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Comment by firekvz | Hacker News Reader

Mechkebs are fun, been an user for years, right now sitting on a 1.5k build from 2018

I enjoyed the hobby, not amymore

Since around 2016, the money grab situation became a joke, it all started with Drop (former massdrop) and it all went downhill.. i get that the community was really small and we were forced to use forums to organize drops and so on.. but now the community is by the milliions and stuff are even more expensive than before.. Fake "limited supply", copies of copies of switches that at the end offer no difference, same old keycaps vendors that have months if not years of intentionally delayed orders to justify their insane pricing, US/EU resellers of china pieces for 1000% margins, hidding inventory, snob creators, corruption in raffles, people being hyped by snob 'keyboard celebrities', censure in discords servers when you bring this up and i could go for hours with this list

It just sad...

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I've learned that with all the mechanical-head-pens hobbies that it's best to read a little, decide on one good enough product, and stick with it. Stop reading the forums, stop second guessing yourself, just be happy with what you chose.

I settled on a Code keyboard with MX Clears. It's durable, useful and I'm happy with it. Sure I could upgrade but there's little to no reason.

Same with headphones. I gave up on all the fancy audio and use AirPods. Yes, they sound worse. Yes, Bluetooth hurts audio quality. But who cares?

For most of these hobbies the benefit you get from your first purchase will never be replicated. From there it's all diminishing returns.

How much does bluetooth hurt audio quality?

When audio is being transmitted via Bluetooth, the audio is transcoded to another codec to be played back on the receiver. Lossy transcodes always hurt audio quality, however telling the difference between the source content and transcoded audio isn't as easy as you might think.

This is very good advice. It's often so tempting to get on that threadmill after making the first purchase.

Mechanical keyboards are great. Fell in love with an M 20 years ago, and wanted the same feeling. There are great models under $100 that will last you forever. I have 3: 1 at work, 1 at home, and 1 BT for the media center. That's it. Never replaced them, I just got them not to move keyboards around.

The rest I agree. It's like the audiophile business. Drop basically turns every consumer product line into an exclusive, elitist, better than you, brag in front of your bros marketplace with absurd margins. Keycaps are the worst offender, they're the cheapest thing in the whole keyboard to manufacture yet they get sold for... hundreds??!? Hard pass on all that.

Boutique keycaps are expensive because small-run injection molding is always expensive. I'm not at all sure they're the cheapest part of the whole keyboard, I would bet the case is probably cheaper.

> small-run

Yeah, that's the excuse, but seems like every batch is small-run, limited release, exclusive collectors edition, but somehow more and more stock keeps coming back over time. They're expensive even by Warhammer standards, but at least Warhammer figures have detailed work from an artist on them.

> I would bet the case is probably cheaper.

You're right on that, actually.

>Yeah, that's the excuse, but seems like every batch is small-run, limited release, exclusive collectors edition, but somehow more and more stock keeps coming back over time.

I can all but guarantee you that fancy custom keycaps are rarely going to be done in runs big enough to have the economies of scale drive down the cost of tooling. Particularly with double shots and the like, those molds are extremely expensive. I don’t doubt that the products are luxury priced, but I think you might be surprised by what the costs are here.

I don't think it's necessarily tooling economies of scale, but probably custom-order costs-- rather than cranking out 5000 standard US QWERTY sets, you have to swap between five different toolings and run 50 sets of each. Even if tooling's free, there's a cost in the short runs and switching.

From what I've seen, a typical new keycap set is 90% existing tooling in a new colour-wave, and 1-10 completely new legends, usually that define the theme (there are seemingly 300 sets with Hiragana sublegends, but this one will have a Windows-logo key replaced with the Strawhat Pirate flag!)

I suspect there are efficencies to be found by pooling overlapping orders and reducing nonstandard kitting. Saying "everyone gets the 3/£ keycap" adds 20 cents per order, rather than making a few UK users buy a low-economies-of-scale kit at $25.

I've been fond of Maxkey's caps-- they seem to have achieved that accidentally. They seem to sell one basic cover-all set in different colours, and as a result they have pretty good supply and modest prices (their sets sell for about USD100, I suspect anything similar from Signature Plastics would cost 150 or 200, and have a 12 month turnaround)

Care to share your favorite sub $100 keyboard?

