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geekhack Community => Reviews => Topic started by: macdja38 on Sat, 24 October 2015, 19:18:47
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About a year ago I bough a brand new Das keyboard 4 Ultimate (a nice mechanical keyboard with blank keys, mx blue switches and some USB 3.0)
Typing on it is really nice, Full NKRO, 2 USB 3.0 ports, fantastic volume wheal, convenient media keys, an excess of function keys, Mac and PC compatibilitiy, ability to funciton in 6-KRO Compatibility mode.
A month or two ago one of the keys, (bottom row, 2nd key from the left shift) literally fell apart. One day I noticed it was wiggling around, upon further inspection the part that goes over the + sign part of the switch had basically disintegrated.
Thing is, that's not the part that bothers me, I really don't care if something breaks due to a manufacture defect. We have to face it, Quality control can't feasibly catch everything, and bad batches of plastic or whatever caused this can happen. The part that bothers me is, after less than a year from the original date of purchase, I contacted das keyboard and told them what happened. They simply closed my ticket and told me they don't mail outside the US. I contacted the store, and they told me to contact the manufacture.
It was less than a year from the date of purchase and I was completely out of luck.
In the end I still use the keyboard, though I will never recommend a das product to anyone, ever again. I mean... the average keyboard you pick out of a dumpster would probably last longer than this 150$ one did (I still used it, I moved some keys around so now the insert key is missing).
If anyone knows somewhere I can get single cheap key... and how to buy keys, and what I should watch out for... and all the things I don't know as someone who has never bought an individual key for a keyboard before...
TL;DR: Bought das keyboard, key-cap broke after less than a year, Das does not stand behind products sold outside of the US, be careful buying from them.
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That's a sad story :(
I'm actually surprised this does not happen more often - the stem of the keycap seems to be to be the most fragile part, even if it is molded in one piece.
For a single keycap, Signature Plastics/Pimp My Keyboard would probably be the first place to look.
http://pimpmykeyboard.com/dcs-1-space-pack-of-10/
You'd want a row 4 1x key, which they sell in packs of 10 for $11.
Or you could try WASD Keyboards, where you'd want a row 1 keycap for $1:
http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/blank-keycap-singles/row-1-size-1x1-cherry-mx-keycap.html
Yes, they number their rows differently.
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Sad story :(
You'd think that most keyboards are built to stand the test of time yet these things happen. Customer support is an important part of every product experience, it's a shame to see Das just completely blow you off like that. To my knowledge, it is for this reason (lack of support) that the Truly Ergonomic mechanical keyboards are not recommended.
I recommend the stores Rowdy linked to for a replacement keycap. My SP "crap bag" arrives on Monday, if it weren't $7 to ship a single keycap I would offer you something from my bag :(
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Sorry to hear that! I've heard that Das's quality has really gone down hill in the past few years and that typically they're no longer recommended to buy due to poor QC and build quality. Buying single keycaps is likely to be pretty expensive, if I were you I would probably pony up the money for a whole new higher quality cap set.
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Sorry to hear that! I've heard that Das's quality has really gone down hill in the past few years and that typically they're no longer recommended to buy due to poor QC and build quality. Buying single keycaps is likely to be pretty expensive, if I were you I would probably pony up the money for a whole new higher quality cap set.
Considering more could end up breaking you may as well replace the set and not worry about it down the line