I took a break from mechanical keyboards because I had a keyboard I was happy with. Now I need another for a second desk and it seems like all the keyboards people recommend now are fully pre-built.
This doesn’t make sense to me, I really like the ability to chose my switches and keycaps (especially my keycaps). I don’t see why you would get a keyboard that already has these when the first thing your going to do is replace them.
I think a big thing is that good prebuilts are now readily available: hot swap, foam layers, PCB stabilizers, CNC aluminum cases, a mounting system more sophisticated than tray mount, decent firmware (often properly released QMK/VIA, but at least VIA), and fun features like lighting or encoders. A late as 2022, this would have been a wish list on an interest check for a $400+ kit; now it’s a baseline to charge three digits for a prebuilt MX board.
There are still many group buys going on at the high end (geek hack basically exists as an IC/GB publishing platform at this point), and a lot of boards are available bare bones, but when a newbie comes along for a recommendation, no one has to feel bad recommending some pre-built that would make a Pok3r look like a joke as a value proposition.
Haven’t been really into the scene much in a few years, but this seems to track.
Over the years I’ve built several kits, and a couple of partial / fully custom boards (including one hand wired), but my current daily driver is a Keychron, and I’m super happy with it: Between the build quality, case and switch options, QMK, hot swap, backlighting, etc, I really haven’t missed my older boards (although I still want to build a split 1800ish layout someday), and I’m sure I’ll dump more money into caps at some point.