In terms of cheap, I run the redragon K40 at $40.

ducky keyboards are around the $90-$120 range mostly, depending on the model you get. I think they're a great option for a high quality but non-exotic keyboard

Not OP, but I've been using a Durgod Taurus K320 TKL for two years as my primary work keyboard with no problems. I like it quite a bit.

Been running Noppoo Choc since it came out, got two of them. Newer Noppoo Lolita Spyder had the same feeling but didn't award being bought. At work a colleague has a Drevo Tyrfing V2, too much LED but it has a good touch too.

Just go on ebay, you can find great pbt double-shot keycaps for ~$20 or even less, usually shipped from China. The enthusiast shops only carry the most expensive stuff.

I am into the mechkebs as a hobby (have a KA2, Kyria, Model01, Redox and parts for Dactyl Manuform laying around) but it the first time I've ever heard of Drop, fwiw.

I think that mechanical keyboards are an interesting (if expensive) hobby, but standard keyboards with only mechanical switches and and funny keycaps are too expensive for what they are providing. They are a bit nicer to type with, but switches are in general not the problem of a keyboard. The layout and ergonomics are.

You have to switch to an ortholinear split with a firmware to see how different the ergonomics of a keyboard can be if we push it further and do non let legacy drive our decisions.

It’s interesting you mention this, as I (somebody who has always used basic keyboards) just recently bought a split ortholinear mechanical keyboard for this exact reason. Curious to see what the experience is like.

The ideals of improved ergonomics and typing efficiency were much more interesting to me than fancy keycaps... but looking cross-sectionally at the keyboard space while researching my purchase, I found that the opposite was mostly true in terms of what attracted the most attention. Strange.

>looking cross-sectionally at the keyboard space while researching my purchase, I found that the opposite was mostly true in terms of what attracted the most attention. Strange.

It is not that strange - people who aim for ergonomic builds are a small community of an already small (if increasing) community. Most people do not want something like a new keyboard to mess too much with their motor memory.

That fits for me. I got two mechanical keyboards at the same time. One mirrors the Microsoft Ergo: cloud nine. The other is unique in the layout: ergodox ez. On this, my typing speed dropped to a third of normal. With the cloud nine, i typed at full speed minute one. The twice as expensive ergodox ez sits in my closet.

In my experience it doesn't take very long on a new keyboard set or even a new layout entirely before one gets fairly up to speed. When I built my Lets Split v2 ortholinear, I put dvorak on it and getting up to speed was surprisingly fast.

The ergonomic reasons behind the lets split/ergodox make them quite worthwhile. I love my HHKB2 but a split keyboard in general feels much better for my posture.

> I think that mechanical keyboards are an interesting (if expensive) hobby

I'd love to own a mk, but I don't because I refuse to pay the huge markup just because "it's mechanical!". I'm typing this comment on a decades old Logitech K120 that's even missing some keycaps, that cost me, what, 10 bucks? But you're telling me I can't find a ultra basic key caps set for under $20 because...? "Hey, this Ducky is tacky but doesn't look that bad, how much is it?" $125? Go duck yourself.

The scene is completely nuts, there's no space left for people who just want to type on a mk, it's all about exclusivity, "the endgame", limited editions, artisan caps... Bullshit. There's no "mechanical K120". There's no room left for full sized, affordable, practical, run of the mill, "Ford Model T" mk. So thanks, and good riddance. I'll just buy another K120. I could pay $20, even $40, for "a good feel", but it's not worth $100.

Imagine the same scene on mice. "Hey, are you tired of your ball mouse? Want an optical mouse? Well, the technology is cheap, but we're going to charge you $120, just because!!"

I don't want a mk as a hobby, I want it as a tool. But it looks like we're incapable of conceptualizing a mk as a tool. Sorry for the rant, and pardon my French.

I own just one mechanical keyboard and it’s my daily driver, when I type lot I plug it in and off I go, otherwise I’m fine with the not so good-to-type-alot laptop keyboards. Mechanical keyboards are a good investment if you don’t go overboard and become obsessed with them. They do offer a very good feedback and are pleasant to type on. My typing error rate is the lowest on my mechanical keyboard, and I guess that says quite a bit. My mechkeb is a Leopold FC750R and couldn’t be happier with my purchase, which i expect I will own for quite some time.

