Welcome back to nearlucid. Today we’ll be taking a look at the Glacier 80,
a premium TKL from CreateKeebs, the makers of the beautiful Thera75. This proto was sent to us by
CreateKeebs for review, but as always that will not affect our opinion or statements in any way.
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First, the unboxing. This is honestly one of the nicest unboxing experiences I’ve had
for a keyboard. The box design is really nice, with this glacier shaped cutout on the sides.
Opening it up, we have this graphic, which doubles as an instruction manual for building.
First is our daughter board and 2 internal cables, Our gaskets and hoswap standoffs,
Plate foams and PE foam for the nav cluster, Plate foams for the alphas and function row,
Bottom PCB foam and PE foam for the alphas and function row,
Bottom PCB foam for the nav cluster, And our case foams.
There are a LOT of foam config choices. Here’s our 2 polycarbonate plates, one for
the alphas and function row, and a smaller separate one for the nav cluster. And this
is going to help the board feel more bouncy. Here’s the blue hotswap PCB with all of its
flex cuts and unique gasket tabs. The PCB breaks off here, and this
is where the cable will go to connect the two. Finally, under this foam, is the board itself.
I did have to speak to myself here, this blue is actually stunning.
The underside mirror weight is protected by a plastic wrap, which we’ll keep on for now.
Onto the specs. The Glacier80 is an aluminum gasket mounted F13 TKL,
offering both soldered and hotswap PCBs. The soldered PCB supports 7U Spacebar,
split left shift, and stepped caps, and the hotswap PCB is fixed. Of course,
both of these will also depend on whether you get the win key or win keyless version of the case.
Case color options are white, gray, black, burgundy, light blue, and navy.
Plate materials are polycarbonate, pom, and poron (which is just foam),
and fully plateless is also optimized if you want a flexible and bouncy typing experience.
QMK and VIA are both supported, and the typing angle is 6.5 degrees.
Finally, the price is estimated to be around $400,
with the group buy currently slated for mid January 2022.
So since I had a positive experience with gateron ink stabs last time, I’ll be using
them again. These have been lubed with 205g0 on the housings, and XHT-BDZ on the wires.
2 interesting features of this keyboard are the split PCB and gasket tabs. The split PCB will
help with the bounciness of the keyboard, since there’s going to be less resistance by the PCB to
pushing down. I found the easiest way to separate these parts was to bend the joint with your hands,
then bend off the excess connections with flat nose pliers. The gasket tabs,
which look like separate pieces of the PCB, are what actually touch the gaskets within the case.
This will allow the PCB to push downwards much more easily than if the gaskets were
on a traditional PCB with small gasket tabs, allowing for, again, a very bouncy typing feel.
First, we’ll put on the gaskets. This board has quite a few of them,
on both the bottom and top case. On group buy versions,
you might also have to separately install the bottom mirror weight and top mirror badge.
Next, we’ll put together the inner assembly. Going into this polycarbonate plate are some Gazzew Boba
LTs with Nixdork tops, lubed with 205g0. For the first build, I won’t use any plate foam.
I will, however, add the thin case foam to the bottom, just in case there’s some hollowness.
Since this is a gasket mounted keyboard, all we have to do to finish
up is put the inner assembly into the case Connect the nav cluster PCB to the main PCB
Plug the main PCB into the daughterboard And screw in the 8 bottom screws.
Lastly, we’ll be topping this off with GMK hammerhead.
Unfortunately, this set doesn’t have an f13, so I’ll just use both escape keys.
Let's take a listen to a few different configurations.
this is definitely a board that you want to build a few times to reach your preferred sound. In my
opinion, the Bobas sounded really thin. And while this seems to be an issue with Bobas on their own,
the glacier without foam is really quiet. The improvement of sound through foam
is really evident in the second sound test. However, with this much foam in the board, the
bounciness is basically completely gone because the foam fills the volume of the bottom case.
SOTC switches, made by createkeebs themselves, are also really good stock. They don’t sound
plasticky and actually feel really smooth, which is likely thanks to the use of an LY stem,
which is a new blend of plastic by JWK. I’ll definitely review this switch further down
the line as it’s super interesting and would be a great pairing with a glacier.
Ultimately, it’s up to you to determine the foam configuration you want in order
to bring out the best sound in your switches, but also your preferred level of bounciness.
The glacier is a huge breath of fresh air in terms of design.
Every part of it is striking, yet in a tasteful way.
Immediately on the top, we can see the beautiful glacier emblem in a mirror finish.
Also breaking the norm for most keyboards in this price range, the outer edges are fileted,
or rounded off, instead of chamfered. This might not be noticeable upon first impression,
but is definitely appreciated as it adds to the very premium feel.
Moving to the side, we can see a quite striking profile, with a jagged cutout on the top piece,
mimicking the shape of glacier ice. This continues on the back of the board,
where we can see the glacier emblem show itself again in the form of an engraving. I absolutely
love the cutout of the top case matching the lines of the engraving here. It really adds a lot more
dimension and visual interest to the back, and is just an overall very eye-catching design.
You might notice that the USB port is quite close to the outer case, and this is one of my gripes
about the design. The USB port isn’t recessed, meaning that when you plug your cable in,
you’ll be able to see a bit of the metal itself. This is a pretty minor issue, and one that’s very
easily fixable, because the board already has a daughterboard which could be moved backwards with
very minor adjustments to the design overall. Boards with recessed USB ports look much cleaner,
and is somewhat expected for boards of this price range. It’s quite interesting to see this design
choice, as the Thera75, a premium board run prior to the glacier by createkeebs had a recessed port.
Enough griping about the back, let's get to the staple of this keyboard, the stunning mirror
bottom weight. It's seriously incredible. Front and center is a subtle geometric protrusion of a
glacier. The outline of the top is emphasized by this circular cutout in the case. To the right of
this is glacier written in a cursive style, just in case you forgot what your board was called.
Lastly, let's talk about this distinctive shade of blue. This definitely makes the most sense
for the glacier theme, although I do admit it is quite difficult to find a matching keycap set for.
The shade has been commented on by quite a few viewers of the initial sound test.
Zain Zaidi added that the color looks quite cheap, and looking into it further,
I sometimes agree. Youtube definitely can't do the color justice, but I can assure that in most
lighting conditions the color does not take away from the premium feel of the rest of the board.
In terms of material quality, the anodization of the aluminum parts looks spotless,
without exterior marks or interior marks. This is very impressive for a prototype unit. However,
the most concerning areas for issues, the badge and bottom mirror weight, do have slight problems.
My board came with a nick and scratch on the badge,
as well as some large streaks on the mirror weight. These are only visible in certain
lighting, but I understand that mirror finishes are really hard to get perfect
and this is a prototype unit at the end of the day. Ultimately, since create keebs does have
past experience with interesting finishes, I have faith that the group buy units will be flawless.
400$ is quite the premium, but for an F13 TKL with this level of design,
I’d say the glacier holds a surprising amount of value. I think this even beats the Jelly Epoch in
terms of uniqueness in keyboard design. However, this isn't an original take on createkeebs design.
Their projects are always refreshing to see, like the Thera75 with its head turning badge,
vast60 with its inlay, and Valli60 with its striking yet minimalist profile. The Glacier80
is an incredible addition to this line of design, and I’m very excited to see what’s next in store.
That's all I have for you today. Thanks for watching this episode of nearlucid.
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