i'm gonna tell you guys a secret and you guys better not take this out of context all right
i get pretty excited when i see knobs now knobs on keyboards knobs on keyboards this one has two
of them that's crazy well howdy hey everyone hypiotech here and i get sad every time i see
that only 80 of you are subscribed so please hit subscribe anyways in this video i'll be building
out the kl90 polycarbonate edition we'll be using some ktt roses as well as some kinetic
labs poly caps black on white this is the latest offering from kiko's lab and will be available
for group by soon also we'll be taking a look at some other special little kl90s in the process
so stay tuned for that hipio from the blue void here with the disclosure i don't get to keep these
boards that i'm reviewing and i was paid for my time kiko's pretty cool and really i could
trash this board and he'd be pretty happy but the real question we'll be uncovering in this video is
how excited can hippie get about two knobs hmm i don't know just keep watching and then i guess you
could like place your bets down below if you're a batting person i don't really know how you could
bet on how excited i could get but just whatever so we'll start with the unboxing and most of these
are just prototype boxes and won't be really representative of the end experience but check
out this novel oh that is a freaking hefty knob so this freaking hefty knob is a brass encoder knob
but you get the option of one or two depending on if you go with the oled screen with the board and
we'll talk about the oled screen a little bit more soon anyways you're probably wondering yo hypio
can i actually buy this board for once is this one of those boards i can actually buy to that
i say maybe depending on if you're a time traveler or not so the group buy will be running from may
10th to may 31st and you'll be able to pick up this board for 400 u.s for a solder version and
425 us for the hot swap version there'll also be a lot of different plate materials available for
purchase and you can check those out at the kiko labs website in the description this is my hands
as the fr4 and i'm just showing off the gaskets real fast this is a gasket mount board but the
gaskets are very very thin and very very minimal it's definitely not going to be the squishiest
gasket mount and overall i'd say it doesn't have that big of an impact on the typing feel but we'll
go over that a bit more later so the polycarbonate edition comes in heaps of colors and the names are
slightly pretentious we have midnight black tiffany blue purple haze and frosted ice
in my hands here i have the purple haze which sounds like somebody was smoking a little bit
of weed ironically the stream where i built this was on 420. hmm now you're probably like oh hypio
is this coming with free switches wow that's so cool that it comes with free switches no
no listen stop because kiko is using this board it came with switches pre-installed but
just ignore those we won't be touching them so this spicy spicy board is what i like to call a 75
asterisk it looks familiar to a 75 percent but as you can see on this left row you've got a lot of
keys going on there these are dedicated macro keys that you can change via qmk or via if you do a lot
of productivity work like in cad or video editing or anything like that they could be pretty helpful
i feel like this row is definitely gonna make or break the board for some people as it's an
incredibly unique layout but because of that it'll also be a little bit difficult to find keycap sets
that'll fit it also as you just saw i put on the knob and this board comes with two knobs if you
go for the dual encoder version or a knob and an oled screen if you go for that the oled screen
is a bit of a gimmick but uh you could put the bongo cat on it so i think that's really important
right now the knobs can only be programmed via qmk and i think by default the right one is volume and
the left one is like scrolling through web pages or something as i mentioned a couple
times because herder the board is polycarbonate uh the board is polycarbonate no duh hypo what the
heck however this polycarbonate is cnc'd rather than injection molded which means that
it is quite a bit thicker and quite a bit nicer overall in its general construction
this is the creme de la creme of plastic boards i'm sorry french people also it's
got this really nice chamfered edge around the whole board which kind of makes it feel like a
gemstone and i really like that it's quite nice all right let's take a look at the booty so we've
got a brass badge installed with a really cool kiko logo and four little rubber feet on the
bottom the case is slightly translucent so you can see the pcb through the back
this could be a pro or a con i think it gives it a bit of an old school game boy feel
but it does look a little bit tacky this brass badge though has such a nice finish on it
and i really want to paint fill it but i can't i think the overall construction is really solid and
it definitely feels like something you'd get for four hundred dollars and not like something that
you'd pay a hundred bucks for yeah you thought you'd get out of a build video without a wow stick
uh cue the wows in the chat right now if you're watching the premiere you know what to do
i'm the ultimate wow stick she'll please buy a wow stick in the description thank you so the
top is secured to the bottom with six phillips head screws and then the pcb sits in the middle
as a gasket mount there's nice little cutouts in the top and bottom that kind of just slot in one
issue i ran into is that the screws were totally stripped and stuck in the bottom portion of the
case but apparently this was kiko's doing and not mine here's some stock koala bonus sounds i guess
so any key night viewers might notice that there's some weird stuff going on with the orientation
of some of these switches the vast majority are south facing but some are north facing
and some are east and west facing yeah we did it so that they can fit around the usb-c port in my
hands here i have the hot swap pcb version which actually supports a normal and split space bar
natively that's pretty dope and pretty rare this pcb also supports screw-in stabilizers
and we'll be talking about that a little bit more later one big important thing to note is
if you're buying this hot swap pcb to entirely avoid soldering unfortunately you will have to
solder on the encoder knobs and the oled screen yourself now it's not exactly a hard soldering
job but it might be a little bit daunting if this is your first board ever so keep that in mind when
ordering the hot swap version so sad european noises the hotswap pcb does not support iso
but happy european noises the soldering version does support iso yay so you guys get to boulder
i think that's most of the pcb stuff covered yeehaw next we're going to take a closer look at
the bottom case which you could see has been cnc'd out very nice the brass badge is removable and
theoretically you could replace it with something but they don't sell any different badges right now
moving on the sport features an attached usb-c port and no daughter board or anything
