I think I get it now. I like it when people come and visit while they've doing a shot because it makes LTT feel more 'alive'. It's more like a real work space, where if you're doing something cool, people wander over and want to check out what's going on. Of course it's also that you get perspectives that you'd normally not see about a product, such as when Mr. Horst provides an opinion. I think it's great that LTT has gotten big enough where these kinds of things can happen organically.
@@emptywig Ha, yeah. I've commented to this effect before, but just mentioned that "I thought it was cool". While watching this video, I had this little eureka moment and the 'why' seemed to crystallize for me. I then felt the need to comment and share :)
LTT start their work in the kitchen in the real home back then, and they still keeping this kind of homy feeling in their current video. really appreciate it
Thanks for featuring AM AFA! Just would like to add that you can further increase the hardness through AM AFA's 18 different typing combos. Aside from adjusting the 3 gears from soft to hard, rebound stiffness can be adjusted by switching between the two different leaf-spring materials: phosphorus copper and stainless steel. In addition, conventional adjustment solutions, such as two sets of adjustment pads and an additional set of bottom pads, are also provided for mixing and matching. * You can choose between three (0/1/3) pad hardness options. The firmest feel can be achieved through adding all the pads. Removing all the pads results in the softest feel and touch.
YES, THE 'B' KEY IS ON BOTH SIDES! That alone is worth the price tag! [EDIT: Apparently that's standard for the "Alice Layout," so I've now found my perfect split keyboard layout] SO many split keyboard layouts just assume you type 'B' with your left hand, which makes us right-hand-B-typists very nervous when typing the word "bigger." ALL split keyboards should have the 'B' key on both sides!
The double B on split only works with staggered row like Alice. When you go ortho, putting an extra B key on the right doesn't make sense (and you probably don't type B with right hand if you familiar with ortho anyway). This is because on staggered row, the B key is in the middle of both hand, but on ortho, it is on the left side.
Hotswap is to allow for a board to be built without the need to solder, or buy the tools to solder. It should be the norm to fully disassemble the board to replace switches. It is a REALLY good idea to support the hot swap socket on the back of the PCB when you insert switches to prevent a switches being inserted with a bent pin from ripping off the socket.
Yeah it is definitely ridiculous for him to say that you'd have to take apart the board to swap switches. It really looks bad when the 'keyboard guy' at LTT makes things like this appear different than they actually are, as channel is many peoples first introduction to high-end keebs.
Reviewing some notebook: “omg that keyboard has so much flex oof so bad” Reviewing some strange expensive keyboard: “omg that keyboard has so much flex oof so cool”
Just like the rest of the crew gets to show us some of the crazier top end stuff from other genres of tech I'm so glad we get to see stuff from the keyboard community as well. This board def seemed to live up to it's premium price providing unique build, engineering, and aesthetics.
Plouffe has taught me a lot about keyboards, and I feel like I'm a better consumer for it. Not sure if I'm ready to make my own, but I don't feel the idea is stupid anymore
my next keyboard is going to be hand built by me, and be hot swappable on everything just in case. I dont really like most keyboards that are prebuilt, and I dont like alot of their 'features' so I would rather just build it all myself.
@@MostafaElSakari to an extent its cool/usefull, anything more than a standard form factor hotswap keyboard is stupid. most of these keyboards don't even have software, I was supprised this one did, I have personally wasted lots of time looking and trying these things, I ended up using the nzxt function keyboard over the dozens I have, it just works and has usable software. lots of people buy those stupid curly cables, stress over the foam inserts they put between the PCB and the case, some even refuse to use hotswap and solder the switch AND led in
I thought the flex would be take a screw out of the bottom (old setting) and screw it into another. Seeing that it was a total disassemble to move a thing seems too hard.
If that price is for the entire thing that doesn't seem as outrageous as a lot of people in this 'hobby' seem to spend on a single piece of nonsense alone. Materials seems pretty premium, the sound seems pretty darn nice. Yeah it's expensive but considering the small run it must be + some actual R&D going into it... I'd say that price actually seems surprisingly decent. Especially when you have Corsair and Razer charging $250 for much less adventurous keyboards that use cheaper materials and massively increased scale of economy. (And corsair is still to cheap to put some foam in their keyboards!)
back in my days keyboard flex was a bad thing and we went out of our way to mount the switches through solid plates of steel , now people pay extra to have foam or extra springs :D
To be fair, while the board in my keyboard is floating on gaskets and wrapped in foam, it's also got a solid metal plate across it lol flex is bad, cushioning the whole plate is pretty nice (but usually expensive and not at all necessary)
@@helplmchoking but that cushioning is a weird solution to whatever it improves, how about putting the whole keyboard on a soft mat instead? :D or why don't we simply make softer-bottoming switches ( silent cherry style?)
