picture this you got 250 dollars you could spend it on anything what do you decide to spend it on
more keyboards i guess howdy hey i'm hippie tech and i totally don't have a keyboard problem i
swear it's normal i'm normal you guys know the drill for this type of video the rules are simple
i have 250 dollars and i have to spend it on apple maker's website i decided to go with a mid-range
build and a couple products that people keep asking me to try that i really wanted to try out
so i spent 175 of the buckaroos on this gk68xs this was an interesting choice that we'll look
into more later for the keycaps i decided to go with the akko asa profile blackpink keycaps mostly
because all the others were clones and 10 gather on yellows uh we'll talk about that more later
but uh we'll be using some derock yellows they're a little bit different the gator on yellows
yikes so all in all this build comes in around 250-ish
with a big asterisk if you're wondering if this is a good mid-range build stick around i'd like to
take this moment to give an extra howdy hey to the 26.8 percent of you that are actually subscribed
please get subscribed if you're not one of those people a little bit of background for this video
apple maker has been a long time affiliate of mine but they're not really a sponsor or
anything they just kind of send me boards randomly and i look at them or sometimes i don't look at
them in this case they gave me a little bit of a shopping spree and you know that they gave me 250
to go wild that's a little bit of a stretch i kind of just picked out what i wanted to pick out
but you know we got to make it dramatic it's hypo dramatic time anyways the gk68 is a board that i
often recommend as it's one of the most basic beginner boards but the gk68 acrylic version
who knows i'm a little bit skeptical of it and that's kind of why i wanted to check it out here
it's a lot more expensive and now there's a lot more contenders in the space so i don't know if
it's going to be that good of a value proposition as far as the unboxing goes it's like any other
skyline board you've got the keycap polar switch puller dinky little usbc cable and uh what's this
oh my god what's this so i go to apple maker i say hey could you send out some gather on yellows with
the build i'd love that they say oh yeah sure bro and uh they sent 10 10 gatter on yellows
bro yikes so because i can't build them out with 10 you'll see the switches i use later
don't worry the board also comes with a split spacebar module but i won't be using that as
split spacebar is kind of yucky in my opinion i'm sorry split spacebar king i'm sorry don't
no listen you're still you're still special the board came wrapped in a felt carrying case which
is better than nothing but when something like the nk 65 has a way better carrying case for 95 total
yikes take a shot every time i say yikes a shot of water that is of water only so what's the dealio
with this board eh so this bad boy is the gk68 xs it's a 65 meaning that it keeps the arrow keys
and it's made out of acrylic with a nice little frosty design i guess a fun feature is that it
does feature an fr4 plate but the board is tray mount meaning that you won't really feel any of
the flex that that would offer and it's pretty stiff overall now coming in at 175 us dollars this
bad boy's a 90 dollar increase over its plastic counterpart that's a bit of a doozy and we'll
be scoping out whether or not that's worth it at all some other fun facts is that this bad boy is
bluetooth which is a very good perk and not that many boards offer it but more starting to offer it
i'll be fair to it though the acrylic design is pretty nice if you're a keyboard enthusiast you're
looking at this picture and you're going oh no oh no this board is 5 pin hot swap which is great
meaning you can swap out switches without desoldering but it has plate mount stabilizers and
north facing leds this means your stabilizer experience will be a little bit rattly
and you won't be able to use cherry profile keycaps without a little bit of interference on
the middle row if you're curious about what this means there's a wildcat video on it that explains
it pretty well but we won't be running into that issue today as we're going to be using the echo
key caps which we'll check out later speaking about the rgb though it is disgustingly bright
but the underglow is kind of weird they went with a center strip and a side strip but it's
kind of uneven also when i unplugged it it stayed on and i couldn't turn it off and then they were
really bright and it hurt my eyes and then i realized you have to plug it in to turn it off
if it's not connected to a computer the bluetooth is very weird
so knock wise it's not very hollow and i might look into modding this in the future but i don't
think it necessarily needs it maybe a little bit of silicone could help and the plate flex is
really weird around the spacebar module not a big fan but hey let's get this thing built out right
so for the switches i had to go with something from kinetic labs because of the yellow situation
and i had to go with durock yellows which are a go-to pretty light linear they're like gatoron
yellows had a really interesting baby they're pretty smooth stock but i did lube them up with
some carbon gs2 and if you want to check these switches out or anything really just go check the
description i put all my little links down there and those help support the channel i don't really
care what you buy but you could click them and buy something now listen i know you like knowing
how to loop switches but in this video i didn't really do that so go check out literally 17 of my
other videos one of them's gotta have a looping tutorial one of them right oh here's some magic
so we got the switches on and this makes it a pretty decent mid-range build but gather
on yellows would have been cooler it would have been like a budget build ooh budget time
