Post your keyboards, ask for building tips, model tips, switch types tips.
Please keep the knives out of reach and remember all is a matter of opinion, no matter how wrong you are when you say linear switches are the best. 
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After a long time sweating to decide what kind of desk layout I wanted, I ended up buying the GMMK3 customized to my taste during the christmas discount season.
Glorious has a silly history behind, but the products are serious quality and they care about aftermarket support. Also I wanted a ājapanese styleā - serious and unassuming on the outside, gaudy on the inside - and I liked that you could choose a back color.
The keyboard feels solid, and the tactile switches I ordered with are just the right amount of noisy, while providing just enough feedback to know that you pressed the key without having to feel like lifting weights with your fingers (like my beloved IBM keyboard).
The lights are configurable, as most of the keyboard itself, but the software sadly is windows only. Once configured, you donāt need to keep the software installed.
Planning to have the keys replaced with something classic, but still deciding on the color scheme:
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DSI mac keyboard. It has cherry red switches. It also has flaws
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I never understood the appeal of 60% / Tenkeyless keyboards.
Is a matter of desktop space? Or to have the mouse closer to the reach?
This DSI has an industrial aesthetic that appeals to me but at the same time, i feel the borders are a bit too big? Was it meant for a specific environment?
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I think its meant for an industrial or commercial environment-- the keyboard is bulky and doenāt really lie flush against my desk
Flaws-- the arrow keys canāt be held down to repeat USB - hub is usb-2.0, not superspeed-- otherwise it would be a good place for flash drives. I donāt use a 2.6 GHz mouse, so the electronic noise issue wouldnāt be a problem.
I donāt like numpads. The one thing I do miss is a pause button, which is useful in some games. Luckily I have a stream deck for that. (Interestingly, the stream deck is useful in all sorts of games, but since a āsteam deckā also exists, Google is useless for finding many game related streamdeck macro sets.)
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Also, regarding my other project. I have 3 Model M Keyboards in different conservation status (one has only minor cosmetic flaws, another someone managed to hit a key hard enough that it needs replacement and one in between) and I am thinking of bringing them (screaming) to the modern era.
I looked up if there was an option, but most controllers used old, difficult to source parts, and either custom firmware or expected you to code your own (only provided plans for the board). So I made one from scratch using an RP2040 (that is absolutely overpowered for this task) and QMK. The idea is that I can use this as a direct drop-in replacement and should workā¦ but also I can use the expansion header to put some kind of expansion (my plan would be over the old leds). Having I2C plus 4 GPIOS it can be something as gaudy as a wheel and display or multicolored leds orā¦ well, sky is the limit.
Boards arrive in a couple weeks. Letās hope I donāt find many bugs. Great thing is that the cost is really not that high, about 10$ per board.
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makes sense. One of the things I liked about the keyboard I bought is that you can completely change the layout if you want, so I could have a sort of āstream deck liteā on the numpad if I wanted (I would just need to get some custom keys or just use the ones that have little plastic windows and you can put a paper below).
But obviously you would still have a keypad attached to the keyboard.
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Ah, but then you donāt get the graphics that change with every program switch-- Abbyy Finereader needs a completely different set than CorelCAD.
Most used buttons are zoom in and zoom out. Seems a might bit expensive for that, but right now, my arm is in a sling-- and my typing skills are abysmal.
Also one touch screencaps are nice when you are trying to scrape a ebook site.
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I could (have different shortcuts, not graphics)ā¦ if I used windows. The GMMK3 keyboard software is application aware and can switch your profile on the fly. But yeah, I would not have nice icons 
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My previous keyboard was a 1st gen GMMK TKL, I loved it. The usb port started to fail, though, so I picked up a Keychron V3 with blue switches this year. I lurv it, too. Went with TKL again, as I have a separate number pad that I like and is going strong. Left hand trackball is from Clearly Superior Technologies, right hand is a Logitech MX Ergo (two trackballs ended up being the thing that helped me the most with RSI at one desk, and Iāve stuck with it).
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I am clumsy, mostly type 1-handed, and struggle to type 2-handed. I much prefer a compact keyboard, so I donāt have to reach too far to the left, with nav keys, so I donāt have to scroll so much.
I often use a Periboard 609B, and sometimes a Periboard 409B-Ru.
I used to have an Adesso keyboard, but it gradually broke down.
I tried others, but without the easy-to-use nav keys, theyāre that much harder to use. I kow people often say that nav keys aremāt necessary, since you can just combine function keys with arrow keys, but theyāre too far to reach, and arenāt compatible with sticky keys.
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Here goes:
Iām pretty late to the Mechanical keyboard space, having used either whatever keyboard that came with a given PC, or used various wireless keyboard and mouse combos over the years. The first mechanical keyboard I got was an original GMMK.
