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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: zslane on Wed, 23 September 2020, 11:56:31

Title: Any high-end, full-size, hotswappable boards for sale?
Post by: zslane on Wed, 23 September 2020, 11:56:31

Looking for recommendations for high-end, full-size (104 or 108 keys), hotswap keyboards.

(And by "high-end" I mean something more premium than the GMMK.)

Title: Re: Any high-end, full-size, hotswappable boards for sale?
Post by: Krelbit on Wed, 23 September 2020, 12:33:31

High end fullsizes are already hard enough to find without hotswap.

Title: Re: Any high-end, full-size, hotswappable boards for sale?
Post by: Leslieann on Wed, 23 September 2020, 21:27:58

And hot swap isn't very reliable.
Kailh hot swaps are rated for 100 insertions (on average), which may sound like a lot but many times just pulling a keycap will yank them out. If you play with switches much, you will go through a lot of those pretty fast, and yes, odds are you will at some point settle on a switch, but by then how many have you wasted? The Kailh are also extremely hard on the pcb, being bottom mounted and SMD*. Unless you view several hundred bucks as disposable I wouldn't get them on anything you plan on keeping long term.

*Note these issues mostly apply to Kailh and there are alternatives but those are the most common you will find on a pcb.

Title: Re: Any high-end, full-size, hotswappable boards for sale?
Post by: zslane on Thu, 24 September 2020, 11:04:53

I hear you. I had such a keyboard (AoPo 108), and it worked for a while, but installing new switches caused several of the switch transistors to become detached from the PCB, rendering the board useless to me.

All I wanted was a full-size keyboard with Kailh Box silent brown switches, but since nobody sells a full-size with that switch as an option, I decided to try hotswap. I guess MX-compatible switches just aren't my destiny.

Title: Re: Any high-end, full-size, hotswappable boards for sale?
Post by: Leslieann on Thu, 24 September 2020, 22:22:21

Like I usually recommend...
Get a full size GMMK. Look, it's not a $500 board, but throw good stabs on it, bandaid mod, lube, your switches and a magnetic cable and I guarantee you will be surprised at how good it actually is. And when the sockets screw up you will be able to replace it for $70, you can barely buy a good PCB for that. If you do find a good high end full size you're still out little more than a spare pcb.

Title: Re: Any high-end, full-size, hotswappable boards for sale?
Post by: hvontres on Thu, 24 September 2020, 22:40:45

+1 on the GMMK

I was going to go that route, but a $25 e-bay coupon led me astray and I picked up a open box Reddragon K556. I wrote a short review in this thread: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=108433.msg2955688#msg2955688 (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=108433.msg2955688#msg2955688)

The short answer is, the Reddragon can be made to work, but the GMMK would have been easier.