Just went over to Reddit's mechanical keyboard forum and found that another Ducky Shine 3 owner had 19 LEDs burn out in about the same time period I had 7 burn out. But he seemed very passive and he just let them happen without contacting Ducky. When he finally had had enough, he realized he should do something, but his warrantee had just finished.
Others had written about lesser numbers of burned out LEDs with Duckys and there had been a recent recall by Ducky (I forget the name of their parent corporation) for bad circuit boards. So anything can happen. Ducky did replace all who asked for replacement.
I'm sure what problems some Ducky's have are not unique to just this brand. Other brands can have issues as well.
Does Ducky have greater LED failure rates than other brands? I did see others brands mentioned with bulb failures with one or two bad bulbs--but I will say that when searching, when Duckys had failures--they really had failures. I think they need to look at how they source their LEDs.
If your Ducky has been fine and you've gone past a year with no failure, it will more likely than not to continue to be solid. My Ducky burnouts started with the first happening after only 2 weeks, and then they continued on every month, then they slowly were spaced out further and further. I had 6 burn out while still under warrantee. I have only 7 failure right now and I'm finally ready to begin to do soldering as I haven't had more dimming and failing now for almost 4 months. I'll buy a batch from ebay soon and give it a go since Ducky failed to send me more as they promised, and now have shut me off and are not responding to any emails at all. (No, I was never nasty in any of the emails.)
I am not happy with the complete silence from Ducky support. I assume they glanced at my emails from the past and suddently realized that I'm months past warrantee now--so technically it's not their problem--even though I informed them long before the warrantee was up. When my keyboard was still very new, they paid attention and made an effort to send me a few replacement bulbs--but just not enough bulbs to cover the burnout rate.
With the spaced out timing of the many bulb burnouts, had I chosen to ship it back to my supplier under warrantee to have each newly failed bulb repaired, I would have paid more in total shipping than for the entire cost of the keyboard new. An expensive keyboard indeed.
My guess is that Ducky buys their bulbs like anyone else--from ebay or one of the manufacturers in China--getting the rock bottom lowest price possible--not necessarily looking for reputible suppliers--price comes first. It's a business. So sometimes they get good quality--sometimes not. So if you get the keyboard with lots of failures, well, that's the luck of the draw. Other keyboard makers might be a little more choosy or other criteria for choosing who they buy from. Just my thoughts.
So, just great. Reading Reddit was really useful because I actually feel LUCKY now after reading the comments by the poor guy who had 19 LEDs fail in his Ducky over about the same length of time mine did. Several recommended to him to just buy new "opaque" keycaps and forget about the lights altogether--turn them off--as burned out lights are distracting. I am considering that--but I do like the lights. Frankly, the great lighting options are the only REAL reason to buy Ducky over another brands. No one comes close to their programmed lighting options.
But if you are not interested in LEDs? Then there are better options than Ducky, IMO.
