I’ve been looking to move on from membrane keyboards and go mechanical, but no matter where I look literally every mech has some form of obnoxious RGB lighting on it. Are there any that just… don’t have it?
I’ve been looking to move on from membrane keyboards and go mechanical, but no matter where I look literally every mech has some form of obnoxious RGB lighting on it. Are there any that just… don’t have it?
TL;DR: Check out the KeyChron K3 V2 Non-Backlight edition. Decent quality, inexpensive, no lights, and no knowledge required.
ZSA make good stuff, sell it at reasonable prices, provide incredible support, and give a shit about artists/humans/the world. Any time mechanical keyboards are mentioned I feel compelled to inject their name into the conversation. I’ve owned a Moonlander for a while now and I have nothing but good things to say about it. I’d recommend the ZSA Voyager for someone checking out not shitty keyboards for the first time.
With that out of the way: it’s tough to find a lightless mech keyboard these days because backlights make sense and, so long as you’re putting lights behind keycaps, you might as well use full color range LEDs and let the user set a low brightness white color or turn them off if they don’t care for it. Some companies make non-backlight versions (KeyChron’s K series for instance) but they’re a rarity. Why produce and stock inventory that’s not moving?
I recommend doing some research on how mechanical keyboards are built (watch a 10 minute video on the internet) and then using RTINGS’ keyboard table for some comparison shopping. You’re looking for a well rated keyboard with hot swappable PCBs designed to accommodate south-facing LEDs (they point down - less bright). One of the advantages of going mechanical is customization. Don’t want the LEDs at all? Remove them from your build. Even without PCB hot swapping: no one will stop you desoldering LEDs from your keyboard.
Building out something like a Gem80 from NuPhy or a 60HE from Wooting will net you a high quality mechanical keyboard that won’t get in your way but is customizable enough for you to avoid RGB-induced eye sores.
Yeah OP if you want to live the ultra elite mech keyboard life you should be totally fine with just buying something and spending a ton of time desoldering a crap load of tiny components off of it. That’s the best part about mechanical keyboards, is spending hundreds of dollars on them and then also needing to invest in a bunch of soldering gear and time to make sure you can skillfully enough disassemble electronics at the component level to not damage your newly purchased expensive device.
Uh oh. Was someone grumpyyyyy? Poor thing. Thanks so much for taking the time to leave such an insightful and well considered contribution to the discussion. Invaluable stuff.