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Comment by arinlen | Hacker News Reader

> Me, or anybody who needs a no-fuss, one-shot, buy-and-use-it-till-it-dies type of consumer.

You can get a cheaper no-fuss mechanical keyboard from reputable brands with respectable components for far less than this logitech keyboard is being sold.

From the top of my mind, Akko keyboards are quite nice, and most of their products sell for $50 less.

You'd need to be completely, utterly clueless to go to Logitech for a mechanical keyboard. The faintest of Google searches would lead you to established products which are both cheaper and better.

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> From the top of my mind, Akko keyboards are quite nice, and most of their products sell for $50 less.

Opened the website. Almost everything out of stock. No other layout besides us_US (most european languages use accented vowels like èòàù). Clown pink and RGB everywhere. Closed the website.

To be fair, their keyboards have line names like "Naruto" and "Doraemon", so.

> Opened the website. Almost everything out of stock.

Amazon seems to have no problem stocking up on Akko keyboards. The ones I'm seeing listed as out of stock on Akko's page seem to be low-volume special editions with custom keycaps.

But again, I'm not a sales representative. Anyone interested in mechanical keyboards surely is able to use Google to find decent offers. I doubt Logitech products will feature in anyone's shortlist though.

What's the difference between Akko, EPOMAKER Akko, YUNZII Akko, Womier Akko, Gliging Akko, COSTOM Akko on Amazon?

That all looks... entirely reputable. Absolutely.

From some quick glances at /r/MechanicalKeyboard, Akko looks to be a manufacturer (primarily for switches), while the rest are various distributors.

Funking naming/branding isn't unheard of in the MK world, considering a large amount of stuff is bought from China and rebranded.

> Anyone interested in mechanical keyboards surely is able to use Google to find decent offers.

Umm, there are now almost daily threads on HN about how bad Google search has become, especially for product search... So I'd guess many people will be happy about a no-nonsense offering from a somewhat reputable manufacturer like Logitech.

Whilst I get your point - you might want to tone down the rhetoric slightly...

I'm a mechanical keyboard aficionado - I've gone through everything from Das, to Annes, to WhiteFoxes, to Keychrons. (Yes, I did solder some of those...lol).

My current daily driver is a Keychron K6 - but even I am seriously considering this Logitech.

The spec sheet promises a battery life of 10 months (no backlight) - the Keychron K6 is fine - except that the battery life sucks, and it takes 3-4 seconds to wake up from sleep every time.

I'm looking for a QMK wireless keyboard, but they're thin on the ground - and I suspect the battery life would still be terrible.

At the end of the day, companies like Logitech (or Apple) have the time and engineering nous to test things, and have them Just Work. Things like decent battery life, or having fast wake-from-sleep would probably be handled by their engineering teams.

You would think. The most annoying piece of hardware I have is a Microsoft wireless mouse which, while it's physically fine, goes to sleep very quickly and takes roughly a second to wake up when you move it. It's pretty much unusable as a result. Which is disappointing, because MS hardware generally is pretty good, but I guess everyone misses sometimes.

> guess everyone misses sometimes.

It's still strange to me how companies like Microsoft and Logitech can still regularly produce lemons after, what, 15 years of optical mouse production. It's not like anything fundamentally changes any more, they should have a winning set of virtually perfect devices that cover the entire market with interlocking segments by now.

I guess they're going for the "make it bit shit on purpose so we can sell them another mouse in 2 years" strategy.

Or maybe they just cannot help themselves from penny pinching good products into bad products so continually that you don't even know which are which any more (and you certainly can't tell if the expensive models are actually better or not).

I guess it's good that they're leaving market gaps open for the little guys?

>because MS hardware generally is pretty good

After a couple years of supporting Surface devices, I have very different views in this regard.

I was more thinking peripherals. The Natural keyboard line and their cheap mice were always just rock solid. Admittedly I've not been in the market for them for a while so I don't know what the latest models are like, but I did find the irony that a software company's best products were its hardware ones rather delicious.

