I am someone who has not used mechanical keyboards before, but I am curious about them since I read everywhere that they are great. The issue I have is that I obviously don’t know which things I will like or not. For example the switches, there are a lot of brands, and they produce different switches. When I read about them, I see the familiar terms: “clicky”, “tactile”, but I have no idea what that actually means.
However, just starting to buy stuff to test it out will become very expensive, very quickly.
How do you start with this without spending hundreds and hundreds of Euro’s at the start (and without knowing if you like it or not)
I think it’s either money or time!
I took the middle road. Like you, I didn’t want to / couldn’t afford to spend huge amounts just to figure out what worked for me, so I spent A LOT of time in research mode. Subreddits, YouTube videos, Discord servers, the works. All to try to figure out what appealed to me. But I did end up spending more than I expected I would when I started.
The switch thing was a challenge. The keyboard switch testers I’ve tried haven’t really done anything for me. I think maybe it’s because I need enough of the same switches to actually mimic typing on to get a sense of how I might feel about a full board of those switches— just the one didn’t really give me a full sense. Plus, there are a few other variables that come into play— keycaps, whether you’ve got any dampening/foam on your board etc. That’s not to say you shouldn’t get one. Something’s better than nothing.
There are two things that really got me started on my interest in ergomech boards: a Vinpok Taptek (cool board but hella clicky for my tastes) and the Textblade (vapourware, but got me thinking about the smallest most practical keyboard I could get my hands on). So I knew I wanted something quiet, and I knew I was open to a less than usual layout/design. I think I may have even seen a split keyboard in the Textblade forums, I think it was an Ergodox or a Moonlander. From that, I ended up with my first board— a Lily58 with rotary encoders. Had someone build it for me, and I was happy… for a while. But the Lily58 isn’t the most portable split, so I kept browsing.
Since then, I’ve picked up a wired Corne, an R2G Corne (relatively cheap, and easy to assemble), and a wireless Corne (had that prebuilt for me; no more TRRS or USB cables to worry about!). I could have stopped there, but I really wanted to know what it took to actually build a board from component level, so I bought an Aurora Corne kit and built a wireless 5x3 Corne. This one is the dream, and because I built it myself, it was cheaper than any of the other boards I bought prebuilt. Switches I love (Alpaca Silent Linears), keycaps I love (XVX profile, which I’d never heard of in spite of browsing a tonne of subreddits, ogling other people’s keebs and asking what keycaps they were sporting), and eminently customisable (I just recently upgraded to 1500mAh batteries), all in a reasonably small, portable package. I reckon it’s my endgame. It is. I still do browse on occasion, but I have no need to acquire/build another board. Not at all. Nope.
I mean, I did see an interesting Centromere Mini build the other day. But no. I’m sorted.
So, the takeaways:
- Figure out any preferences you might have, including any environmental considerations. Will you need to use your board in a quiet space? Will clicky switches get you murdered by loved ones or colleagues? I’m unlikely to go for low profile Chocs simply because there isn’t (as far as I understand it) such a wide range of affordable silent low profile switches, which straightaway helps me to narrow down the kinds of builds I might be interested in.
- Prepare to do a lot of reading around (and YouTubing— there are lots of people on YouTube reviewing switches and things) about the various different components you might want for your ideal board. But remember, no matter how opinionated anyone else might be, your tastes are what matter.
- Find the cheapest way to test out a few staples (Cherry MX reds, for example?) and try to judge things relatively from there. Keycrox in the UK offers sample bags of switches for testing; I’m not sure about Europe based equivalents.
- I don’t know whether you shop Amazon or not, but you can probably find switch testers there. You might also be able to test and return a few different boards via Amazon to help you zero in on what you might want.
- Maybe allow budget for a few different variants of cosmetic elements? Having experimented, I know I’m good with XVX, DSA and XDA keycaps. There are others I’m not nearly so comfortable with.
- Last thought: they don’t happen that often outside the US, but you might benefit from heading to a keyboard meet-up if there’s one near you within a reasonable stretch of time? https://kbd.news/meetups
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the extensive reply! This is very helpful for me!
I’ll be sure to check out a lot of reviews and stuff.
Sound is an issue for me indeed. Not be wise of my loved ones, but I think I’ll make myself go mad if it is super-loud.
Thank you again!
For the switches, you can buy switch testers for 10 bucks, with one switch of each brand/type/etc, to give you an idea of how they feel and sound.
