I was expecting the weight to be like 500 grams but itās 2 kilos! This has got to be really low quality aluminum as thin as they can make it with a lead weight.
The shipping price of $7 global air has me questioning realityā¦
Edit: Iām glad you rolled the dice on this because I have so many questions lol
This looks decently well made in the reviews Iāve seen. Have you handled a Womier S-K71, for example? A couple years ago these would have been limited run group buy boards. Now they sell for well under 100 dollars.
I had seen the Womier S-K71 mentioned here a few times, but I finally looked it up after your commentā¦ and Iām kind of blown away by the features you get for the price. Literally the only box it doesnāt tick is that it doesnāt have QMK/VIA.
I really did get into this hobby at the worst possible time (mid-2020, lulz) and while I donāt regret any purchases, I would have probably saved a boatload of money if I discovered our little rabbit hole just a couple years later. Perhaps the fit and finish on my custom GB boards is a bit better, but is it $300-400 better? Iām actually excited for anyone getting into keyboards nowā¦ and maybe a teeny bit jealous lol
To be honest, I saw a review on YouTube and I simply could not believe it. I looked it up on AliExpress and saw that I could get one for 79 Euro delivered, so I took a chance. I was pretty blown away. Itās nearly 2kg of CNC Aluminum, gasket mount on PC plate, and included some nice switches (although too soft for my own taste) and some half decent keycaps, with the rest of the set in the box so that you can use them on a different board. Tri mode and has a physical Mac mode switch too.
If it had QMK/VIA as you say, and if the PCB were drilled for screw-in stabs, this would be a world beater. In 2018 you would have had to join a group buy for $500 to get a board this good.
I really do wonder how itās possible to turn a profit on something like this. Obviously, economy of scale factors in at some point, so maybe it really is that simple once you sell enough of a particular board. Iāll always have a warm spot in my heart for quirky, small run boards, but itās certainly a bumpy and expensive path, so itās really nice to see that great features are making their way to much more affordable keyboards.
Itās not just economy of scale in the āmake millions of these and pile high, sell cheapā sense, because I donāt think many of these boards are being sold by the boatload. Itās that with the present state of technology, the setup to build a few thousand boards is faster and cheaper. CNC machines are set up remotely and need only the design files, same for the plates and PCBs. Lower cost means, obviously, that margins donāt have to be thinner, but the overall result is downward pressure on prices.
The more interesting part is to speculate when the next manufacturing transition will happen, because ultimately Chinese margins will erode and they will have to outsource to somewhere with lower costs in their turn.
3 years old video, I couldnāt find any links for it but maybe it is what ended up as the stabilizer mechanism for void switch. There are clips and stabilizer models in this repo
So Iām sending basically all my extra switches to my friend who runs SwitchOddities.com for him to list on his site or use for the mystery packs and uhhhhh who wants to see what 17lbs of switches looks like (after the weight of the box is taken out and rough estimates on the packaging)? Its a 16x16x12 box as well lo, and with some very rough math its about 4133 switches in that box
Thatās awesome! Thanks for sharing the love - I have no doubt whatsoever that at least a little bit of that box is going to end up in my collection of single switches >.>
That could actually be a really cool set if they went all out with a graphic novel/graffiti aesthetic. I think the mixing of the pixel art for novelties is confusing and is part of why the design falls flat. But yeah, I really like the large, cutoff alphas. I kinda like the modifiers too.