Noppoo & Royal Kludge: Same Company?

[njbair]

So I just read intelli78's review of the Royal Kludge RC930-87 RGB over on KeyChatter. Earlier this week I took delivery on my new Noppoo EC108-Pro from Massdrop. Here we have two Topre-clone boards with MX-compatible keycaps. That alone might have just been a coincidence. But then I saw KeyChatter's photos of the RK's packaging:



Compare to these photos I just took of my Noppoo packaging:



Now let's compare the backs of the boards:



These boards are made by the same company. Am I the first one to notice this?

[azhdar]

My Cm storm boards just have a similar looking back, and anyway it's a known fact that keyboards share OEM : https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=69165.0 .

[njbair]

I'm not trying to make it out to be a conspiracy, but I wonder about the ramifications of this kind of thing...two MX-compatible Topre-clone boards from different vendors being manufactured by the same OEM, does that mean the switches being used are exactly the same?

[azhdar]

I'm not trying to make it out to be a conspiracy, but I wonder about the ramifications of this kind of thing...two MX-compatible Topre-clone boards from different vendors being manufactured by the same OEM, does that mean the switches being used are exactly the same?

First of all your "clues" don't prove they are made by the same company. But they might have gotten the switches from the same source.

And yeah it seems it's the same switches :
Noopoo:

Royal Kludge:

[njbair]

First of all your "clues" don't prove they are made by the same company. But they might have gotten the switches from the same source.

Well they present a very strong circumstantial case:

• Similar box design with same fonts and similar line art.
• Several identical features listed on the top of the box (word-for-word).
• Same exact packing slip in the box.
• Same rubber feet and standoffs.
• Same cable routing channels.
• Same bottom label.

And now, the same switches.

[davkol]

CM Storm QuickFire Rapid and Filco Majestouch2 are both similar, and guess what? They're both made by Costar and based on the same prototype. Conspiracy? Nope, just the way the industry works.

I'm not entirely sure, if Noppoo actually manufactures anything, or they just pack PLUM stuff, but yeah, the OEM is the same here in either case.

[njbair]

CM Storm QuickFire Rapid and Filco Majestouch2 are both similar, and guess what? They're both made by Costar and based on the same prototype. Conspiracy? Nope, just the way the industry works.

I'm not entirely sure, if Noppoo actually manufactures anything, or they just pack PLUM stuff, but yeah, the OEM is the same here in either case.

Again, I wasn't trying to make this out to be a conspiracy. I get that different companies use the same vendors. And at the end of the day, both companies' boards retail for less as a result of the shared manufacturing costs. I'm just new to this hobby and I started this thread to see if anyone else had noticed this kind of thing.

But it's still worth taking note of these things when we see them. For example, I read one person saying that the switches on one of these boards are not good, and that the other board's switches are much closer to genuine Topre. That means some combination of the following conditions is true:

• The manufacturer has major consistency issues.
• The switches are the same but the rest of the boards' construction makes them feel significantly different.
• The reviewer's evaluation is unreliable.

So anyway, please don't take my post as trying to be some kind of exposé. I was just sharing something of interest and looking for someone to verify what I was thinking.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I don't understand all the veiled hostility either. Something I discovered earlier: the keyboard controller in my Majestouch 1 was made by Holtek, so the whole keyboard appears to the computer as a generic Holtek keyboard.

What's funny though is that the two keyboards mentioned in the OP have such similar packaging, right down to the graphic design style of the keyboard line drawing. You'd think that they'd want to inject tad more individuality into their products, but clearly not!

Reviewer evaluations are never reliable if they're judging by human perception alone — we all have biases, even if we're not aware of them. Personal factors are strange: for example, I gave my K110 to chzel, who finds the Himake switches pretty usable, while to me they felt like only Arnie could type comfortably on it. We both perceive the same switches completely differently to each other. It's like how I never notice all the friction problems that people complain about with Cherry MX.

[njbair]

I don't understand all the veiled hostility either. Something I discovered earlier: the keyboard controller in my Majestouch 1 was made by Holtek, so the whole keyboard appears to the computer as a generic Holtek keyboard.

What's funny though is that the two keyboards mentioned in the OP have such similar packaging, right down to the graphic design style of the keyboard line drawing. You'd think that they'd want to inject tad more individuality into their products, but clearly not!

Reviewer evaluations are never reliable if they're judging by human perception alone — we all have biases, even if we're not aware of them. Personal factors are strange: for example, I gave my K110 to chzel, who finds the Himake switches pretty usable, while to me they felt like only Arnie could type comfortably on it. We both perceive the same switches completely differently to each other. It's like how I never notice all the friction problems that people complain about with Cherry MX.

I read an article recently, describing an academic study that was done on wine sommeliers to determine the accuracy and consistency of their wine tasting reviews. The numbers were shocking. Most tasters were horribly self-inconsistent, ranking the same wine very highly during one tasting, and then very poorly the next. The study made some waves within the wine community because it basically determined that wine tasting is not a science. And we're talking about trained professionals earning anywhere from $80-$160K per year.

The study concluded that, although taste comprises a finite set of measurable factors, it is practically impossible to know them all, let alone to accurately and consistently account for and measure them all. I think that's the same kind of thing we're talking about here.