My coverage of Computex 2019 is sponsored by Tecware.
Providing quality computer and gaming products.
Another big gun of the mechanical keyboard market is of course Ducky.
The Ducky booth was constantly packed, and from what I saw, was the most popular mechanical
keyboard based booth at Computex.
A lot of Ducky's recent success has been because of the Ducky One 2 Mini, which was an absolute
hit, in particular with this bloke.
So they showed off a bunch of those, with serveral different colourways and themes.
The more interesting 60% though was this Mecha Mini.
This is essentially an aluminium version of the Ducky One 2 Mini, however it has what
they say is a nano coating.
It’s a glossy sort of finish, rather than the typical smooth anodised finish on most
alu boards.
Don’t know how I feel about it.
It does look pretty nice, but it gets pretty grubby with the fingerprints as we can see.
And just like the One 2 mini, it’s USB type C, has RGB backlighting, and seamless backlit
PBT doubleshot keycaps.
The case and PCB is all standard for 60% parts, so it’ll fit into aftermarket cases, and
other standard 60 PCBs will be able to fit into this.
So from what I can see, it’s essentially a Ducky One 2 mini, but in aluminium.
And that’s cool, nothing wrong with that.
But yeh, of course it’ll be more expensive.
The other big new upcoming release is this Ducky One 2 SF.
SF standing for 65%.
The big thing about 65% boards, and why I like them, is that they have the dedicated
arrow keys, and a few nav cluster keys.
The layout is a bit different to other 65% boards.
It has 67 keys, with just 3 keys out of the main area.
A more I guess conventional approach would be to have a forth, but yeh, they left that
block empty.
The weird bit is the 2u right shift.
Normally there would be a 1.75u, which is the common size for most compact keyboards,
and is now in many keycap sets, so it’s easy to cover.
The 2u is a bit more awkward, and they're just using a numpad 0 key for that.
I suspect that these are just placeholder keycaps, so they don't specifically have the
correct legends on them yet.
But still, it isn't the greatest for keycap compatibility, which is a bit of a shame.
The cool version though, had a whole area to itself.
This was the Year of the Pig edition.
And there was a whole lot of info and it had a video playing all about the thought process
behind it.
Too bad I couldn't be bothered to check that stuff out.
But yeh, they actually put in some real good effort towards this one.
First of all, the box was stunning.
It had a custom keyset, with custom legends which to be honest, I don't mind.
If you're going to have a themed board like this, then you gotta do it.
To be honest, I have no idea if these other artisan caps come with the board, but they're
pretty cool as well.
Another new board that Ducky had was the Freedom.
This one was all about its connectivity, in which there are three modes.
Good old wired.
Bluetooth 4.2, and wireless It wasn't much of a looker in my opinion,
and seemed like a bit too much plastic for me.
For me personally, the other Ducky full sized and TKL designs looked better, in which have
stayed the same, so no updates there.
Still an interesting board though in regards to its connectivity, which may tickle someones
fancy.
Overall, I'm super happy with what Ducky did this year.
They didn't just refresh their Shine series with the TKLs and full sized.
They finally came to the 65% game.
Well, it's the same design and all, which is fair enough, as it fits the line up.
The Mecha Mini is a nice edition as well.
With the One 2 Mini doing so well, I really didn't expect basically a metal version of
it, but again, it makes sense.
And yeh, Ducky being Ducky, they have different colours and whatnot for many of their boards.
And they're expanding their lineup slowly, which they really needed to do, because everyone
is on the move to produce more unique keyboards to stand out in this heavily saturated market.
Big thanks again to Tecware for supporting my coverage of Computex 2019.
More stuff to come , so stay tuned.