if anybody out there is zeus hey zeus how's it going thanks for subscribing i've been told that
the board does have esd protection so moving on i lubed up these durak v2s myself and this was
a 10 minute speed run so these are not perfect by any means now that we have the pcb naked you can
see the dual encoders or where you would put the oled screen on the right like i mentioned before
even on the hotswap pcb version you will need to solder these in yourself but there's plenty
of tutorials online if you need some help i would say for the vast majority of people i
would skew towards getting the hot swap version anyways as installing milmax sockets is annoying
unless you're iso i'm sorry iso game oh yeah we gotta talk about the foam eh for those of you that
like a nice muted sound the board will be coming with pcb foam and this is optional to install
but personally i would recommend it i would however really like to see a pcb silicone version
please kiko i think pcb foam sounds really good but it can sometimes dampen the feel a little bit
if you're using a really flexible plate talking about the plate we'll be using the polycarbonate
plate to come standard with the board and oh my magic transported us to pink dimension well hi
welcome to pink dimension where we'll be talking about the switches we'll be using for this build
ah what's that smell oh it's roses ktt roses very cool now i might get some flack for using
a budget switch and an expensive board but i gotta be honest with you i really like
these switches and i'll be using them in a lot of builds i think they've got the perfect balance of
thok for a linear and they end up a lot thockier than the jwks which can be a little bit clacky
these ktt roses however are three pin and i did need to swap out a couple of them for five pin
as the pcb wasn't very friendly to three pin switches in a couple places like the space bar
or tilde this is because the layout support that they have means that the switches don't
make great plate contact so it's kind of just the pcb holding them in with like the tilde
i guess that's a small price to pay for good layout support eh because of the strip screws
i had a bit of trouble securing the top but there you go the screws are in now thanks magic i think
the overall build process is decently intuitive and easy enough that most people could do it i
would say when putting in the switches for a board like this i'd recommend putting them in with the
plate and pcb out of the case and supporting the hot swap sockets from the back with your finger
when using a flexible plate like polycarbonate it's really easy to just accidentally push through
and break those hot swap sockets so it's good to support them from the back
if you know what i'm saying regardless i think the mix of purple and pink here is very cute
and you know what i like it so moving on key cap time yeehaw i've used these keycaps in one build
before and they're kinetic labs polycaps black on white these are double shot pbt and you know
i'm pbt gang so they're pretty good they have a little bit of weird legending and qc issues
but overall i think they're pretty good for the price because the layout support is a bit wonky
i had to get pretty creative with my keycaps that i used as i mentioned before this is the
biggest upside and downside of this board you get that left set of macro keys which
is really really useful for productivity but really hard to fill up with most keycap sets
i think if you're someone that collects artisans or something like that this would be a great board
or if you buy a set that has a lot of blanks or an f-13 plus row here's a look at the squishiness of
the gaskets i'd say compared to some stuff like the id80 crystal the gasket performance here is
pretty good but compared to something like the type master you're not gonna notice the
squishiest experience or the most responsive experience while typing but even the craziest
gasket mount is only just a tiny bit different in feel from like something like an integrated plate
and the difference between mounting styles is often really exaggerated by people with buyer's
remorse but i digress rant hippo is coming out i better put him back in the cave get in there
so you guys can tease me a little bit for how that space bar sounded but come on i lubed all
of the stabilizers in 10 minutes and it's not the board's fault if the stabilizer sounds bad
that's my fault so i also got the chance to take a look at the wooden kale 90 prototype made by toby
yeah the toby from pbt toby i know pretty crazy this thing really surprised me and
i'll definitely be building a wooden kl90 for myself in the future so get subscribed for that
who knew wood could be so good huh i also had the exclusive privilege of taking a look at the 1500
kl 90 fe this board was gorgeous featured a really cool seracote and a titanium badge
on the butt and titanium plate which was pretty cool these boards were pretty dope but if you want
to check them out a bit more click on that link in the top right to visit my full stream of these so
it's hip your opinion time hip your opinion time you're probably asking me hip yo you're
the only one that's seen this board should i pay 425 dollars for the hot swap version and to that
i say maybe i would say that the main appeal of this board is entirely in its layout if you want
dual encoders or an encoder and an oled and that large macro row on the left then hey this board is
pretty cool and guess what there's nothing else like it despite the gasket being a little bit
underwhelming i've been using it for a couple days now and i'd say the overall typing experience is
quite nice this is one of the thockiest and nicest sounding boards that i've ever gotten my hands on
and i mean you can compare that for yourself by listening to the sound tests of all my boards
now if the layout doesn't appeal to you i would say maybe look other places as it is on the more
expensive side 400 is a lot to be dumping on a board and if the layout is what you want
then this is perfect this is your holy grail pick it up you better act fast you know if not maybe
just stay tuned to see what kiko has in the future in different layouts i'm gonna be leaving you
guys with the sound test please watch the whole thing to support my youtube algorithm overlords
otherwise susan's not gonna let me eat if you like this video do a sound test of your own in the
comments and make sure you leave it a like and get subscribed thanks to josh curboard not suss clatty
platt cody j and aquarius want to know why i just thanked a bunch of people it's because they joined
the watering hole gang want to get some info on that well then here i'll give you a little ad
to watch right before the typing test thanks for watching you see this guy right here this is zack
zack has a lot of keyboards but not a lot of friends and then zach discovered something
pretty crazy he discovered that there's a join button down below and for only 4.99 a month he
friends consider clicking that join button down below 4.99 a month that's it wow disclaimer zack
actually does have friends i swear he definitely didn't pay me to say this he has so many friends
you