If they decide to sell the bare bones board for something like $80, I’ll buy it in a heartbeat. I really like the blue, and a plastic case with good foam always sounds stellar. But I can’t justify purchasing cherry switches and a dedicated TKL set that may just end up in a bag.
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Very interesting for sure. I still think Keychron has the slight edge, but the premium colorways they went with are definitely more appealing.
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Monokei has done a really stellar job on that video and their promo page for the Standard. There are a number of brands that manage this pretty well, but this is one of the first I’ve seen from a newer player (aka not Logitech/Razer) that could really appeal to people outside the hobby.
However, I did have a mild chuckle at the second USB-C cable included with the board:
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Ha! The old copy paste typo.
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Mekibo is the NA vender. Looks like there is no barebone option. I actually don’t mind getting some cherry brown.
Edit: Nice, I also like that it has BT.
Edit2: the side profile and the bottom look just like Kei
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I was just about to go in on a Q5 when this beaut graced my inbox. They’re doing that per-key flex thing with a separate plate for the numpad. Neat.
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Hey it even has a bluetooth option. Don’t see that as often on big chonker boards. Wonder how much that version costs…
…couldn’t resist.
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These tasty Shiratama caps designed by @taneyats look like rice cake balls:
(I can’t post this in the keycap profile thread because the last three entries are from me…)
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GMK Umka extra in-stock. I like the colors, reminds me of gmk sandstorm, but Sandstorm looks better
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Reminds me of OG Cherry that’s been in the sun.
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Tiger lite GB started. I love my tiger80. Picking up a plastic kit.
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If I may explain a little, we went with Cherry as our manufacturing partner had problems with non Cherry switches:
- They had trouble with the leafs on some sample switches from a Chinese brand that’s pretty common, enough trouble that they were not confident to include them.
- We also had trouble with batch variance for these switches, they had to stop the switch installation machines multiple times to extract switches that didn’t install correctly into the sockets. Might be a small batch issue I suppose.
- The non Cherry switches were much more pricey, still not sure why they decided to charge that high.
The Standard does come with hotswap sockets installed so it’s pretty easy to swap in for your own switches. Lots of folks who are interested actually asked us for Cherry switches, so that was a new thing for us.
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Have there been any discussions on selling a barebones kit without switches or keycaps? Perhaps at a later date?
Design-wise it’s definitely the best looking budget-friendly board out there. But I just don’t need more switches or keycaps.
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Not at this point, afaik (and we have limited experience with this) it’ll be extremely tricky to get it FCC / CE certified as a barebones kit. Also we made it for our friends who generally want just one mechanical keyboard and are not that interested in joining the hobby.
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Another Retro-inspired case. Man Groupbuys come fast and furious these days. Impossible to keep up.
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Often forget about these complications. That makes sense.
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The design of the Tetrix 60 looks a bit off to me. The accents look like afterthoughts. Dunno, I’m no professional designer.
I like Swishy’s 8-bit 60 more for this aesthetic. More genuine to me:
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Yes exactly. I’m passing on Tetrix for the reasons you mentioned.
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I was eyeballing it but they haven’t gotten around to a sound test yet and to me, when you have a prototype in hand, is off-putting. It’s just hard to spend that amount of money when you’re essentially going in blind. Granted, they said one is coming but still.
I think the two lines at the top of the Tetrix 60 are supposed to represent the “select” and “start” buttons on the GameBoy, along with the more obvious call-back in the bottom right corner.
While I’ve never done product/industrial design, I do work as a web designer. I think the Tetrix 60 was going for a subtle homage but I don’t know if they succeeded.
Part of the problem is that the select and start buttons don’t appear next to each other at the top of the GameBoy, so it’s an odd choice to tuck them up in the top left of the keyboard and aligned horizontally. I know why they did it that way, but I don’t think it works.
Also, having the bottom right corner radius and diagonal lines is understandable, but the lines are cut off in a weird way where they run into the bottom right key. Additionally, the other three corner radii are too rounded, so the bottom right corner seems just slightly off, rather than a deliberate choice. Think of this like an artisan keycap: an artisan can be wildly different and still work nicely—but may offend some viewers—but if your artisan is only slightly different than the standard keycap, it’s going to seem like a mistake.
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