keyboard to gift

[yui]

Hello me again with a strange question, i wanted to gift a keyboard to someone who never used a mechanical keyboard before, but i am very unsure about what could make a good 1st keyboard. i know i want to put the e-pbt dreamscape keycaps on it so i think a white board would be best. and iso is a must have.
so far i have found 3 candidate:
Ducky one 2 white - out of stock everywhere though
Custom white Varmillo - really expensive but are they that good that it is worth it? (around 3*ducky one price and 5*GMMK price)
Painting a GMMK white/with pale colors - by far the cheapest option
Buying PCB from an opensource project - not quite sure i can achieve the quality i want from that

and the other thing is the switches, she only ever used laptops and old rubber dome keyboards, i was thinking that for an introduction brown may be best, but i am very unsure on that as well.
Any ideas and feed back welcome, i kinda want to make the best gift possible
Thanks

[fohat.digs]

Not answering your question directly, but I would stress that it be something that is always reliably "plug & play" without any glitches.

I have gifted keyboards that were not used long-term after the user encountered any obstacle. Granted, several of them were vintage keyboards that required adapters and/or converters of some sort and did require some "attention" from time to time. But others were modern, USB keyboards.

You used the words "she" and "laptop" and I can tell you that 2 women to whom I gave keyboards encountered "problems" involved with unplugging and transporting, then not working on the other side. How? I have no idea. The circumstances and process seemed straightforward and idiot-proof to me.

TL;DR - give only rock-solid maintenance-free pieces of hardware

[Leslieann]

Avoid the GMMK
It's a nice board if you enjoy tech, but in tech we have what is known as the wife-factor or wife-approved, a GMMK will probably fail this test. I'm not saying it's bad but it's like showing a woman a tricked out SUV versus an Ariel Atom, the Atom is amazing, but the (typical) wife will see it as just stupid and impractical.

I recommend browns, but also a high profile case, I wouldn't worry about RGB but she might like some backlighting (rgb or no).
In other words keep it simple, if she wants to move up from there, great, but going overboard will just cost you money for something she just simply may see as overkill and excess or worse.

[yui]

maybe should have been more careful about gender she is very technically minded and not my wife but i do agree that as a gift i do not want to give something that will fail constantly, i guess from what you say the best would be to wait for the ducky to be back in stock, with the fact that dreamscape has not hit the GB stage yet i guess it has time to come, am i wrong in thinking that ducky channel makes reliable boards?
thanks for your insight

[kajahtaa]

Give Iris and soldering Iron.

[Sup]

Leopold is the answer

[treeleaf64]

Leopold wit lubed/filmed browns

[bkrownd]

I got my girlfriend the Akko Hello Kitty keyboard for (early) christmas this year and she's loving it.  She doesn't care much about keyboards, but she loves Hello Kitty.  It has the Akko version of "brown" switches, which work fine.  As you suggest, a medium weight gentle "brown" tactile is a happy medium if people don't have a particular switch preference.  If they aren't a keyboard/computer enthusiast unless there's a fun hook like Hello Kitty ,their favorite colors, or something like that a non-enthusiast may just view the keyboard as a tool and not think much of it.  Some people will appreciate fancy colors more, and others will appreciate something more classic or subdued. 

I can think of several great utility gifts people gave me over my lifetime which I didn't appreciate properly until later in life when I got interested in quality version of that kind of tool.  (My first old-school Remington Microscreen, my first HP Voyager calculator, my first good knife set, my first german cuckoo clock, etc.) 

[yui]

Leopold wit lubed/filmed browns

Leopold is the answer

maybe but no, they do not have 100% + iso + white, they have a beige option that is ugly and use non standards keys so not happening either as i plan to offer the board with a set a key caps on it. or if they have i have not seen it on sale anywhere... if i needed a black tkl i would have gone with a leopold and not asked a question and no, modified switches are not happening yet.

And i should not have said "she", she is not my girlfriend and pretty sure she does not want to be, she helped me through tough times and so i am quite thankful for her and want to give something back, she seems to like good quality board because although the old HP keyboard she has is completely run down and some legends are not even there anymore she does not like the new flat keyboards and keep the old one, so it is why i though of giving a good new keyboard, although i could also have searched for the exact same HP NOS

[1offiv3]

I wonder how this  “buying advice” would have changed if you said it was a gift for your brother, a male friend, father, etc. I think the factor more important than gender stereotypes of women wanting something “easy” and “simple to use” is the tech “know how” of that person, and also how they will be using the keyboard.

