I've had no complaints with the quality of Filco, Leopold, or Das. If you want tenkeyless though, there's really no reason for Das to be in the running here. I like my Das, but the only thing it has going for it over a Filco or Leopold is the USB-hub functionality, which is pretty minor. It's bulky compared to a full-sized Filco/Leopold and gigantic compared to a tenkeyless ones.
WASD won't have a tenkeyless version until the *end* of next year according to the current schedule. If you do go with a full-sized board, WASD is supposed to be pretty solid and they offer some cool keycap customization options.
While the Keyboard Company's Amazon store is currently out of stock of tenkeyless Filcos with blues, I'm pretty sure I saw a post recently on their geekhack vendor forum stating that more would be in stock in a few weeks, so you might want to check that if you want a Filco.
The main differences between the Filco and the Leopold are:
- Costar stabilizers on the Filco and Cherry stabilizers on the Leopold. The Costar ones make the 2+ unit keys (backspace and larger) feel more like the small keys, while the Cherry ones give them a little more resistance when pressed. It's significantly easier to add/remove keycaps on the Cherry stabilizers, but some people are bothered by their feel a little.
- Non-standard spacing of the stabilizer mounts for the spacebar on the Leopold, so there are fewer options out there if you want to replace the spacebar. They should be an option in new Signature Plastics group buys here though.
- Detachable USB cable on the Leopold. I didn't care about this before I got a Leopold, but it makes it much more convenient to store the keyboard or to swap it if you end up with a couple keyboards that use mini-USB.
- Sharper edges on the Filco, rounder edges on the Leopold. At first I thought the rounder edges on the Leopold made it look cheap compared to the more serious looking Filco, but I've warmed up to the slightly softer appearance of the Leopold.
- The Leopold has lock indicator LEDs under the caps/scroll keycaps. The windowed keycaps that come on these keys look kind of ugly in my opinion, but you can always swap them with some custom keys later. The light still shows up through standard non-windowed ABS keycaps, but I haven't tested it with PBT keycaps or particularly thick ABS ones.
All the possible keyboards here are great choices, and blues are probably my favorite Cherry MX switch for typing on. Just be aware that they'll be a bit... clicky.