Itās a 100% layout board with brown-style (Gateron Brown) switches
Pros:
- It was relatively inexpensive. (~$123)
- $60 for the board
- $28 for the key caps
- $35 for the switches
- It was available as a kit, and it was surprising easy to assemble, given I had no prior experience with mechanical keyboards.
Cons:
- The key caps, while functional, are not aesthetically pleasing to me.
- They are pudding style, so that the RGBs shine through the legends as well as ~75% of the sides of the caps. It was kind of neat at first, but I mostly just want the light to shine through the legends.
- Of course I can change them, but I never got around to it before I replaced it.
- Limited customization, via their proprietary app.
- Itās pretty bare-bones, as far as the outer case goes.
Other:
- Itās a 100% layout, so itās very familiar to me, but also very space inefficient.
- I actually received this as a birthday gift 2 days before the Pandemic lock-down began (2020-03-12), so I didnāt end up using it for about a year since I took it to the office and didnāt go pick it up for quite a while.
Despite my list of cons above, itās a totally reasonable and comfortable to use board. If I had somewhere else to use it, I would.
My wife and I use lap desks with portable monitors, keyboards, and mice connected to desktop PCs for PC gaming. Her lap desk is smaller than mine, so she actually uses a combo keyboard/touch pad instead of a keyboard and separate mouse. Options for that kind of thing are limited, so she ended up with a more-or-less generic backlit Bluetooth keyboard thatās sold primarily for tablet use. Itās not terrible, but itās not great and because itās connected via Bluetooth, it wonāt wake the PC from sleep. I have searched unsuccessfully over the years for a mechanical keyboard with attached touch pad, or something similar. When I started reading about QMK, I learned that itās capable of emulating a mouse, so I thought Iād give it a try and see if it could be a good solution for her. Long(er) story short, it was not, and thatās how I ended up with a Keychron C1 Pro.
Itās a TKL (80%) layout with brown style (K Pro Brown?) switches.
Hereās what it originally looked like:
My wife likes blue, so I ended up replacing the key caps, so now it looks like this:
They are shine-through, so they actually look better when theyāre lit up.
Pros:
- It was very inexpensive (~$35)
- It is compact, while still retaining most of the key positions from a 100% layout.
- Itās lightweight, without feeling cheap or flimsy.
- It runs the QMK firmware, and is customizable with the Keychron Launcher app or VIA.
Cons:
- It has dedicated lights for Mac and Windows modes, which are largely useless for someone who does not switch between those operating systems. Ditto for the dedicated switch on the back to change between those modes.
- Itās really just layers in QMK. I get it, but it feels like wasted space on an otherwise compact layout. I can just ignore them, so itās fine.
Other:
- I would totally use this as my keyboard for my gaming PC, except that it doesnāt have the ability to set individual key colors depending upon which program/game Iām running.
That brings me to the keyboard I do use for my lap desk/gaming PC, a logitech G PRO Keyboard. It really doesnāt seem to have an easily identifiable model number. Itās a TKL (80%?) layout with blue-style (GX Blue) switches.
Thatās not mine, but I didnāt want to bother with taking a picture, because thereās no real difference anyway.
Pros:
- Every key, plus the logo, indicator lights, and the extra buttons in the upper right can have their color set per-app in the Logitech app.
- It has a dedicated key to turn on/off the RGB, which can be handy.
Cons:
- The Logitech app is kind of bad, and might be getting worse.
- While it wasnāt particularly expensive (~$100), it certainly feels like I paid the gamer tax.
- The legends on the keycaps are not great.
- The font choice certainly says gamer.
- The legends on the number keys are inverted, with the alternate glyphs on the bottom, and are not shine-through.
- I have learned empirically that I and others around me donāt particularly like the clickiness of blue-style switches.
- Unfortunately, these are not easily swappable.
I really only got this to pair with the mouse (G600) I bought at the time, so that I could manage both through a single app and have per-game settings, but itās probably the keyboard I like the least.
Finally, hereās the keyboard I use the most, The Keychron Q5.
Itās a 96% layout with brown-style (Gateron G Pro Brown?) switches.
Hereās what it originally looked like:
Hereās what it looks like after I made a few minor changes:
The thing that immediately bothered me when I started using it was the placement of the del, home, end, pgup, and pgdn keys. The lack of an ins key didnāt really bother me. I ended up rearranging these keys into a more sensible layout, along with the dedicated LED key.
Pros:
- It was relatively inexpensive (~$90)
- It runs the QMK firmware, and is customizable with the Keychron Launcher app or VIA.
- The layout reduces the horizontal footprint somewhat, with fewer compromises than smaller arrangements.
