In the past two years, the mechanical keyboard has gradually become a fragrant food in the peripheral circle, and many game lovers and white-collar workers have entered the pit mechanical keyboard, in order to be blown godlike "finger horse killing chicken (massage)".
As a lover of mechanical keyboards, Xiao Lei still feels that the key circle (mechanical keyboard circle, not keyboard hero circle!) Blowing a little too much, although the contrast film does have many advantages, but the mechanical keyboard is more to let the user have better feedback with each tap, rather than what "horse to kill chicken", really want to "horse kill chicken" is better to use your other hand to pinch your fingers and relax.
Back to the point, the mechanical keyboard has indeed been favored by more PC users, and with the development of domestic brands, today's mechanical keyboard prices are also going all the way down, in the past at least four or five hundred products, now basically only two or three hundred or even lower can be bought, the price reduction has also greatly lowered the entry threshold of the mechanical keyboard circle.
When Xiao Lei wandered around the Internet, he often saw some netizens who wanted to buy a mechanical keyboard, but after seeing a variety of product pages, he fell into a tangle: Which one is better to buy? Which one is better for me? Similar questions can be said to be numerous. It just so happens that Xiao Lei has a lot of mechanical keyboards on his hands, and the price point is from 100-700 between them, since everyone is curious about how the mechanical keyboards of different prices have performed, then Xiao Lei will test it for everyone.
Considering that most of the friends who have doubts are new to the mechanical keyboard, or have not yet started with the mechanical keyboard, Xiao Lei also found a few colleagues who have not used the mechanical keyboard, and let them choose their favorite models and use feelings.
How big is the difference between the workmanship and function of the keyboard at different price points?
Xiao Lei has at least six or seven pairs of mechanical keyboards on hand (some of which are colleagues), after careful consideration, Xiao Lei decided to choose three pairs for comparison, namely AKKO 3108 (Cherry tea shaft, horizon blue and black color), Belly Spirit FL980 (single mode BOX white shaft, aqua green color), Belly Spirit CMK 87 (three-mode BOX white shaft, mechanical heart blue and red color).
AKKO 3108 is priced at the lowest price of 239 yuan, the abdominal spirit FL 980 is priced at 399 yuan, and the abdominal spirit CMK 87 is priced at 659 yuan, with prices ranging from 200-700 yuan, which basically covers the current main mechanical keyboard price range, and are more representative mass production mechanical keyboards in the same price range, which can represent the current workmanship and feel of some domestic keyboards.
Let's first look at the workmanship, purely from the appearance, the design style of the three has a lot of differences, AKKO 3108 is the standard 108 match, FL980 is to reduce some of the keys that are not commonly used by ordinary users, and then the overall design becomes more compact 98 match, CMK 87 is the small numeric keypad area directly reduced the 87 match.
From the material point of view, the three keyboards are made of the same material, the main body is based on ABS material, the keycap is PBT material, the only difference is that CMK 87 increases the metal counterweight, and because of the new internal architecture, it is more heavy. However, although the material is the same, there are still many differences in the workmanship, the main structure of CMK 87 is significantly better than the other two products in terms of coating effect and feel, and the workmanship of the keycaps is also more refined.
The FL980 is slightly better than the AKKO 3108, the keyboard body has a fine matte texture, and the fineness and material of the keycaps are also stronger, but the treatment of the edges of the keycaps still has some small flaws. In terms of the fineness of the keycaps, AKKO is also a slight loss of the two keyboards, especially in the stability of the keycaps, AKKO's keys have a more obvious sense of shaking, the main reason is that the Cherry tea shaft is a traditional cross shaft body, and AKKO itself is designed to be shallower, so the shaking degree is significantly greater than the two belly spirit keyboards that use the BOX white axis.
If the AKKO 3108 is switched to a BOX axis, the keys should be more stable, but the AKKO 3108 does not support hot swapping, while the FL980 and CMK 87 both have hot-swappable configurations, and users can use it for their own use
The replacement of different shaft bodies to achieve different button feel, in this regard AKKO 3108 is considered to be a complete failure.