> I'm looking for a QMK wireless keyboard, but they're thin on the ground

The issue with wireless keyboards and QMK is that Bluetooth is such a messed up protocol and to implement it QMK would realistically have to deal with proprietary binary blobs which they choose not to. I heard there's some work on "custom" 2.4GHz transmission modes but that's not as universal or ubiquitous as Bluetooth is.

Maybe check out ZMK, basically a QMK for wireless keyboards but more opiniated. I'm about to build a wireless corne with it after years on a wired QMK Planck.

Battery life for closed source keyboards made by big companies will always be better because they have the resources to perfectly engineer the hardware and code for every model and the willingness to cut lots of corners in terms of customizability. Same with any other piece of hardware.

I'd personally prefer some form of wireless which is specifically not Bluetooth. For one, I'm typing this on an old desktop that doesn't have BT of any kind and I don't want to have a dedicated keyboard for choosing my OS (I sometimes use windows on this computer).

Also, sometimes there's noticeable lag when typing on a BT keyboard (I have experience with an older Apple keyboard on an MBP and with a Keychron). I've never had such issues with either of my MS sculpt keyboard or Logitech mice and keyboards (nor with my Logitech lightspeed mice which are amazing, but I realize that's something else).

> I'm looking for a QMK wireless keyboard, but they're thin on the ground - and I suspect the battery life would still be terrible.

QMK's bluetooth stack is pretty fucking broken and has limited chipsets it supports. You'll have more luck with https://github.com/jpconstantineau/BlueMicro_BLE or https://github.com/zmkfirmware/zmk

I've seen dongles you can buy (I think in the $30-$50 range) that sit between your normal non-QMK keyboard and your computer. Then when you press a key, the dongle takes the keycodes from your keyboard, runs them through QMK, and everything works like your keyboard had QMK to begin with.

This is probably the route I'd go for a wireless board. I'd likely choose a keyboard that really has the wireless part down (Logitech is a decent option here, I think - the experience with their receiver is better than Bluetooth for input devices in my experience) and then run it through one of those dongles if I really wanted wireless.

> The spec sheet promises a battery life of 10 months (no backlight) - the Keychron K6 is fine - except that the battery life sucks, and it takes 3-4 seconds to wake up from sleep every time.

Turn off sleep. There's a key combo to do it (at least, there was on my model). It has such a small effect on battery life that I have no idea why they default to making it go to sleep like every two minutes of inactivity.

I do sometimes look at my mouse that's also bluetooth and runs on a single AA battery for months, and wonder WTF Keychron's doing wrong with power management. Oh well, at least it can work plugged-in, too. And it was cheap.

> You'd need to be completely, utterly clueless to go to Logitech for a mechanical keyboard. The faintest of Google searches would lead you to established products which are both cheaper and better.

Not clueless, just not someone who would Google around for reviews or care to get the absolute best. They go to Best Buy. This is virtually every adult I know over age 40/50 outside of the industry. They'll roll up to Best Buy for a new keyboard, see this and think "cool! Some new type of thing!"

A household brand name like Logitech is significant. They've been making mice almost as long as I've had a computer. This is extremely important to anyone who's been around long enough to have ventured into trying alternatives and eventually come back to the big names for consistency, warranty, return-ability.

> This is virtually every adult I know over age 40/50 outside of the industry.

Or even a lot of people in their 20s and 30s inside the [programming/IT?] industry.

Some people are fine spending 20% of the time to get 80% of the features and are willing to spend a bit more money to do so.

Yep, I'm in that bunch now. I used to be intense into research and DIY.

BUT now I've got more money than time.

So if it comes to my door in 2 days and/or can just be returned.. I don't flinch at $50- 100 premiums.

I like this one that seems similar to the logitech "mini" one. https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-k3-wireless-mecha...

It's low profile, has replaceable switches, can use a cable or bluetooth, is a fair price and has worked really well.

Have they improved the keycaps on the K3 since launch? I had one at launch and ended up returning it because the keycaps were so poor. Very rough with lots of imperfections.

I have the revised K3 and the keycaps don’t have any quality issues. You should be good to reorder.