- Itās solid. At 2300g (~5lbs), itās not going anywhere on your desk. It definitely feels premium.
- The key caps are good. They feel comfortable to type on, and the legends are clear and readable.
Cons:
- Itās very heavy. I am surprised every time I pick it up just how heavy it is. Iām not moving it around much, but I wouldnāt want to pack it in a bag along with a laptop.
- I donāt really care for the OSA profile key caps.
- Itās just a personal taste, but I think I prefer squarier key caps.
- The location of the fn key isnāt great.
- Iām used to using that with my left hand, but there are only three keys to the left of the space bar, they are too wide, and I wouldnāt want to swap with them anyway.
- The key caps are not shine-through. The backlights donāt really provide any functional value in the dark. They are replaceable, of course.
Other:
- Itās very blue.
- I knew I was buying a keyboard with blue key caps, but I had originally planned on changing them out for green. I didnāt pay enough attention to the pictures to see that the case is also blue, making that a slightly harder choice to make. Itās not a criticism of the keyboard itself, just something I wasnāt expecting.
Overall Iām pretty happy with it. I also ended up enabling mod space and mapping the home, end, pgup, and pgdn keys to the arrows for easier access and to match my laptop. I also mapped the P key to prt scr on that layer, since the layout doesnāt include that key. That works generally pretty well, except the default config for mod space doesnāt line up with the way that I type. Iām finding that Iām missing more spaces that I usually do. I think this might be due to the timing window between what the keyboard considers a tap vs. a hold. As far as I know, this can only be changed by modifying the source and recompiling the firmware, which I have not been enterprising enough to try yet.
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I have the same pudding caps on my original GMMK!
Itās in a poker chip case with a foam insert (poorly) cut to fit the keyboard. It used to travel quite a bit between home, work, and D&D games.
That keyboard had some Novelkeys tactile switches that I liked quite a bit, but it doesnāt look like they make them anymore.
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I love pudding keys, but for some reason nobody has made a spanish layout for them.
That is something I felt a lot while shopping for my new keyboard. I felt if I wanted a full size keyboard I had either keychron that required some modification to get it exacly like I wanted or a gaming keyboard that did also that, except I paid double. WASD was on the list, as my father is very satisfied with the one i gifted to him 6-7 years ago, but sadly they closed past october. In the end i went for the GMMK because of the customization options (which meant I did not had to shop a keychron and modify it myself).
Theyāre a boon if youāre a touch typist and/or you have big hands as the narrower profile is less prone to hitting the wrong key.
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They feel fine, Iām just not thrilled with how they look. I do like that the legends are centered, though.
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I love the OSA profile. They remind me of the electric typewriter we had growing up. I think they were blue, too.
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At work I use a Kinesis Freestyle Edge keyboard (with MX Brown keys), with a Kinesis 10-key off to the side. (I donāt have a good picture of it.)
After years of dicking around with non-ergo mechanical gaming keyboards I finally decided to take the plunge and get a legitimate ergo keyboard.
It was kind of a unicorn ā I like gaming keyboards because of all the customizable keys, but I wanted something comfortable but not too unconventional. This one seemed to tick all the boxes.
It took me just a couple hours to get used to it (even with my weird typing style, which was forcefully corrected by its design), and itās super comfortable to use.
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I use a DasKeyboard S āProfessional Silentā with Cherry MX Brown switches. Iāve used it pretty much constantly since 2012. I do think I might replace the keycaps, theyāre worn smooth.
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Speaking of gamer tax. I haaaate RGB products, all i want is for the thing to just exist and the lights are just distracting to me.
I currently own the Logitech G610. Purchased in 2017 for $79.97 on Newegg.
Pros: Keyboard itself is weighty enough without being overly heavy. I like the feel of the typing experience (Cherry MX Red switches). I enjoy that the volume knob is a physical thing i can mess with.
Cons: Over the years i have had issues of the keys randomly coming off during regular use, and sometimes having the stems break and me having to fix with superglue. As mentioned thereās also the Logitech app where you can customize the lighting and add lighting animations, both of which could be nice for someone but its just distracting to me. I just turn off animations and set the lighting to be quite dim. Iāve never used the playback buttons under the volume knob, and thereās a gaming lock button that disables the windows key that iāve only āusedā accidentally.
I havenāt quite set my mind on replacing it yet because it still works well, i donāt want to spend the money if i donāt have to. I do like Keychron and will keep an eye out for their full size ones, but open to other brands as long as the price is justifiable and doesnāt have obnoxious features/aesthetics.
Will have to take pics of the 10keyless wireless Keychron i have. I havenāt used it in a year or two, its got some custom keys on it to give it some color
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