Moreover, the PCB board of AKKO 3108 does not reserve a light installation location, so even if the user wants to install lights later, the installation difficulty will be much higher, and it is even better to directly purchase an AKKO 3068 with a similar appearance but initially supporting lights. However, as a mold that has been on the market for 5 years, the AKKO 3108 can be used 5 years later to wrench wrists with the FL 980 and the latest CMK 87.
In the three keyboards on the function, AKKO 3108 is not configured with RGB backlighting and driver, while FL980 and CMK 87 support driver settings and RGB backlighting, friends who like lighting can adjust the lighting through drivers or key combinations, and the two keyboards of the belly spirit have built-in a variety of lighting effects.
In addition, under the drive settings, the two keyboards of the belly spirit support macro keys, for gamers, macro keys still have a lot of effects, some professional software in the press more cumbersome key combinations or some repetitive key operations, can be set through the driver, the use of short key combinations can be triggered, saving a lot of time.
Mechanical keyboard expensive is good?
Distributing three keyboards to three colleagues and having them rotate after a period of use, the test was quickly completed, but the results were a bit unexpected by Xiao Lei. Xiao Lei asked his colleagues to score 10 points, and after the three of them scored the keyboards separately, they added up the scores of each keyboard and then divided by 3, and the result was that AKKO 3108 scored 7 points, the Abdominal Spirit FL980 scored 7.66 points, and the Abdominal Spirit CMK 87 scored 8.33 points.
Cherry tea shaft as the most famous golden oil shaft, even cherry has declined today, the feel is still desirable, one of the colleagues believes that cherry tea shaft AKKO 3108 does not lose the belly spirit of the two keyboards, but the other two colleagues prefer box white axis, more obvious paragraph sense of the key trigger feeling can indeed make novices more immersed in the typing experience.
From the point of view of scoring, although it is true that the more expensive the score, the higher the score, but specific to the keyboard feel, several colleagues believe that the gap between the three keyboards is not large, and the biggest factor affecting the score is the appearance. To be honest, this is the same as the original intention of most mechanical keyboard players to buy high-end mechanical keyboards or even customized keyboards at a high price, not to pursue how good the feel is, purely because... It's beautiful.
Interestingly, the comparison between the Belly Spirit FL980 and the Belly Spirit CMK 87 surprised Xiao Lei a little, and the three colleagues gave the results after trying out the two keyboards separately, and even placing them together and tapping at the same time. Although all three colleagues voted for CMK 87, only one colleague believes that CMK 87 feels better, mainly in the sense of rebound, and the other two colleagues believe that the two keyboards are not much different in feel, CMK 87 is only better in appearance and workmanship, the keys are smaller, and more suitable for office use.
Considering that the difference between the two keyboards is 300 yuan, colleagues have also said that if they buy it, they will give priority to the FL980, after all, the difference in the feel of the two keyboards is much smaller than the difference between the price. Of course, in fact, considering that colleagues' CMK 87 is a wireless three-template, and Xiaolei's FL980 is a single-template, if calculated by the FL980's wireless three-template, the actual difference between the two is only 100 yuan.
However, CMK 87 ultimately takes advantage of the new mold and design, and has slightly improved in appearance and feel, but because the shaft body of the two keyboards is the same as the Box white shaft, the actual feel will not be much different. In fact, unless it is a custom structure such as Gasket used, most keyboard experience depends on the shaft body, and then the workmanship of the keycaps, of course, there are satellite axes and other large keys tuning will have different feel, but it does not affect the feel of the main key area.
From the results, the feel and workmanship of the mechanical keyboard with the increase in price does have a more obvious increase, but specific to the keyboard feel is not necessarily so, in the case of similar internal structure, the keyboard feel mainly depends on the shaft body, keycaps, etc. only account for 10-20% of the feel.
According to the domestic mechanical keyboard experience purchased by Xiaolei in recent years, in addition to the customized product line of the current mechanical keyboard, the hand feeling gap between the products at the same price and the same structure section is not obvious (e-sports brands are not in this list), and the keyboard between 300-700 is more in the appearance and function of the difference, and the feel mainly depends on what shaft body is used.