Since you are posting in c/emk you might also be interested in ergonomics for keyboards? If you scroll here you will see a lot of different keyboards, many which are split (2 parts, one for each hand). A good idea would be to print the layout of ones you are interested in, to see how they feel with hand placement and movement.
I thought I was posting in the “regular” mechanical keyboard-community. That is my mistake (still new here…).
In terms of ergonomical layout, I will probably stick to a regular one since that is what I have used for decades already.
Do you have any hints on where to buy a switch tester?
Switch testers are quite nice even if they don’t have the exact switch you want. It’s a lot easier to figure out what the numbers and descriptions mean if you have a comparison point. The switches I ended up with were not in any tester, but the testers were still super helpful.
As for layout, it’s worth being open to the smaller things like CRKBD or Lily58, your brain is better at adapting than you may think. These layouts save desk space, are significantly cheaper, and are quite nice to use. The savings add up especially quick if you are trying out different kinds of keys.
Yeah, those two keyboards are not for me. I don’t even see a row with numbers on top on the CRKBD, and when you work in Finance like me, numbers really are indispesible. And to be honest, I am so used to typing all figures blindly on the numpad, that I really don’t want to mess with that.
For non-financials I can see this working though, so thanks for the advice.
Amazon has a bunch of them. If you want to try specific switches, you can create your own 9 keys switcher tester on keygem, they ship really fast (based in Europe).
Oeh, that sound great!
Thank you!
I’d second this. Buy a switch tester, and have a play to see what you like. Some computer shops even have them in store to ‘try before you buy’. Next thing is the keyboard typo. Ortho? Split? 100% or 40%? FWIW I started out with an ErgoDox, and then played with layers and key layouts until I found something I was happy with. Then you can simply stay there, or if you’ve reduced your keys to something like 36-keys, there are a wide range of boards to choose from with slightly varying layouts and designs.
Since you’re looking at non-ergo mechanical keyboards, you have way more options and flexibility.
I would get a quality hotswap board (Keychron boards are the usual recommendation, if you go Aliexpress you can find cheaper options too) and a set of any switches you like. Switches maintain resale value well (some even raise, because broken in switches tend to work better than non broken-in) so get a set you’re interested in, daily drive it for a bit, and then see what you’d want changed.
You can also think about your current keyboard setup, what you like about it and what isn’t working for you.
Good advise. Given my job, I will need a numpad, so that will limit it somewhat, but I’ll have a good look around.
Also thanks for the tip on the resale-value of switches. I thought they would be worthless once used indeed, so that is good to know.
There exist external mechanical numpad/macro pads that you cna use if you wanna downsize the board. Then you can hook up the numpad only when you need it
Pro-tip: getting rid of the numpad is good for you long term. Num pad existence is associated with RSI pain. I would consider a 60-80% keyboard and a separate numpad that you can pull out when you need it.
Fyi the lily 58 has space for the number row at the top. You can also build a number pad that sits between the halves. It’s all wireless and still takes less room than a standard layout.
But anyway, you choose the layout that works for you. That’s the whole point of ergo mech keyboards. Lots of great open source software exists to choose and build exactly what you want with no compromises.
You can buy tester switch packs so that you can test how you like the feel of different switches. It’s probably worth the investment if you have no idea what you like. But to be honest, I’m a n00b (been active for 2 years now but at a very basic level) and I chose my first switches based on an assessment of how I’d rated different keyboards over the years. (Possibly easier if you’re older and opinionated - I’m a millennial, I have several decades experience using different home, school and office keyboards and have always had strong keyboard opinions). I knew I liked clicky keyboards and proceeded accordingly; I looked at which clicky switches were well-regarded by the community and watched YouTube reviews, and started from there.
Having said that, I recently built a keyboard with silent switches for the first time to see if I liked them too, and it turns out I do. So I guess my main thought is that building the perfect keyboard (=endgame) for you is a journey, and kind of the whole point of the hobby. The experimenting is part of the fun.
I get the hobby-remark, which is very true. But like I said, I’m hesitant to pour in hundreds of Euro’s before I actually know if I like it (a keyboard or the hobby around it).
Any hints on where to buy these testers?
I’m in the UK so I don’t really recommend you shopping with a UK store since you’ll be hit with customs 🙄 There are good EU keyboard shops, so it’s worth just doing a search for “switch tester” and limiting your results to Europe. But if you get stuck, UK Keycaps stocks testers, as does The Keyboard Company. Worth looking on Etsy too, as there are traders on there who sell keyboard parts.
Okay, great!
Thank you!