Thanks for the input, I'll check it out.

I think a lot of the interesting keyboards are really small series, and such things cost - there is such thing as "economy of scale".

The cheapest KB I've built myself was a Kyria for just over 200 EUR with cheap keycaps but relatively expensive switches - Kailh Pink, as I remember. Imagine building something like Keyboardio Model01 (https://shop.keyboard.io/products/model-01-keyboard?variant=...): You have to build a case in low numbers, you have to design and print the PCB boards, you have to order the switches (Jesse, the author of it told once, that Cherry was not even interested in talking to him due to the relatively low number of switches he could take off them) and you still have to solder and assemble it, which for small shops is a manual job. Even the most mass-produced ergonomic keyboard I know if, Kineses Advantage2 is still a very niche product.

So all the "endgame" photos of another 60% KB with "artisan" keycaps and expensive pre-lubed switches are indeed bullshit. But you can get a lot of gain out of it if you go for ergonomic keyboards, even if you get the cheapest switches and keycaps (gatreon, for example) because the ergonomic improvement you can get out of a keywell or a proper thumb cluster can be life changing. Especially if you have a predisposition for developing RSI or similar problems. But it will still not be cheap. Or you can buy one and stick to it, you don't have to do it as hobby. Buy a Kinesis Advantage and do not worry that much. If you later want to mode it, there are still multiple possibilities.

Your French is fine! :)

I'm typing this on an Ajazz Ak33 which I've owned for several years and it's still working perfectly fine. You can find it for less than $30 on aliexpress. There are quite a few options of mechanical keyboards for less than $50 .

Check out cloud nine. Full sized, split mechanical, and looks near identical to the Microsoft Ergo 4000. I typed full speed immediately. Still pricey, but feels like a tool to me.

> Imagine the same scene on mice. "Hey, are you tired of your ball mouse? Want an optical mouse? Well, the technology is cheap, but we're going to charge you $120, just because!!"

My, I better not tell you what a MX Master, G903 or Kone Pro Air retails for...

That said, I think you're asking too much if you expect a mk to cost about the same as a membrane keyboard; I think a 2x-3x price increase is totally reasonable considering that a membrane keyboard is trivial to assemble compared to one made of 102 individual switches, and that the production scale is so vastly different.

On the other side, I'm typing this on a Lenovo keyboard that's technically a membrane but it's so sturdy and clicky it feels pretty close to the brown-switch Cooler Master I have at home (which was definitely a cheaper mech, I think I paid $65 or so for it).

>There's no room left for full sized, affordable, practical, run of the mill, "Ford Model T" mk.

I bought a boring (by mk community standards) Filco Majestouch in 2010. I think it was around that $125 price point, but you know what, it is at least 10 times better than the keyboard I had before it and costs less than 4c per day. I wouldn't even be surprised if this thing lasted another 10 years.

Personally I don't understand why people spend thousands of dollars on new PC hardware just to use a 10$ mouse and keyboard. Of course people are free to prioritize whatever they want, and I'm not suggesting everyone should have DIY custom $400+ keyboards, but if you put a 10 year old K120 infront of me with missing keycaps, I'd be measurably unhappy while trying to use my computer.

I bought 2 of these in tenkeyless (for work and home) and both are still in great shape. I did switch to Kinesis at work about a year later but is 9-10 years of daily use and they all look almost identical to when new.

Finding a keyboard you like is expensive but once you do they pretty much last forever. At work the Kinesis has outlasted 5 MacBooks and serval PCs. It is by far the cheapest computer peripheral when time of use is considered.

These days you can get solid mechanical switch keyboards in the $60 to $100 range. The only downside is that they all seem to come with LED backlighting and obnoxious gamer marketing, but once you turn off the light shows they're perfectly good keyboards. I think they would qualify for "Model T" status.

They have mechanical switches but often lack N-key rollover (I think the blog post gets this wrong) and instead have a watered down form marketed as "anti-ghosting". But that's more than enough for all purposes except maybe Emacs olympics and social prestige with keyboard-philes.