@@nickiebanchou that works too. It's mainly to reduce hollow or rattly noises, that kinda tapping sound. I'm not an expert, there are people way more into this stuff than I am, but it does mute a lot of the higher sounding sounds. You definitely don't want the board flexing imo, just damping vibrations
With every Plouff custom keyboard video I care less and less about custom keyboards. Keep putting him in the thumbnail though, it makes it easy to know what videos aren't worth watching.
IF you're going to go that premium and split everything you might as well go all the way and make it an adjustable hinged layout so you can get your angle just right. I get that it's batteries and Qi-charger blocking that but just use two smaller batteries and hinge those too.
Seems to me you could just have a couple set screws (with rubber pad on the end) coming up from the bottom that you could tighten to come up against the bottom of the leaf spring. Same adjustment, no disassembly required.
If you’re not already fully into the keyboard game, I would not recommend this board. However, that is not to say that it might be a perfect daily driver for some, unfortunately its nigh on impossible to get straight to your endgame on a first board. I would strongly recommend considering the QK75 if youre looking to dip your foot into the keyboard hobby. Thank you for reviewing custom keyboard products LTT. :)😊
That's a really nice layout, it took me a while to get used to a split layout when I used one years ago but you do get used to it fast. I'd consider one of these but the design is a bit much, you know it'll be mad expensive, and they look sold out. But the biggest thing for me is I've gotten really used to low profile mech keys going from Keychron's optical low profile switches (which I remain unsure of, I think it's their crappy ABS caps that let it down) and now my main NuPhy Air75, which was more pricey but the keycaps are great which mattters since there are so few options, and it has standard red low profiles. I'd never be the one to spend like $300+ on a keyboard like some people will do (I know, at that level you're more supporting independent artists than buying a tool) but if you work or spend a lot of time using a computer every day, it's worth making sure your tools feel great to use. Maybe that's a wild split mech board, maybe it's a super slim Apple keyboard, but don't settle for the $20 garbage offices have stacked in the back room. They suck
If you want an alice style board (like the one in the video) with low profile switches and arent afraid of soldering it yourself, you could look into sesame 60 ergo or basketweave s ergo and some redragon lowprofile mx switches. All of those components go for relatively cheap
Hey wait that's Arisu, not Alice. Arisu has arrows, Alice is 60%. Not gonna lie, though. I'm kinda eyeing that Dark Night colorway. I don't love RGB, but a set of GMK Dark keycaps on that would look so good. Already love AVA, too, so that layout with BLE would be kinda dope.
well, technically the VF-19 wasn't in the Robotech series, but I get what you mean 😌 I was honestly surprised when I saw the VF-19 color scheme, and thought "is it actually inspired by the YF-19 valkyrie from Macross or just a weird coincident?"
So, it's not cool when a keyboard flexes because it feels mushy, but it is ok to intentionally flex the whole assembly? These keyboard people is just nuts...
Horst really annoys the shit outta me lol. The way he just walks into the video to poke things and then walk off. Plouffe is great though. Super down to earth
This is definitely a way to get into the alice style keyboard, a very expensive way but at least it's a way someone can get into it without any custom keyboard knowledge. You can definitely get into ergo boards a lot cheaper, but it doesn't get much easier than plug and play.
The price isn't *that* outrageous for a small batch custom job like this, in the custom keyboard world at least it wouldn't be out of place in the $1000+ ballpark. It's an expensive hobby with very little economy of scale, prices get very high very fast.
If I was rich or even middle class I would buy this board just for the beauty of it and the uniqueness. It's definitely the most pretty board I've ever set my eyes on, making my tofu65 2.0 look like a dollar general board from behind the check out counter.
