okay okay I get it you want to know what keyboard to buy well howdy hey I'm hippiotech and let's
just say I've been doing this for three whole years and by this I mean hoarding keyboards so
let's just say I've got a couple keyboards up my closet um don't take that out of context well it
turns out this is great for you because in my quest to try hundreds of keyboards I'm gonna
be showing you my favorite budget keyboards that you can buy oh and did I mention I'll
show you switches and keycaps as well Gamers I haven't forgotten about you either but first I
need some ground rules the keyboards that I show you must be in stock right now or soon and they
must be hot swappable so they're beginner friendly most of these are going to be custom keyboards so
I'm gonna start with my basic recommendations and then I'm gonna move to the switches and
keycaps and finish off with the budget Kings so uh you're going to want to stick around for
that speaking of sticking around 79 of you aren't subscribed so stick around the Subscribe button
now before we get to the super cheap and fancy Customs let's start with the mid-range and I
know what you're thinking kikron hipio again well yeah the kikron Q series of keyboards and now the
Q Pro Series are a line of keyboards that I feel comfortable recommending to literally
anyone getting into keyboards they're what I like to call the good enough keyboard now
obviously they're not the best but they come in at a lot of different prices and they also
come in in a lot of different layouts like jeez that's a lot of layouts what now what I think
makes these so great is beginner boards is they sound good once you put in just a little bit of
effort modding them and that'll be a trend with a lot of these more budget-friendly
keyboards in this list oh you don't believe me just just listen to this before and after okay
yeah for 170 bucks that's really not that bad but I know what you're thinking hippo that's
still too expensive and I'll be getting to the cheaper boards later don't worry
but you know it's not cheap yet people keep buying the gmmk pro and I genuinely have to
wonder why people keep buying this board as I think it's genuinely overpriced like it's
fine but it's overpriced please don't don't buy it don't buy it stop let's play a little
game I'm going to show you this keyboard and you're going to tell me is it modded or stock
well it's actually stock this is the dust silver lilac 75 and it's the start of budget I'll give
you just a little taste it starts at 80 for a fully built keyboard and they've got a lot
of different color options now I've got full videos covering every keyboard in this video
and also I've got them linked down below with affiliate links but this one was genuinely
one of the most impressive stock keyboards I've ever seen however when you buy it make
sure you select the gadaron switches those are the best by the way now unlike some of
the other keyboards when you mod this one it actually doesn't make it any better so this
is definitely one of the best budget pickups if you're incredibly lazy however I'll have
a more premium pickup if you are also lazy uh but have more money also dust silver has
some cheaper boards like this 53.60 that was a mouthful don't get them they're nowhere near as
good as the quality on their 75 percent just save up the extra 20 bucks like that's not very good
speaking of saving up some of these boards might be in stock from time to time so I'm including
them in this video like the Zoom 75 now any of the keyboards from melatrix tend to hover around
150 to 200 bucks but they're well well worth it this is the zoom 75 which comes in stock every
once in a while as well as a zoom 65 tkl Etc they come with a lot of foam and pretty well looped
stabilizers which is the ultimate package that makes it so your keyboard will end up sounding
oh so good oh they also feel good too I guess but I'll have their website linked Down Below in case
any of their other boards happen to pop on sale while you're watching this video who knows they
might be in stock they might not be that's really one of the biggest problems with the
keyboard hobby is sometimes stuff just comes in and out of stock so you have to move kind
of quick when you find something that you like speaking of things that I like my friend Toby
is running a sale right now for his wooden keyboards now these are a bit more expensive
but they're handmade wood and they feel and sound absolutely incred edible it's a 75 with a macro
row and I'll have it linked down below ooh bars uh let me just leave you with the sound test of it
now for some of you you might be thinking hippo I don't care about about typing all I
care about is gaming and what I have to say to you is most keyboards work for that like 90 of
gaming keyboards are marketing and uh that's it but if you really insist on a game or keyboard
I'll help you out one of the few keyboards that isn't marketing that I've actually tried is the
