Everglide is very well known in the keyboard world for their switches and stabilizers.
But entire keyboards? Not so much. Today we’re going to take a look at the SK68,
a board created by Everglide as part of a keyboard line you’ve probably never heard of.
SK68 is a gasket mounted entry aluminum 65%. We are locked to a north facing PCB with no
daughterboard, no layout options, and RGB with seemingly no software.
Although there is bluetooth. There are 2 plates to choose from,
polycarbonate and carbon fiber, and 3 colors, gray, lavender, and blue.
It sits at an acceptable 220 dollars. The board doesn’t include aqua kings.
Those were provided by everglide. However it does include everglide v2 stabilizers, which is nice.
I’ve retuned these with 205g0 and XHT-BDZ. On top is the included plate foam, carbon fiber plate,
and since this board is north facing I’m going to use green jacket tactiles, which are long poles.
Next, case assembly. Gaskets are preinstalled, with the bottom gaskets interestingly on the
acrylic diffuser instead of the bottom case. I’ll sandwich the top case, inner assembly,
and diffuser, then connect the PCB to the battery, and screw the case shut. Finally,
we have this optional gold sticker for the bottom logo that I’m going to apply.
On top goes gmk modern dolch 2 mist.
I think it’s fine, but just a little dull. Although,
dull is the standard for prebuilts anyway, and in that regard, it’s not objectively that bad.
It's not even hollow. I think it even sounds more alive than a foamless QK65. Green jackets
on carbon fiber is a very loud configuration, so at least it isn’t both dull and quiet.
And again, this board is north facing, which restricts you to using switch and keycap
combinations that don’t have interference. Lets try with SOTCs as well.
That settles it. This is a clack board. It's actually pretty nice now, and this is without any
mods or external adjustments. The spacebar sounds bad, so if you’re going to use the included stabs,
I would recommend taking some time to wire balance. But overall, not bad. Not bad at all.
I opted for a stiffer build, with a carbon fiber plate. I didn’t feel like this was
going to be a board that was going to handle flex well. The standoffs between
the plate and PCB make it worse. You might have more luck with the polycarbonate plate,
but then you also might risk hurting the sound, so it’s up to you. With the little space inside
the case, there is virtually no flex or bounce, so focus on fine tuning sound for this board.
The design feels like a combination between a prebuilt and lower level custom. On the top we
have uniform bezels all the way around. The sides have a sliver of the acrylic diffuser showing,
which opens up more at the back. In the center here is our recessed USBC port.
On the bottom is nothing more than the everglide logo, engraved into the bottom. Again,
I applied the included sticker on top of this. I feel like this would be a good design for
someone coming into custom keyboards straight from prebuilts, because it’s rgb oriented,
but in a sensible way. I actually do like the way the RGB wraps around the edge. It
reminds me of the drop custom keyboards, but if drop actually understood the community.
You do have the option to use this keyboard wirelessly. Very interestingly, there is no power
switch for the battery. It seems to just go to sleep after a while of inactivity. I also didn’t
get any documentation about how to adjust the RGB, even though that is a feature they tout on their
website. It seems to involve the right alt key, but I’m kinda baffled by how to go from there.
Overall, I think the design pretty accurately reflects the cost.
There's nothing bad about it, just nothing particularly interesting.
There really isn’t a whole lot to say about this board. Like the opposite of tenet.
It feels like an awkward middle ground, where either rounding down to something cheaper
or rounding up to something more expensive would be a better move. At least it doesn’t sound bad.
But there are definitely cheaper customs that can sound good too. Do I think it’s worth almost 4
times as much as the GAS67? Not quite. Do I think it’s worth 1.5 times as much as the QK65, or 1.2
times as much as the Zoom65? probably not either. Do I think this board is still a decent start for
beginners, even though it still could use some work to match the competition for its price range?
Yeah.