One of my colleagues has a mechanical keyboard - possibly a Filco - that he uses in preference to his corporate-issued one, and i have come to loathe the sound. I get that they feel good to use, and the haptic and audible feedback is particularly effective. But for the love of $deity I just want the noise to stop.
I remember over 20y ago, a filco was the best mechanical keyboard money could buy.
I bought one a couple of years ago, to my surprise it was nearly identical. A bit cheaper material. Still over a 100 USD.
The difference is one can by an Aula for less than half the price, with better 3 Bluetooth settings + 2.4 dongle, blacklit, better sound coming out of the keys, less loud and annoying.
A great company that made the mistake to stay stagnant.
The botique keyboard space exploded during that time, especially towards the latter half of the 10's and through the pandemic years. There were countless one-off group buys across the price spectrum all offering more interesting products, and in the last 5 years or so there's been a number of vendors offering enthusiast-level features in mass production boards (e.g. Keychron).
It's definitely not a market where one can stand still.
I bought a ~60€ Redragon linear switches keyboard for my office desk to replace the company-provided shitty Logitech, not expecting much, and was very surprised by the quality. So competition is definitely tough.
I still have 4 of these, even one of their bluetooth ones. They all work, except a 15 year old one whose USB cable got frayed and fell apart. (I bought a USB-C port to see if I could fix it, yet another incomplete project)
I agree with op who said that they aren't getting better but calling it stagnant is more than I would say. The build quality was quite high and they clearly focused on that, and the price reflected that. I own another mechanical keyboard that I bought from Amazon during the pandemic and I already started getting ghost tapping (I only used it for dev work so I was more than a little annoyed to see it).
Not saying it is perfect though. They clearly were a Windows-first shop and that never changed. I've never managed to get the 変換 key and the other Kanji keys working in Linux or on Mac, much to my annoyance.
Sad news. I'm sitting at a modified Filco keyboard with custom firmware right now. Its sound profile is not very pleasing by today's standards but it has been a reliable workhorse.
Years ago I ordered Ninja 2 from Japan and was sadly expecting to pay another 20% or so in customs fees, but the price was given in yen, and the customs probably couldn’t figure it out, so they released it to me for free. It’s still going strong.
One of my colleagues has a mechanical keyboard - possibly a Filco - that he uses in preference to his corporate-issued one, and i have come to loathe the sound. I get that they feel good to use, and the haptic and audible feedback is particularly effective. But for the love of $deity I just want the noise to stop.
I remember over 20y ago, a filco was the best mechanical keyboard money could buy.
I bought one a couple of years ago, to my surprise it was nearly identical. A bit cheaper material. Still over a 100 USD.
The difference is one can by an Aula for less than half the price, with better 3 Bluetooth settings + 2.4 dongle, blacklit, better sound coming out of the keys, less loud and annoying.
A great company that made the mistake to stay stagnant.
The botique keyboard space exploded during that time, especially towards the latter half of the 10's and through the pandemic years. There were countless one-off group buys across the price spectrum all offering more interesting products, and in the last 5 years or so there's been a number of vendors offering enthusiast-level features in mass production boards (e.g. Keychron).
It's definitely not a market where one can stand still.
I bought a ~60€ Redragon linear switches keyboard for my office desk to replace the company-provided shitty Logitech, not expecting much, and was very surprised by the quality. So competition is definitely tough.
I still have 4 of these, even one of their bluetooth ones. They all work, except a 15 year old one whose USB cable got frayed and fell apart. (I bought a USB-C port to see if I could fix it, yet another incomplete project)
I agree with op who said that they aren't getting better but calling it stagnant is more than I would say. The build quality was quite high and they clearly focused on that, and the price reflected that. I own another mechanical keyboard that I bought from Amazon during the pandemic and I already started getting ghost tapping (I only used it for dev work so I was more than a little annoyed to see it).
Not saying it is perfect though. They clearly were a Windows-first shop and that never changed. I've never managed to get the 変換 key and the other Kanji keys working in Linux or on Mac, much to my annoyance.
Sad news. I'm sitting at a modified Filco keyboard with custom firmware right now. Its sound profile is not very pleasing by today's standards but it has been a reliable workhorse.
Years ago I ordered Ninja 2 from Japan and was sadly expecting to pay another 20% or so in customs fees, but the price was given in yen, and the customs probably couldn’t figure it out, so they released it to me for free. It’s still going strong.
Lost another keyboard to Diatec
Pepperidge Farm remembers that commercial.