The mechanical keyboard craze has never been hotter. But if you’re a newbie, like PCWorld’s Adam Patrick Murray, all the different choices and modifications might seem a bit intimidating. It’s a good thing that Hipyo Tech, a YouTuber keyboard expert, was on hand at the Linux Tech Expo 2023 to give us a crash course. And what he had to share might be surprising.
Reading the reviews and scanning the subreddits might give you the impression that it takes hundreds and hundreds of dollars to make a “good” mechanical keyboard. And it’s true, you can drop a car payment’s worth of dough into a keyboard, and make it amazing. But you can get results almost as good with a budget keyboard and a few frugal upgrades, as Hipyo explains. It’s a lot like building a gaming desktop: you can put in a ton of time and money, or just go with what works with a fraction of that.
For example, if you like the “clicky” feedback of Cherry’s Blue switches, Hipyo recommends Kailh’s popular Box Jade alternative. They’s smoother, cleaner, and even louder, and easy to find on shops like Amazon. If you have a hot-swap keyboard, which doesn’t require any soldering, then you don’t need anything except a switch puller to swap them out.
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Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.