Thanks! I actually did like the keyboard, but the keycaps were unbearable bad and I went back to my Magic Keyboard (which I don't mind at all, really; I just know I can do better and would like to explore a bit)

I've found it worth buying a set of keycaps that I know I like. Even amongst keycaps made of the same plastic (PBT), they don't always feel the same. And in my experience, the keycaps make as much or more of a difference in feeling as the switches themselves.

Specifically, I bought a set of the Granite DSA keycaps several years ago and always use them on my primary keyboard.

The problem with the linked keyboard, the K3, is it's ultra low profile. At least at launch, there were no alternatives on the market except the ones that it came with. The keycaps are thinner than my phone and I remember trying different keycaps and I think they worked (maybe upside down?), but not well.

I have this and it’s nice except I would much rather have a dongle the bluetooth.

I haven’t found any wireless mechanical keyboards with a dongle until this Logitech one.

I have one of those, but the wireless doesn't work well for me (shuts off after about 5-10 minutes, takes a few seconds to turn on again, and runs down the battery in less than a week), and the it defaults to a really crazy looking moving backlight scheme.

On the other hand, I have a wireless logitech with a little trackpad I use for controlling my PC from my couch that's been on the same set of AAA batteries for over a year. So a proper mechanical logitech with a wireless dongle is sort of appealing to me.

Wow - that’s only half the price!

What’s the battery life like, and how fast is the wake up time? (I’m a Mac user in case it matters. )

Honestly I just use it wired and it looks like others are not impressed with the Bluetooth. Maybe one of them will chime in.

I've been using a similar one as well. Specifically, the RK68 Pro.

The Bluetooth is... okay. It takes a few seconds to wake up, but it doesn't turn off for about 30 minutes. Battery life has been fine with BT 5.0. I want to say somewhere in the range of a couple weeks? All with backlighting disabled.

USB wireless is a bit of a joke, honestly. I've had it lose signal even just a foot or so away with absolutely nothing (except air) between the dongle and keyboard. I have to have the dongle at about 8" or less to maintain a reliable connection.

Overall, I'd say the keyboard is fantastic for the money. I'm truly wowed by the mechanical keyboards you can get for comparatively very cheap prices these days.

That being said, I still generally trust a company like Logitech to get Bluetooth and RF USB to be less flakey. Sure, other smaller companies get it right too, but I've had to do way more experimentation and messing around in order to find that.

Though if you can do with a wired keyboard, then I wouldn't bother with the Logitech, personally.

I'm a big fan of the Logitech Triathlon keyboards and mice (which this one seems to be among).

I use a Kinesis Advantage and USB/DP KVM on my desk, but have switched my spouse and my basement computers over to the Triathlon keyboards and mice (which support hotkey switching among three computers, including mixed Bluetooth and multi-device USB dongle connections). My spouse switches between her work laptop and Macbook without fussing with cables or a KVM and is quite happy with it.

(I bought much cheaper M720 and K850/K780 keyboards on Ebay, but the underlying convention/functionality seems the same and is really slick/cheap for multi-computer usage.)

> You can get a cheaper no-fuss mechanical keyboard from reputable brands with respectable components for far less than this logitech keyboard is being sold.

This actually looks decently low-profile, what are similar reputable brand keyboards that are equal to or less than the height of this keyboard?

How many layouts do they have besides en_US?

> How many layouts do they have besides en_US?

Beats me. I do not represent the brand.

I guess worst case scenario you're a keycap set away from any keyboard layout you wish to have.

No, you cannot convert an ANSI keyboard to an ISO layout. Which is a pity, as many nice keyboards are ANSI only.

> No, you cannot convert an ANSI keyboard to an ISO layout.

A cursory search on Google returned plenty of search hits on how to convert keyboards between ANSI and ISO.

Also, apparently there are ANSI+ISO keycap sets on the market.

Anyway, I don't have a dog in the race. Anyone who is on the market for a 150$ keyboard will surely be able to Google stuff that suits their fancy.

Sorry, can you be helpful and point me to a link which shows how to do this for any given keyboard? For example, you would have to replace the left shift key with 2 separate keys, how should that work?