wooding 60he they've got these gamer switches but the keyboard's a bit more expensive coming in at
175 bucks and now again I've got a whole entire video on this but essentially these are some of
the only keyboards that I would say would be actually more advantageous to use for gaming
but it's only in very specific use cases it has rapid trigger which basically means that
your key will reset every time you start to go up this is really great if you're playing
games like OSU and uh not that much else really like it might be kind of nice but uh
it's really uh a lot of marketing but if you insist on that then hey the wooting is
technically the best gamer keyboard look at all these gamer features that it has but ultimately
I think the switches don't feel very smooth and they also don't sound very good so [Applause]
let's talk about a different gaming keyboard the 180 Asus strix scope 2. now this one literally
doesn't have any features that would make you better at gaming but it's got the gamer
aesthetic which some people really like for some reason it's also got really good Wireless and
it's one advantage is that it sounds absolutely incredible stock it also feels really nice too
now there's a million gamer keyboards out there but hopefully the takeaway from this
is that you don't really need a keyboard specifically for gaming and we can go back
to the budget part of the video where you're not going to be wasting all of
your money just for gamer aesthetic don't get me wrong these aren't necessarily bad and you
shouldn't feel bad if you want these types of keyboards it's just all about preference
now I might have tried 40 keyboards last year but I tried a lot more than 40 switches now you might
think all keyboard switches are the same there's no difference between any of them well you're
kind of right but you're also very wrong keyboard switches come in all different shapes and colors
not really sizes though and let's talk about my favorite wujay switches now you may or may
not have heard of the process of lubing switches where you manually brush Lube on switches to make
them sound and feel better what I discovered last year is that it can frequently be a waste of time
now we're seeing a lot more Factory Lube switches like the wuche studio switch line which I'll have
linked down below even more specific than that are the Morandi switches which come in at 45
dollars to build out a board they are absolutely the best switch I've ever tried from the factory
literally incredible I mean look at the sound test for the zoom 75 from earlier that's these
full disclosure they are a sponsor of mine but these have quickly become one of my favorite
switches for anything a lot of switches just end up scratchy and spring pingy out
of the box when they're not Factory looped I've tried many many different batches from muche
and they always end up incredibly consistently lubed and really good I could spend the whole
entire video going just on switches and let me know if you want that but these forty dollar
switches from Echo tend to be also very very good now basically any Echo switch that says
that it's lubed will end up being very decent and if you aren't familiar with lubing it's
where you mod a switch by literally putting lubricant in it to make it sound more smooth
I don't care about plastic now I've literally made a whole entire music video about how I hate
keyboard group buys and keycaps mostly because they're always out of stock and you can never buy
the nicest ones they're also really expensive well for around 25 bucks you can get these B
keycaps they look amazingly cute they're a flat profile and I really like them one thing that's
definitely gotten better in the last year is that if you've ever heard of gmk keycaps they're like
the quote-unquote most popular well they're now frequently in stock at drop.com but if a hundred
dollars plus is too much for you then you can get these Idabel blue cat keycaps for only 50 bucks
which is a really good value they sound amazing there's also offerings from Echo that you can end
up getting for quite cheap although some of them are clones which is a little bit cringe there's
also a million different keycap sets on Amazon that are original and decently affordable like
these some gazen keycaps that come in stock from time to time that are only 42 bucks for a whole
entire kit with keycaps the most important thing is making you sure that it'll fit your keyboard so
just compare the layout of your keyboard with the keycaps that it shows on the website and then just
get something that gives you Joy you know these are just recommendations obviously you might not
like these color schemes that I recommended but keep your mind open now if you're ready
for my incredibly biased opinion I think the best keycaps you could possibly get right now
are polycaps hippo this is in fact my keycap set and you can get it for 79.99 from kinetic
