My Keyboard Journey - Ducky One Two
Part two of my mechanical keyboards journey. It's 2018 and a Ducky One Two felt like business class in a world of rubber dome economy seats.
I didn't foresee how an average keyboard would plunge me headfirst into a hobby for years to come. I knew the switches were meant to be serviceable (Cherry MX Browns!) and the keycaps were not the best profile (OEM!) but after trying it out on a short document the sensation was the same as trying a gourmet burger for the first time after a life of McDonald's. I tasted the good stuff and couldn't go back to the mediocrity of rubber domes and butterfly switches.
I was happy with my choice. The Ducky One 2 felt better than expected, came from a reputable company, had some embedded software configuration options and could be purchased as a TKL. I could see why it was a common recommendation in specialist forums and I kept encouraging colleagues at work to type on it to see if they had the same revelation as me (most did).
Things were OK for three months but a couple of things kept bothering me:
- I only had one mechanical keyboard so I kept carrying it between my office and my home. This wasn't painful as the keyboard had a USB-C port with a detachable cable (a rarity at the time) so it was easy to keep in my backpack but we are talking about commuting with an extra 1 Kg on my back for no good reason.
- I hadn't stopped visiting forums and websites covering keyboards and I had a baseline now. It was very different to read reviews, discussions about mods and rants after you have something to compare against.
This was 2017-2018 so the hobby was still niche. There weren't mainstream companies offering big mechanical keyboards testing displays in Currys, force curves weren't a common thing yet, terms like creamy, thoccy were in their infancy and there weren't influencers talking about everything "keyboard" on video to get a better sense of sounds and visuals. This meant that having a baseline was critical to understand the references people were using when describing their keyboards.
On the fourth month after getting my Ducky, I bought a 12 switch tester and now there was no coming back. I tried to get several hype switches and a couple of rare ones so I could imagine myself typing in all kinds of ways with my next keyboard. My order included:
- Kailh BOX Burnt Orange
- Kailh BOX Pale Blue
- Kailh BOX Navy
- Kailh BOX Jade
- IC Hako Clear
- IC Hako True
- Zealio 62g
- Zealio 65g
- Zilent 78g
- MOD-L Tactile
- MOD-H Tactile
- Aliaz 70g
I wanted to keep my Ducky One 2 at home and get a "sober" keyboard for the office. There were many options and working in a software company meant receiving a lot of strong opinions in mailing lists from others who type 8 hours a day.
One common recommendation across all these discussions was WASD Keyboards (RIP - Link is from Internet Archive). They were known to be high quality and caught my eye for additional reasons.
They had a collaboration with the blog that started this journey; offered MOD switches which were my favourites from the tester -I know understood what a good tactile bump was- and were known for offering readily available PBT keycaps.
The decision was clear. Their keyboards were expensive but I was going to invest in a WASD V2 TKL so I could have a keyboard for gaming and one for working.
Why would I need more than that?