I don't think you can do that on most boards. The switches and stabilizers are very different between layouts. I can't imagine how would that work outside of re-soldering some switches and reassembling the board, if the PCB allows.

I think the same, you would need a different positioning of the switches on most keyboards. But as the poster I answered to was claiming you could convert them, I was curious, what he was thinking of :)

You realize ISO is physically different, like, there is one more physical key and enter is 2U high (not wide, high)? Unless the PCB was designed with that conversion in mind there's no way that's going to be possible.

> You realize ISO is physically different, like, (...)

That is only relevant as far as picking keycap sets go.

As I've pointed out, there are plenty of ANSI+ISO sets on the market.

Beyond this point, the relevance is zero.

It's a non-issue.

You've been provided answers of how this is not the case.

Observe this image of ANSI vs ISO layouts: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

Let's say I have an ANSI keybord, and I buy a set of ISO keycaps?

First of all, the enter and shift keys are not going to fit, so let's reuse the keycaps from the ANSI ones. Now we do put in all the keys and... my #/~ key is left over. There is no switch on the keyboard to mount the keycap to. ANSI keyboards do not have the same amount of keys.

Not to mention my \| is not in the right place - the ANSI shift key covers it's proper location, so guess I'm putting an undersized keycap on the top of enter. No amount of rebinding is going to let me have the left half of left shift do one thing and the right half do another.

These ANSI/ISO keycap packs you're thinking of are not indicating they will let you convert one keyboard to another. They just mean they include both shapes of enter keys, both sizes of left shift and \|, and a #~ key which doesn't exist for ANSI keyboards.

>I guess worst case scenario you're a keycap set away from any keyboard layout you wish to have.

I'm not aware of any main Logitech keyboards that support changing the keycaps. I couldn't even find replacement keycap sets for my board when I looked a year ago.

I find it apalling even Apple offers more keyboard layouts than a company focused entirely on peripherials. It's insulting honestly.

Believe or not, Apple offers a lot of keyboard layouts when compared to most computer companies.

Basically the reason why even if I'm willing to do my research on mechanical keyboards, I will still end up with a Logitech or some big brand one.

I got a random mechanical keyboard for $50 on an eBay auction. It is a Logitech keyboard and it is terrible, probably the worst keyboard I have ever used. It lasted less than a year before button pressed started registering twice or not at all.

Now Amazon offers many non famous brand (likely rebranded Chinese OEM) products and find good one from there is nightmare. Some consumer may stick familiar brand like Logitech or Corsair.

I think that they don’t need to know or research or ask about other brands is the point. It’s like you know that Monster Cables will be sufficient.

That said why would such a person want a mechanical keyboard but not want to out in the effort to learn about them? I’m guessing it’s for dabblers or people who’ve heard of mechanical keyboards and it’s more an impulse buy than an investment.

(I’ve tuned my own springs by finger so that’s where I stand personally)

In my case, for the G710+ case especially, I did my research, understood what I want, did additional research and pulled the trigger.

Being happy with what I've ended with, I didn't dive deeper into that rabbit hole, because I have more important things to do than tweaking keyboards.

I'm like that. Do my research, pull the trigger once, consider the problem solved and move on.

Having many hats and ambitions limits one's time considerably. I for one only have tonight to be at home at dinner time, incl the weekend.

Sorry for not being able to live up to your standards in the mechanical keyboard realm, however being a sysadmin and programmer, I think I can want a dependable and semi-decent mechanical keyboard. Considering I've grown up with some of them. If you permit, of course.

You are not the target market. There are not enough people like you to justify a product. If you like the keyboard great, but who is their target? People who have heard of “mechanical = good” and know the Logitech brand. It’s just a weird niche compared to many more people who come into mechanical keyboards from the hobbyist tinkerer side of things.

> There are not enough people like you to justify a product. If you like the keyboard great, but who is their target? People who have heard of “mechanical = good” and know the Logitech brand.

I bet this category easily outnumbers all massdrop hypebeasts or Cherry switch sommeliers out there.

In the same way that middle-upper class men who want a nice pair of headphones, vaguely remember that "high impedance = good" and know the Sennheiser brand easily outnumber audiophiles.

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