askchapo

for my own reasons I am not interested in split kbs.

i have always ended up buying keychron devices. i have 3 of them. I bought them about a year apart and I always looked at other brands but for the money i had available they are the best. All are hotswap. 2 are QMK programmable. keychron usually has a sale around "black friday" on their website. i don't think they have 2.4g wireless which sucks. their bluetooth is not known to be reliable. but they are solid and reliable and stand up to being taken apart and put back together. they are available in a wide variety of configurations. and they are popular which always increases your chance of being able to solve a problem.

I almost bought an ajazz a couple times. and there are a couple of other aliexpress brands that make barebones devices, they have good feedback online. if i needed another one i might buy one of those.

I also bought a couple of more expensive ones on amazon just to try them out and returned them. Not worth 2x 3x the price.

There are now some very cheap hot swap kbs on amazon and I bought 1 to see if it would be good. The case was designed in a very shitty way. extremely echoey and uncomfortable. The switches were so flimsy about 1/3 of them broke while I was removing them. and i now realize how much I like having the detachable usb-c cable instead of built-in.

if you are going to do hotswap I recommend spending a few dollars to get a tool like this instead of using the tool the switches come with:

I do not game at all. The best switches for me are white boxes (i think gatreon) but they are a bit noisy. not as noisy as regular blue switches. they feel perfect t type on. I got a couple of quieter ones that still feel nice the names I don't remember I can find out if you want. it's worth while to get a set of basic testing switches just so you can see the difference in the colors, so when you read online you will have a point of reference. maybe someone you know already has a set they can lend to you. i gave mine away already.

I think tkl is the best layout. I can't stand the more compact layouts but they are very popular and they is a lot more choice (and lower price) if you are able to cope with a tiny hidden shift key. i probably wouldn't have all keychron if i wasn't tied to tkl.

I don't lube or disassemble switches or do anything else to my kbs except on one of them i did pack a bunch of foam into it which was worthwhile.

each of the following increases the price and limits the selection: qmk, larger layout, wireless, backlight, backlight that isn't extremely annoying. only get those features you want.

if you don't need backlight don't get one with backlight because it is usually easy to activate by accident and then your kb is flashing it is very annoying. on my non-qmk kb i had to remove the switch that activates the backlight but once in a while it somehow turns itself on and then you have to put the switch back in to disable it. plain white backlight is the only kind that makes sense to my mind. i was disappointed that I couldn't manage to program the rgb lights to be plain white; turning all the colors up to max doesn't actually produce white.

i really like mechanical kbs. they are like shoes for your hands if you work at a computer. but i find the online stuff about "the hobby" kind of sad. but you can make use of these people who apparently have infinite money because they are extremely prolific.

edit: also for anyone who is concerned about spending so money on a kb then spilling fluids on it. i was worried about it because i am incurably careless. i have spilled many drinks on my kbs and all have survived. because the hotswap ones can be taken apart you can actually properly dry/clean them unlike a regular kb. so you don't end up with one key that has something sticky in it and the whole thing has to be tossed. which has been the demise of every other kb i ever owned. occasionally you have to replace a switch or two.