labs this is a die sub PBT set that I worked very hard to bring to fruition so obviously the
best keycaps are mine and there are no other better keycaps that is a joke that is a joke
here's the part of the video a lot of you've been waiting for the budget friendly version
now we'll get cheaper as the video goes on but first let's start with the nj80 from this video
with Jeremy this was really good value last year but it's actually started to have gotten beaten
out but what has beaten it out I mean what what's going on here well the sense75 from drop is now
99 for an aluminum keyboard that can sound a lot better with just a little bit of work now
99 bucks is kind of The Sweet Spot for Budget custom keyboards now budget Customs usually
get features like gasket mounts which makes the keyboard a little bit more pillowy to type on but
with some of the pre-builts you might have to do a little bit of modding like check this out
now another really good Contender for the same exact price bracket is the monsgeek M1 this is
another gasket mounted aluminum board and yes 99 but what I really like about this is you've got
a lot of different options at this price point now so you can kind of choose the aesthetic that
fits you the best the mons geek M1 has a little cutout on the side which some people might really
like and it looks generally very clean and clacky but now it's time for the ultimate budget section
of the video now earlier when I talked about the Dust silver I think that keyboard is honestly one
of the best but for 64.99 the kikron V1 and other kikron V series are an amazing pickup
I told you it'd be coming back kikron and if you spend 84 bucks for fully built it also is not bad
the kikron v-series has expanded and now has a ton of different layouts for a lot of affordable
prices now the cube Pro Series will be better but the v-series is great if you're on a budget
and just really need a good keyboard so if that checks all your boxes then there you go you've
got a kikron but what if it doesn't well for sixty dollars you might want to build your own this is
the kit Adam and it's a Lego knockoff keyboard you can get it Bare Bones for 60 bucks or the
full kit for 99 which is honestly a great value and dang it we're back to that price now this
keyboard definitely took me by surprise when I built it earlier this year I was expecting
it to feel and sound cheap but it actually feels quite weighted and sounds very very good
now I can hear you you're saying hippo these boards they're like a hundred plus dollars
that's absolutely ridiculous you're insane I don't know what that has to do with any
of this but here's a budget option for you coming in at around 30 to 40 dollars here's
the wilmier 60 this can typically be found in stock at Amazon link down below and it's
a diamond that needs some polishing if you're looking to do some DIY this might
be the keyboard for you if not then uh never again personally I put 20 modding this thing
and the videos in the top right by the way and I got it sounding good enough just listen
oh I'm sorry was that not cheap enough was my years of research and keyboard making not cheap
enough for you are you budget gang how about twenty dollars oh twenty dollars oh now this
is from one of my most popular videos where I upgraded the most popular keyboard on Amazon
this is the EU Sue and it's as cheap as fifteen dollars from time to time now it is bottom of
the barrel basic but it has some crazy crazy potential if you're willing to give it some
love kinda like me now it's got terrible keycaps it's got terrible Blue switches
it's got a plastic case you're probably thinking hipio why is this in the list at
all this is garbage well as I mentioned before if you got a couple hours of time
which I'm assuming a lot of you might have more time than money then you can turn this
into something way way better these are twenty dollar keycaps that I put on here not bad right
now if you don't leave a like and a comment for how good that was I don't even know anymore but
ultimately all of the keyboards in this video are good in their own right and it really just
depends what you want as keyboards are preference do you value having a keyboard that's just the
best right as you buy it then one of these more expensive keyboards might be a bit better for
you does every single dollar matter but maybe you have a little bit more free time then one of the
budget options in this video might be suitable for you are you just really lonely and kind of
need a friend well any of these keyboards will work because the keyboard Community is so nice
if I happen to leave a keyboard out that you can think of then leave a comment down below
as I'd love to know I'm only one hippo but I would love to try a bunch more keyboards this
year and next year and the year after and then I might go on retirement actually but who knows
thank you