I bought a Filco Majestouch 2 three years ago when I finally had to retire my 8 year old Sidewinder X4, which was a $40 membrane keyboard with deeper-than-usual key travel. I can definitely say moving from that to the Majestouch 2 has not made me a better programmer, typist, or gamer. And it hasn't helped with ergonomics either. It just feels better the same way shelling out the extra couple hundred bucks for a high end graphics card makes games feel better.

I owned an actually ergonomic split-key keyboard as well (Goldtouch) when I developed RSI-related wrist problems as a teenager and kept it around for 15 years. That keyboard made an actual difference and I would take it out of the closet whenever my wrists started acting up even from the Majestouch 2. But you don't usually see ergonomics front and center in super expensive mechanical keyboards - because IMO in that price range and in that community it hasn't been about practical concerns for a while. And that's fine - I'm not going to judge someone's choice of things to collect - but I see no practical benefit to spending substantially more on mechanical keyboards.

I enjoyed the hobby, not amymore. Since around 2016, the money grab situation became a joke, it all started with Drop (former massdrop) and it all went downhill..

I have been a mechanical keyboard user for decades and I have no idea what you mean or who or what this is talking about. There are people for whom keyboards are a hobby?? What is "Drop"?

If I want a mechanical keyboard I just buy it directly from Cherry, the quality is high, the prices are fair, the customer service is great, I've never had any problems.

>What is "Drop"?

https://drop.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_(company)

Thanks. How was this one company able to distort the market? Is this an American thing? Here in the UK mechanical keyboards are readily available with no such issues. I don't think we suffer from any "money grab" situation.

seconded. also in the UK and never heard of Drop. perhaps the Americans should order from Europe instead of China?

It's like most things. You can buy most things at a decent to good quality easily, but if you want something bespoke, it costs more.

I like building things, so I'm making my own keyboard. I decided on a switch type. I like a strong tactile switch so MX Browns are too soft for me so I'll pay a bit more for something that suits my taste.

My PC is in the living room, I like having a pretty living room, so I'll pay a bit more for a pretty keyboard case, a pretty rotary encoder and pretty keycaps.

I'm French and the problem to me is that the hobby of building custom keyboards is increasingly popular in the US and in Asia but very little of it is European. This means few keycap sets have the big ISO enter key that doesn't exist on ANSI keyboards. Pretty keycaps are expensive. Shipping to/from the US and Asia is also expensive.

I also use a non conventional keyboard layout (Canadian Multilingual Standard) which has small differences with more standard layouts and though I can type mostly without looking at my keyboard, I still look a it sometimes and it's confusing to have something completely different printed on the key. I've started working with blank keycaps but those aren't much easier to find. Especially in some profiles. (You can have an idea of profiles here : https://www.keycaps.info/stack)

Another factor to the cost is that a lot of the parts are produced for limited runs. I'm not exactly sure how it's organised but a designer submits a new design, if enough people are interested they order a bunch of them with a little extra but they can't easily buy a lot of stock to keep selling. I feel like a lot of the designers do it a side thing and can't afford to invest in it.

Compare it to cars, where people will buy extremely powerful cars, with crazy interiors and using enough petrol to power a small country when a good old second hand Voxhall would be enough for their needs.

Link appears to 404, https://www.keycaps.info/ works though.

MT3 can only be had from Drop.

https://matt3o.com/about-mt3-profile-and-devtty-set

Edit: might as well also mention https://keycaplendar.firebaseapp.com for tracking most regular Group Buy dates

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out !

Nobody is talking about keyboards that are available in supermarkets. https://drop.com/mechanical-keyboards/wdrops?subcategory=key...

There is a community of artisanal Arduino-based mechanical keyboards in existence

A few months ago, I finally built my own board from scratch. I used an Arduino-alike (based on one of the bigger Atmega parts)

It was an interesting endeavour-- designing a PCB, mounting plate/casing, sending them out to be be drilled, soldering it all together, configuring QMK firmware. It's the order of something like assembling Heathkit audio gear was in the 1960s-- the finished product is on tier with a good quality commercial product, but you also get complete control over any substitutions and customizations you like.

