I – The Order
First things first: Ordering from WASDkeyboards.com was a very pleasant experience.
Designing my own set of keycaps turned out to be surprisingly easy. I was a bit wary at first since I wanted custom legends and using the on-site layout designer didn’t do the trick, I had to use Inkscape (which I’d never used before) to design my own layout – but with the help of their templates and FAQ it went very smoothly and I had no problems at all. Their templates include a variety of different styles for legends with a bunch of spare symbols thrown in for function keys, modifiers and other shenanigans. In the end I designed the alphanumeric legends from scratch but kept a lot of the modifiers and the media key symbols.
Their support was also very quick to respond and very friendly in their response when I dropped them an email with questions about my layout before ordering.
The one downside was really the shipping fee to Europe. $50 shipping + $55 customs was a bummer and as much as I enjoy the keyboard, I don’t think I’d order another one unless they get a retailer in Europe, it’s just too much. Shipping keycaps is much less expensive, but keyboards … well.
II – The Keyboard
What’s not to love! But seriously, it
is a very nice keyboard. I won’t go into too much detail about the design and whatnot since others have already done that in great depth, but here’s a few of my first impressions.
The CODE is very solid and very heavy. Once placed on its rubbery feet it’s definitely not going anywhere. I like that, it’s much heavier than my Zowie Celeritas, too. A very solid feel overall, no wobbling, no pinging, no complaints at all.
The matte black finish of the case looks good, has a nice texture to it and doesn’t attract fingerprints. Very pleasant to look at and easy to keep clean.
The white back plate is awesome. I can’t quite say why, but I really, really enjoy the look of it. It creates a nice backdrop for the black keys, especially with the white LEDs of the backlighting.
The backlighting – I like it. I really don’t care too much either way but I thought the white illumination of the legends give off a very nice vibe. I definitely prefer a soft white to other colours, it looks more practical and less flashy and gimmicky. That said, I don’t miss the backlit legends now that I have my custom keycaps on the board. It’s a well executed feature but not crucial in any way, in my opinion.
The media keys are both good and bad. I’m definitely in favor of the new placement, much more sensible than having them scattered out over the F-keys. At the same time I’m not entirely happy with sacrificing the Menu-key to access the media and LED functions. I’d rather give up the right OS-key than the Menu-key.
And last but not least: The switches! Cherry MX Greens might not be for everyone, but I’m happy to say that they are absolutely for me. I was worried that I might find them too stiff or that I might not like the click – I had MX Browns before, so I figured I was in for quite the transition – but even after using them for only a couple of minutes I knew that they were just right for me. Browns make for good allround switches but for typing they were way too light for me and after a while I started getting double letters. After using Greens for a day now, this has completely stopped. I also don’t bottom out anymore when I’m typing normally (I still bottom out when I hack away at the board, but that’s to be expected). I really like the stiffer resistance and the pronounced click.
The CODE came with O-rings pre-installed on all keys. When I swapped the caps, I kept the O-rings for modifiers and function keys and didn’t place any on the alphanumerical keys. I’m not sure why, but I really enjoy the difference in feel. Maybe one minor critique regarding the O-rings: I think the CODE should come with a couple of spare O-rings. When I swapped the caps I promptly lost one of the O-rings; not a problem in my case, but considering how easily they are lost and how inexpensive they are, a bunch of “extras” in the box would be a sensible addition and would save a bit of frustration.
III – The Keycaps
Very happy with those! I know a lot of people don’t like thin ABS caps, but I can’t say anything bad about them.
My goal was a German ISO-layout that could fit on a 87-key ANSI-board and on top of that I wanted to throw in (most of) my custom hotkeys and special characters. I tried to go for a straight-forward design with big pronounced white letters and subtle grey modifiers/function keys. In the end I arrived at this:
Printed it looks like this:
And in place on the CODE:
I’m really happy with how they turned out! If I
had to criticize something it would be the White of the alphanumerical legends, it looks more like offwhite than really bright white, but I can’t say I mind that. Apart from that everything turned out exactly as expected and I think the combination of white and grey (actually it’s white, light grey and dark grey) is easy on the eyes and goes nicely with the white backlighting of the CODE.
I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s exactly the way I wanted it
IV – The Conclusion
I’m happy! The CODE is a very nice keyboard, Cherry MX Greens are exactly what I dreamed they would be and having my own layout printed on the caps makes me way more happy than it should. It’s too bad shipping is so expensive, otherwise I’d happily recommend the board to anyone I know. The way it is I might order another set of keycaps in the future but not another keyboard.
Also: A “thank you!” to DamienG, who kindly helped me with figuring out the size of my legends – thank you!
