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.
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Big keyboard sales apocalypse happened and there no longer the volume of GB buys to make most of them profitable, took out a bunch of GB runners (as did exit scams) and a whole bunch of stores. Any gap filled in at the bottom and middle by better quality prebuilts.
Come to 40%s, we still have plenty of GBs, plenty of innovation with layouts and mounts.
I am very interested in 40s. I’ve been looking at the Epomaker th40 since group buy options still seam too expensive to me. I just so happen to like the keycaps and switches so I won’t feel the need to replace them as well, I’m especially glad about not having to replace the keycaps. I don’t understand how keycaps can be so much more expensive than switches despite being much simpler in design.
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.
If you are in europe, check out 42keebs.eu
But yes, it’s much more difficult to find kits nowadays
Also Falba.tech is stilll chugging along with beautiful bamboo and beech cases.
That is my daily driver (ergodash) with some subtle keycaps. Great so far except that it is still microUSB because at the time I didn’t want to shell out 30€ extra for the pro micro USBC version
Not close to the space … but I think I noticed this too.
I’d guess a dynamic is that things went a bit mainstream which focused things on pre-built products.
I’ve certainly gathered that younger types on TikTok are into “thocky” sounding keyboards and the general aesthetic aspect of the experience … not so much the DIY & customisation aspect.