Unfortunately, due to low economies of scale, I paid about $500 for the board.

You can order good quality mechanical keyboards on <insert major online retailer here> for $30--$80.

Most likely, these are going to be using the same exact switches from the same companies that are used on more expensive ones.

After that price point it's just commodity fetishism. Paying $300 for "uwu" key caps in pastel colors or other such childish garbage.

It doesn't even allow to see prices without registration! Now, that a new level of being hostile to customers! I think I'd rather pass.

A couple of years ago, a buddy convinced me to sign up. Personally, I’ve only found them to be expensive. Like, they show it as a bulk sales price drop, but it feels more like gimmick original prices (though I don’t think they are doing that, maybe it is just normal prices outside my comfort level).

If I want a mechanical keyboard I just buy it directly from Cherry

As with just about everything, while most people are perfectly happy just buying the thing, there are always people who prefer to buy the pieces and build their own to their exact taste and preference.

It could be computers or sailboats or guitars or, as in this case, keyboards.

> keyboards are a hobby

A hobby as in building and customising keyboards. If I want a mechanical keyboards I'll spend weeks researching various pcbs and kits, looking at keyswitch datasheets and listening to recording of sounds they make, choosing keycaps with perfect font, color and manufacturing process. Don't get me started on keyboard cases...

Oh yes, it's similar to a lot of other 'enthusiast' things, like high-end audio, cameras and guitars.

I got into keyboards because I wanted a lockdown project. I figured I could learn a little about electronics and firmware, learn how to solder, and even perhaps make something that would be useful at work. Keycaps can be a complete rip-off, and my keyboard is fitted with a mixture of caps that I've scrounged from various places.

And when we finally get back to the office, a super-noisy mechanical keyboard will help my project of being allowed to WFH as much as possible ;-)

I love how Cherry Browns became déclassé key switches, due to their popularity and everyone ran to the other extreme (extremely stiff tactile switches) and are now running back to the other extreme (softer tactile switches like the Browns) with special lube and keyfilms to improve their sound and subtle typing feel.

> same old keycaps vendors that have months if not years of intentionally delayed orders

Got any source on this? I don't disagree with the rest of your claims, but this sounds completely wrong; for example GMK is actively expanding their production capacity and already offers a selection of keycap sets without shipping delays.

Orders are delayed because the "same old" manufacturers are flooded with an ever-increasing demand for customized low-quantity productions, each of which introduce an overhead. And the appearance of new, cheaper manufacturers only seemed to make the demand explode even more.

That explains a lot to me, as a (almost) user. Wanted to buy one, loved hackers keyboard, but the whole thing was more expensive then a modern mobile ryzen 4xxx mini pc with lots of ram and m2 ssd, wifi6 and so on. It also not locally available so basically no real warranty for me.

Got one of those curvy ergonomic divided keyboards from MS and forgot about the whole thing, while saving $500.

Six or seven years ago, I was very active on /r/mechanicalkeyboards. I think it was basically those folks who MADE it all a joke.

The GOOD news, though, is that the surge in popularity has made a lot of decent, inexpensive mech's available on Amazon and AliExpress.

All that being said, I love my WASD CODE's.

Agreed, this is my experience as well. Like most things, find 1 that you like and use it for a long time. For me it happened to be the HHKB Pro 2.

What makes it a problem to orders switches yourself?

Mechanical switches are not a rocket science, and any electromechanical OEM would've been happy to work on them with such premiums.

I myself been thinking of ordering double action switches, so you don't need debouncing them. I even contemplated adding some ultra low power latches to be overmolded inside, so you get a single output out of the box.

I have never been interested in the "online community" part of this mk fad but I have been happy to buy off the shelves from hhkb maybe 20 years ago, the Unicom, then EZ/sza. It’s expensive for sure but there are functioning suppliers for quality boards.

Not to mention destroying vintage computers because they only want the keyboard.

This one has always annoyed me and really annoys some people I know. I had the opportunity to buy a DisplayWriter (full system) a few years ago and when doing research on it was horrified to find out it was popular to gut the keyboard and replace the circuitry with a modern custom keyboard controller.

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