I agree that people often think a keyboard is just a keyboard until they’ve used a nice one, but the problem is that “nice” is such a subjective term. I bought my sister her first mechanical keyboard as a birthday gift, because she types a lot for school and also writes as a hobby. I settled on a Bluetooth model because I knew she would be more likely to use it if it worked with all her devices, and also a hot swap board because I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce her to a hobby that is meaningful to me. I sent a small switch tester with it as well, with some other options included.

Put some keycaps on it that had a color way I knew she liked, and setup the rgb software to complement the colors. I also included some basic directions on how to connect it, change the rgb feature, etc. She uses it daily now, and I consider the gift a success.

So long story short, I’d get a board that fits the specifications of what you know the person will use it for, what they like, and how likely they are to follow you into the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole, especially if you give them something that really sounds and feels awesome.

I don’t know if you are able to have her try some different switches out and see what she thinks, but that might also be helpful (you could just do it in a way that seemed like you want her opinion if you still want the gift to be a complete surprise).

[Sup]

Leopold wit lubed/filmed browns

Leopold is the answer

maybe but no, they do not have 100% + iso + white, they have a beige option that is ugly and use non standards keys so not happening either as i plan to offer the board with a set a key caps on it. or if they have i have not seen it on sale anywhere... if i needed a black tkl i would have gone with a leopold and not asked a question and no, modified switches are not happening yet.

And i should not have said "she", she is not my girlfriend and pretty sure she does not want to be, she helped me through tough times and so i am quite thankful for her and want to give something back, she seems to like good quality board because although the old HP keyboard she has is completely run down and some legends are not even there anymore she does not like the new flat keyboards and keep the old one, so it is why i though of giving a good new keyboard, although i could also have searched for the exact same HP NOS

Why does it have to be white though? is that HP keyboard also white?

[yui]

Why does it have to be white though? is that HP keyboard also white?

it has to be white because she like lighter colors and with epbt dreamscape or a similar set white will look better, the old HP is silver and black, the ones that came with HP 8100 towers, well it was silver and black, quite a bit of the silver paint is worn.
it does not need to be for Christmas though as the keyset will definitely not be here before April 2021, somewhat annoyingly, so it got time to come.
and i'd wanted to know if anyone had experience with ducky channel and their quality as from the 1st 2 answers it seemed like the best option.

I wonder how this  “buying advice” would have changed if you said it was a gift for your brother, a male friend, father, etc. I think the factor more important than gender stereotypes of women wanting something “easy” and “simple to use” is the tech “know how” of that person, and also how they will be using the keyboard.

i am at IT in my company and we are 2 in the IT office, clearly labeled on the door, my coworker is a rather attractive woman and so peoples do not expect her to work at IT and just be here because of the limited space (multiple peoples were quite shocked when i told them to go see her because she is an expert where i do not know anything, and the opposite is somewhat true too). so it is why i felt like gender may have had a role to play in the advice. and those 2 women are different peoples, my coworker swears by her flat laptop keyboard.

I don’t know if you are able to have her try some different switches out and see what she thinks, but that might also be helpful (you could just do it in a way that seemed like you want her opinion if you still want the gift to be a complete surprise).

well i wanted for it to be a surprise and with covid testing switches seems rather a bad idea, especially here that peoples do not take any of it seriously. it is why the gmmk looked like a decent option, but from what i understand it is fairly unreliable, so, even though i think she could deal with it, a gift should not be a hassle so no go on the gmmk although i have some yampads and i could give one for Christmas and see what she thinks (and those are hotswap too).
still thanks to everyone for the answers and challenging my sanity

[Leslieann]

I wonder how this  “buying advice” would have changed if you said it was a gift for your brother, a male friend, father, etc. I think the factor more important than gender stereotypes of women wanting something “easy” and “simple to use” is the tech “know how” of that person, and also how they will be using the keyboard.

Only a little.

The wife factor is real but more importantly, this is an extremist group, we do things normal people wouldn't do, just because you value certain features doesn't mean everyone does. Enthusiasts put up with a lot of inconveniences to achieve their goal, while a normal person just wants to type a report and go back to whatever they were doing before they sat down at the computer.

A $30 Logitech serves the average person just fine and is already an upgrade to the stock Dell keyboard.

[yui]

A $30 Logitech serves the average person just fine and is already an upgrade to the stock Dell keyboard.

we do not have the same 30$ logitech here, the k120 is complete garbage and much worse than any of the stock hp/dell/fujitsu that i ever tried (before buying an M i tried replacing my 20 years old rubber dome with a k120)