to something that would feel a lot different and possibly solve my issue with hovering the 'WASD' cluster while gaming, and accidentally move in various directions due to the MX Red's on the K90.
Out of the box, you get the keyboard itself, a detachable USB cable, a keycap puller, a set of red WASD keycaps, a space keycap and a manual (which I needed!)
First impressions on the build quality - it is like nothing else I've owned. Not saying it's better or worse than something else, I don't want to compare, but it is certainly in a different league than the other keyboards I've owned.
Nice matte finish on the case itself, and a noticeably better finish on the keycaps compared to my K90 and the like. Keys are etched, so I don't expect them to last for a lifetime, but the coating seems way thicker than the K90, and it appears to have a more shiny finish to the caps.
I got a Ducky-Nordic wrist rest as well, which is a folded piece of transparent acrylic with a tiny bit of springy-ness to it, which results in me moving my hands around more - which is nice, from an ergonomic point of view, I guess.
I booted my computer up and plugged the keyboard and was almost blinded by the brightness of the thing!
The legends on the keycaps are WAY larger than the ones on my K90, and therefore they let through a lot more light.
Fiddling with the lighting settings, keeping the manual handy at all times, was confusing at first - being used to have a software driver of sorts that can handle those things with a visual UI, proved to be a challenge.
But nonetheless, after a 20-30 minute period, I found a setup I liked, with the backlight on at all times, and the keys shutting off when I press them, and then fading back in again.
I'm a bit torn about the MX Brown switches.
After reading a lot of comments on here with people calling them 'dirty reds' and 'gritty linear', I expected the worst. Having only tried them on a sample kit where you get no impression of what they are like on a full keyboard, I was surprised to find them quite a bit harder to press down than the reds on the K90.
I don't see the gritty-point though; they travel smoothly with an ever-so-slight bump, letting my gentle fingertips know when they've pressed down far enough.
I'm looking forward to seeing how they 'wear' over time; if the bump gets less noticeable or stays like it is now.
And on the positive note, I find myself writing more complex and longer messages, caring more about grammar and flamboyant words and phrases, instead of just writing 'k', as I would on my K90. I can't blame the switches for that, more likely its the whole keyboard and the impressions of it, but I'm quite sure the tactile feedback makes me want to press it more than my K90.
Going from a full board to a TKL layout is a but of a challenge, but I would like an external numpad placed to my left (yes, I am a lefthanded numpad user, righthanded all other times), so now the search for a suiting numpad commences.
All on all, I'm very impressed with the Ducky Shine 3 TKL with Cherry MX Brown's and Orange LED's, and I'm excited to have taken my first step into the world of more 'proper' mechanical keyboards.
Looking forward to spending a lot more time reading on here and hopefully getting some more stuff!
Now, world, I'm off to take this thing apart and take measurements for making an aluminium Ducky case.
Have a nice day/evening/night/morning, depending on your timezone.