LOVE Alice layouts. Got one r/n from SneakBox keyboards and I love it - but due to being overseas, I had to pay around $550 for it with the shipping and over $100 in import fees. But if you're in the U.S. or Canada it'd be a great mid-range option.
this kind of videos is why i wish there were more in-location Mecanical Keyboard shops that being said this board seems very counter-intuitive to simply adjust, & while one only adjusts it once, it's still silly you have to take apart the whole thing just to make sure is the flex you want
I have no idea what this costs them but including all the extra parts, having a unique mounting system, fully custom parts across the board, etc. They seem to be throwing everything they can in to make the price hurt less.
Are we not going to talk about the elephant in the room? It really sounds like you're typing on a marble stone keyboard, does it feel solid? This typing sound, really is something else
Seems strange that on laptops the goal is always zero deck flex and 100% rigidity, but here the main selling point is that it has significant flex and that having flex is desirable.
Ohhhh that thing sounds so good. -edit- Of course, short circuit again super late releasing their review. This thing has been sold out for *months*. Yet another impossible to acquire keyboard, oh well.
you know someone is a professional tech reviewer when they complain about packaging. like who could possibly care about a little piece of plastic except someone who deals with packaging every day
I'm really glad I can type and play games using just about any kind of keyboard so I never feel like I need to buy a keyboard that costs hundreds of dollars.
You know, this form factor could be nice for a fighting game button box. But I guess that would come at the cost of being able to hit the jump button with either thumb.
No there's a space bar on either side all ergonomic keyboards have space bars you can hit with both thumbs otherwise it's useless ergonomically because you can't balance hitting the button between thumbs
I am a little confused at flexible keyboards. Like, when a laptop has a keyboard that's flexible, it is considered bad, as in under-engineered. But on mech keyboards, people are willing to pay extra for an over-engineered system that achieves the same thing? It is kinda wild that we have double standards for a phenomenon that affects the same piece of equipment depending on whether it is a full pc or a separate piece of hardware.
It's a sick board and something I'm interested in as I'm typing on my Dygma Raise currently. It's hard to imagine going back to a non-ergo style keyboard after using the Raise and Microsoft Sculpt ergo keyboard. It's great to see more ergo boards than ever nowadays!
I love these keyboard stuff even though I'm not into them myself I still enjoy learning more 'niche' stuff. Also Plouffe you could try taking a look at wooting keyboard's lekker switches. They seem kinda unique and interesting it would be nice to have a review on the keyboard maybe.
I like that they included wrist skates. I know they're seen as an atypical wrist rest, but they honestly become something you can't live without after using them at a kitted out workstation. If you've ever had multiple peripherals, you'll quickly understand their usefulness. My production setup is a macropad, a space mouse, a 60%, a pointing device (I occasionally switch between a mouse and a trackball depending on how I'm feeling, I might add a trackpad into rotation), and a second macropad that spends most of its time as a numpad with a navigation cluster. Rather than having a wrist rest for each of them, using wrist skates is so much easier and provides less clutter, plus it requires less effort to just horizontally slide your wrists, rather than constantly pick them up and set them down when you move to a different peripheral; though I assume if you have _very_ thin peripherals and a plushy deskmat, this could suffice as an alternative. Personally, I don't understand the wireless charger on this. If you need a charger at all, wired or wireless, you're going to have a cable on standby anyways, and a wireless charger here would just add a charging pad on standby as well. It also looks as if the pad, unless you want to constantly plug and unplug it, only has access via the sides. Unless you have a deskmat that has full-array wireless, like some mousepads do, or you have a powerful enough charger mounted under the desk surface, I don't see the point; and even then you're using a vastly more inefficient method of wireless charging, full array, unless assisted by processing and detection (which I don't believe any consumer product is currently using), loses efficiency across the full array, and under-surface chargers lose efficiency due to needing penetration. So again, what's the point? It seems like a throwaway feature to increase cost, a coil module that costs pennies being marked up to justify the pricetag for some people; the whole 'wireless charging is a premium' mentality. I also don't understand the leafspring at all. It's just glorified board flex. I can understand it if you have a heavy hand and are absolutely bashing keyswitches, but don't necessarily want a heavier actuation spring; but at the same time, keyswitches should be offering dual-rate springs for this exact type of person, or at least offer an extremely non-linear spring where the weight shoots up before bottoming out. Which leads into why I actually don't understand the leaf spring design, the dual-rate implementation, the leaf spring really only works for a specific keyswitch weight, a lighter or heavier keyswitch will modify how the leaf spring is intended to