I have two pre-builts from NuPhy right now, the Air96 and the Halo75.
A coworker showed me his Air75 and I was fairly impressed adn started researching... I had been somewhat interested in mechkeebs for a while already but didn't wish to fall into the rabbit hole of custom builds and group buys but didn't like the mass-market offerings such as Logitech's Mini Mech or the Rokkat Vulcan very much either.
Keychron seemed cool but the ones my coworker has all didn't call to me. But the two NuPhys are pretty neat for something that works out of the box!
I have since gotten a bunch of switches to play around with and replaced the keycaps... aaand only recently ordered an Odin 75 kit as my first custom.
Rabbit hole, here we go. :D
I wish it were programmable in VIA instead of NuPhy's software but otherwise their low profile boards look really good to me. I tried a Keychron K3 in the past but strongly dislike their keycaps, and their stabilizers make them incompatible with other brands.
The Odin looks really cool! That little screen should be fun to play with.
I’ve been rotating between a lily58 (the boardsource.xyz lulu58 case) with Zealio Zilents V2 65g, and a ZSA Moonlander with Durock T1s. Numpad I’ve been super happy with my FFKeebs Púca with SP-Star Dark Magic Girl switches.
Keychron Q8, which has an Alice layout. I like the layout; it feels pretty familiar since my two previous daily drivers were ortholinear. I switch between the Alice and ortholinear keyboards often, too.
I think I'm not crazy about the switches, though. I got it with Gateron G Pro Reds, which are linear, pre-lubed, and maybe just a little too light for my taste. It's my first and only keyboard with linear switches, and I bottom out too hard on each keystroke. It's a little uncomfortable on the fingertips after a while. I'm trying to adjust how much pressure I use when typing, which is a hard habit to change.
I had the same experience bottoming out with linears. Mine were K-Pro reds, which are fine switches otherwise, but I'm more comfortable with browns. On the plus side they let me type quietly when needed so I'm thinking of trying them in a mobile/tablet/travel keyboard – maybe an Ajazz K620T.
I'm on a Keychron V3 base with Gateron Brown switches and PBTfans Dolch caps. I have some foam fillers in the spacebar, but no hardware mods otherwise.
I went with it for similar reasons: programmable + 3 or 5-pin hotswap + TKL + normal profile gave me a lot of flexibility to try different things.
I'm especially happy with the keycaps I settled on. I realized almost immediately that Keychron's stock "OSA" caps weren't for me. Next I tried an ABS shine-through set, which were too hard to read with the backlight disabled and started to develop shine very quickly. PBTfans seems to hit a sweet spot for me: nice texture, comfortable Cherry profile, PBT material doesn't seem to wear too fast, and doubleshot to prevent the legends wearing down.
My daily driver is a kprepublic BM40 with Zeal tealio switches that I got off of Ebay for a steal and have upgraded since then. I'm gonna eventually replace the switches with something more tactile, I definitely prefer tactile switches over linears.
Mechanical Keyboards
Hot