For a simple example, an IKBC keyboard and an AKKO keyboard, in the case of the same shaft body and similar price points, the feel is almost the same, and in the higher price segment, as long as the new structure and mold are not marked, then the feel is also very similar, and the difference between the two is mainly reflected in whether it is wireless, design and so on.
So, if you want to buy a mechanical keyboard and want a good feel, then the first thing to consider is the shaft body, which is much more important than others. In Xiao Lei's personal experience, the low-cost and easy-to-use and more suitable for typing shaft body is mainly the BOX white axis, G yellow axis, these two axes can also be occasionally seen on some two or three hundred entry keyboards, and the feel is better than the ordinary Cherry axis and TTC entry shaft.
Where is the mechanical keyboard expensive?
It is estimated that some readers will be curious, since the difference in hand feel mainly depends on the shaft body, then why is the price of the mechanical keyboard still so different? Or even a keyboard with thousands of dollars? Where is the high-priced mechanical keyboard expensive?
The structure of the mechanical keyboard is actually not complicated, mainly divided into four parts:
1. External frame: the main frame of the shell of the mechanical keyboard is combined by the upper cover and the chassis
2. Internal structure: it is composed of hardware such as PCB board, sound insulation mat, and positioning board
3. Shaft body: key shaft body, the soul of mechanical keyboard
4, keycaps: mainly divided into ABS, ABS two-color molding, PBT and other materials
An expensive mechanical keyboard basically takes the above external frame and internal structure to the extreme, and adds a unique design or function, and the core shaft body is not much different except for a few rare shafts. On the other hand, the debugging of the shaft body itself and the debugging of the internal structure also account for a large part of the labor cost, which is also one of the main costs of high-end keyboards, and it is also the customization that mechanical keyboard enthusiasts often say, customized production and design according to personal preferences.
(Image source: Zhihu)
However, in the past two years, domestic keyboard manufacturers are also trying to reduce the price of customized keyboards, such as Dalyou's high-end product A98 will originate from the custom keyboard Gasket structure applied to the mass-produced keyboard, although it can not be fine-tuned according to user preferences and sound, but the advantages of the Gasket structure itself also makes it more pleasing to the preferences of most users, and the entry threshold of the customized keyboard is greatly reduced.
In the past, a mechanical keyboard with a Gasket structure was basically more than a thousand yuan, and after the Dahl excellent and other large factories opened mass production, the price quickly slid down to the price of 100 yuan, although there are many pseudo Gasket structures, but a standard Gasket keyboard can also be bought as long as five or six hundred, only one-half of the previous price or even lower, in the future we are expected to see more customized architecture and molds in the mass production offensive of the factory to drop to a low price.
In addition to Gasket, the aluminum alloy frame is also one of the "victims" of mass production, and the CNC aluminum alloy shell with a starting price of thousands in the past has dropped to the extent of three or four hundred after the entry of some keyboard manufacturers. It can be said that the two most costly components of the mechanical keyboard are low-cost under the offensive of mass production.
The only one that has not been greatly affected is actually the shaft body, the cost of the shaft body will actually be directly reflected in the price of the mechanical keyboard, taking the BOX white shaft in this review as an example, the single price on Taobao is between 1.2 yuan and 1.5 yuan. Also produced by Kaihua, the ice mint shaft used by XiaoLei's other keyboard, the abdominal spirit Q75, the price of a single is as high as 3.8 yuan, and the cost of the optical axis body between the two is more than three times the difference in the standard keyboard of 108 keys.
However, compared with thousands of customized sets (referring to other keyboard modules without keycaps and shafts), the shaft body and ordinary keycaps are not expensive (except for custom keycaps, the upper limit of this thing is very high, and it is not uncommon for a set of keycaps for thousands of yuan). In general, in the price of a high-end mechanical keyboard, the shell and internal structure directly account for more than 50% of the cost, and the shaft body that really determines the feel is the cheapest.
Therefore, for most users, a keyboard that costs about 500 can already make you have a very good experience, and it will not be much worse than a keyboard of thousands of yuan. In fact, the mechanical keyboard is very similar to the niche audiophile circle such as Hi-Fi, and after the product price exceeds a certain threshold, it is very much money and two goods, or even one penny.