work. Unless the leaf spring is meant to be stiff enough where the key fully bottoms out far before the leaf actuates, but then that's just horrendous design from an engineering perspective. It's just an odd system that doesn't make sense on one hand and doesn't make sense on the other hand, and fits a niche that has better hypothetical alternatives, though those alternatives are fairly custom within the current market. I would also imagine, depending on actual implementation, that this design style could also make a mech switch feel like a membrane, of which we already have mech-membrane switches from various vendors, so again there's already some alternatives on one side of the coin, while the other has hypothetical custom alternatives. Again, like the wireless charger, where does this ultimately make sense? Again, is it a weird implementation just to spike the price where most people buying into this will just see it as a 'premium' feature without additional logical thought? Again, this is for the niche market where you need day-long typing endurance _and_ for someone with a heavy hand, but a proper non-linear spring or dual-rate spring within the switch itself would fix this, or moving to a membrane where everything is squishy and gives (there's a reason why membranes are found throughout offices, and cost isn't the only factor), this specific keyboard really has no place for the niche it seeks to fill because it's going about its implementation improperly, and at a very expensive cost. "There needs to be a fourth option where there's basically zero flex and then I would see some value in it, but as for right now I just don't like the leaf spring," accurately points out the issues I'm describing, bad implementation of a dual-rate system, as a proper dual-rate, or again even a non-linear spring that gets weightier after actuation without bottoming out, would be so much better than this keyboard. To further the previous, this thing looks like a pain in the ass to deal with. Not just from an adjustability perspective, but from manufacturability. Such a large bill of materials, such a complex assembly process, and for what? There's better ways of doing exactly this, don't let the poor design fool you, but again just _why_ when there's much better alternatives? The price could easily be half to a third, possibly even less, if they just cut the bullshit and use a proper implementation of the concept, most of that savings coming directly from cutting down bill of materials and manufacturing processes. At the end of the day, this is just an overpriced gimmick product. Sure, the basis of it might be nice, but the selling point makes it a gimmick. I also don't care for the layout all that much. But this is a complaint about a lot of layouts, so I won't really get into layouts specifically. But I will say the left hand left side nav+del column is a bit odd, especially with its spacing, nav should be a right hand pinky column, where the left pinky gets a macro column. Similarly, I don't care for the space row, modifiers on the left, fn and arrows on the right, with a distant right shift just is not a good layout at all, plus the open space (though I understand this, an odd shaped key would be needed) is lackluster. The layout, while a complete alpha cluster, just doesn't live up to fuller potential, and this keyboard in particular doesn't, especially within its own footprint. There could be more, but there isn't. Though I do somewhat like the center module idea. Though for other reasons. Imagine using this as a proper monitor for wireless split layouts, individual battery monitors, moving on/off LEDs such as num and caps locks to this module, other possibilities could be adding additional modules (circling back to main keyboard with additional pads, as stated earlier), etc. You could probably also throw in other wireless peripherals into this ecosystem, pointing devices, audio, controllers, etc., and make this module a one-wire wireless hub for everything. Imagine also being able to store all of your profiles on it as well, QMK profiles per device, audio setups, individual controller mappings (big plus if Steam Input API had a lower-level integration with it) per individual controller, etc. One could build an entire open ecosystem around a central module and offload so much work from the host system, not to mention it'd all be fairly simplistic and streamlined as well, and all it does is sit under your monitor and acts as a peripheral control center; but not just this, say you upgrade to a new system entirely, or you move a setup between a home and work environment, etc., because everything within the peripheral ecosystem functions off the module, and the module keeps all profiles on-board, you can just take the module with you and not have to do additional setup on other systems.
Can someone explain why the leaf spring thing is desirable? They always insist that laptop deck flex is bad and that it makes typing uncomfortable, this just seems like deck flex with extra steps.
Ya know, I was thinking, "Huh, that's kind of like the VF-19's wings. The orange is odd though." Seeing their inspiration was the VF-19 though, funny stuff. >) But yeah, hard pass on this keyboard. Price is absurd for a keyboard, but that aside, disassembly of the keyboard looks like a huge pain in the ass. Having to completely unscrew it to replace the leaf springs is unrealistic if it's a key feature. It should be the easiest thing to do, like swapping weights into/out of a mouse. I'm happier to hand wire my own keyboard for under $100, including 3D printing my own shell and key matrix (3D printer not included in price, I got it for other projects).