but really what i should have done hindsight this is editor hippia this ain't build hip yo
i should have just put 10 gatter on yellows on here and really just gone to town with it that
would have been so fun because the board itself is decently stiff because of all these screws
and hard points i think tactile switches might actually be a better choice for a build like this
honestly with anything too stiff linears tend to feel a bit rough on the fingers
also these stabilizers came factory lubed but i decided to leave them exactly as is
as you know we gotta put the factory lubing to the test anyways it's key cap time yeehaw okay i know
what you're thinking you're gonna call these some type of clone i know echo does a lot of clones
echo's a little bit stinky and i've gotten on apple maker's case quite a bit for selling some of
the echo clones but they don't steal art they kind of do their own font it's a really gray area here
it's a different profile but this set itself is probably the safest from being cloned as honestly
like some people are saying oh it looks kind of like olivia but it looks really different from
olivia this is it's yeah it's pretty different but yeah be a little bit wary when buying some
of these echo keycaps some of them are kind of blatant clones but i wanted to check out
this asa profile and kind of put these to the test echo has made some really great original designs
like the world tour series i like that a lot besides the one that copied pbt toby i'm gonna
sue them i'm gonna sue them so hard that's a joke by the way that's a joke these are double
shot pbt and feature echo's unique asa profile it's also a pretty extensive kit meaning that
it'll fit a lot of boards and for the value being only 70 dollars this keycap set kinda blew me away
these are the type of sets that are going to be given gmk are run for their money pretty soon
as long as echo can get creative and actually work with some designers now these weren't perfect and
had some scuffs here and there and that's some bad quality control issues that could be fixed but man
i was pleasantly surprised with this one besides that space bar so as far as the thickness goes
this bad boy's dummy thick ish it's about as thick as my gmk laser which i have right here next to it
now gmk is double shot abs and this is double shot pbt and they sit at a different profile so they're
not exactly the same but let's just put these on real fast like something something come on magic
there we go so if you can't tell i've had like three cups of coffee today so i'm a little bit
hyper but these need white alphas as they're just a little bit weird with the gray the grey's kind
of a green also this container that they come in sucks and i hate it and this is really strong
opinion with hippie time i hate it because you have to use a keycap remover to remove the keycaps
anyways comparing these directly with gmk i mean the double shot process is so much cleaner
the legending is very clean but i don't like the thin center legends that could be fixed a little
bit and because it's pbt it won't shine anywhere near as fast as abs this was like the shining
pearl of this build you know the board i wasn't too stoked on the switches went meat murph and you
know the keycaps pretty good pleasantly surprised so let's talk a little bit about that asa profile
shall we i don't have essay directly to compare it to but i have typed on sa and a couple other weird
profiles in the past so the sculpt here is very similar to sa but then the height itself is more
similar to oem it's kind of a weird sitting in the middle type of thing and honestly i kind of liked
it to type on it wasn't anywhere near as fatiguing and i didn't feel like i needed to have a wrist
rest to type on it which is good because i can't use wrist rests because they make my wrists hurt
more than not using a wrist rest but that's a topic for another day but you're probably
wondering hip yo it's been like nine minutes and you haven't given us a sound test what are the
stabilizers sound like well these are unlubed i did not touch them from the factory here they go
now there were globs of lube on those stabilizers but i reckon that did nothing because there there
was some more rattle than like a a pack of rattlesnakes i don't know what rattles
sure pack a rattlesnakes quite rattly now if you were to get a board like this i always recommend
swapping out the stabilizers with something like a duroc plate mount stabilizer overall durock plate
mounts are much easier to tune than these really crummy ones that come with the boards and you're
just gonna get a better experience overall that's kind of why i didn't really bother to lube these
up like they're fine enough they're not inherently super offensive but they're definitely not good
yeah as far as the board itself well i have some words if you absolutely need a board right now
right today this isn't the worst option it's gonna be a bit more expensive but it's not the
worst option if you need bluetooth and you need a board now there's not too much else that you could
get there's things like the kbd67 lite but that comes in and out of stock and there's things like
the icky aurora and that comes in and out of stock this board overall didn't sound very bad and the
typing experience was okay i'd like to maybe mod this out by doing the traymount gasket thing that
some people do with tofus but really all in all the board is average at best and i kind of have a
hard time recommending it if it fits your bill and you don't want to use cherry profile keycaps sure
but if not just look elsewhere or be a little bit more patient and pick up something that'll come in
stock like the nk65 anyways i'll be leaving you guys with a sound test please watch the whole
thing to support my youtube algorithm overlords and while you're at it do a sound test of your own
in the comments hit the like button and subscribe or whatever it's free you know it's not free the
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you