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These are two keyboards that I've been looking forward to for quite a while,
they announced them in the fall of 2018 and they showcased some demos of them at CES.
These are the SK630 and the SK650 from Cooler Master.
They're very nice-looking keyboards, and the whole purpose of this particular keyboard is that it's a low profile,
just aesthetically pleasing keyboard, and they look really good,
and I think a lot of people are gonna be interested in these devices because of how good they look.
Now, I got these about two weeks ago,
I've been using them since then, and my initial impressions of these particular keyboards were kind of lukewarm,
but I thought I'd try to use them for a while, try to get used to them,
and the more I used them, and the more I kind of like open them up and played with them
I realized that these are just not good keyboards,
and I just don't think most people should be buying them, or this particular type of keyboard.
Let me explain...
These are marketed as low-profile keyboards,
and just right off the bat if you compare it to a real low profile keyboard - this is another keyboard
I'll talk about later - but this to me is an actual low profile keyboard. It's called the Keychron K1,
this is like half the height
of this. The Coolermaster is noticeably taller, and it just no longer feels like a low-profile keyboard.
If anything, it feels very similar to just like a regular keyboard.
So, right off the bat, it's not really a low-profile keyboard.
And the reason for that... I guess the best way to explain this is to open it up.
I probably should have done this in advance. This keyboard has a lot of screws,
I think it's like 12-15 screws. Most keyboards that I've opened up are significantly easier to get into, and this one's not hard, it's just time consuming.
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Now if you end up buying this keyboard and you do want to open it up, just a tip,
there's two screws underneath the space bar, and then there's another screw on the bottom of the keyboard underneath the escape button.
So top-left of the keyboard, it's underneath the rubber foot.
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Okay, so, on the inside I just want to draw attention to two things.
The PCB is pretty clean, like there's no like super sloppy solder or anything like that. It's like... I dunno it's Cooler Master,
they usually make good keyboards and they've done a good job on the PCB. I do wish that the USB connection,
so it uses USB-C, which is great, but the
actual connector is not directly on the PCB,
so they've actually had to have a secondary
kind of piece, and that makes the whole device a little bit more elevated, which is why the device isn't as low profile as it
could or should be. And the other thing, I'll just demonstrate this real quickly, this connector. It's USB-C,
it's technically universal, but it's a relatively
proprietary cable size. Like, you can't stick most USB-C cables to this.
The one that include is perfectly fit, obviously, but I've tried several other USB-C cables and not all of them fit,
so just keep that in mind. Now, another thing I noticed is that at the bottom of the keyboard tray
you'll see kind of like two spaces which I think are for other variants of this keyboard.
So when they originally announced this thing,
they said that it was gonna have a wireless version of this, and this might be like spots for batteries.
But they've designed this case to be a low-profile
mechanical keyboard, but it's just not. I mean,
it's just, it's not low profile. And there's one real big reason as to why this isn't low profile, and it's the actual switches themselves.
So... these switches are Cherry Reds. They are low-profile Cherry Reds.
And...
Okay, I love Cherry switches. Some of my favorite keyboard switches are made by Cherry.
But they've only recently gone into the low-profile game.
This over here, I will show, is a other company. This keyboard switch is also a low-profile switch,
but they've designed this switch so that the keycaps insert into the switch itself,
and it just makes the whole switch a little bit more flatter and shorter.
The Cherry low-profile switch uses your standard Cherry stem,
which might seem like a good idea at first because then you could switch keycaps and such,
but the problem is that this stem is a lot higher and it inserts into the key.
So just the whole mechanism becomes a lot taller than your standard low-profile switch.
And it just makes this keyboard not feel like an actual low-profile keyboard.
The typing experience isn't great, but I don't mind the switches. They feel similar to regular Cherry Reds.
They obviously bottom out quicker, but they actually feel a little bit stiffer to me.
[Typing]
Okay, so I also want to talk about the keycaps themselves.
I'm gonna go back to the... properly assembled version of this keyboard.
These keycaps are...
Not good. They look awesome. They look really really nice.
They just look very clean, and just boxy and industrial. It's why I was attracted to this keyboard,
but they just type really poorly. And, originally, I couldn't figure out what it was that I didn't like about these keycaps.
And it's two things. The dish is pretty shallow,
but that's something that you can kind of get used to over time, at least for myself.
The biggest problem, though, is the spacing between each keycap.
Like, when you're typing on this thing
you're constantly making contact with the other keys.
And even if it doesn't make you have typos, like you may not be pressing those other keys,
but the fact that you can feel them constantly while you type is just an irritating experience,
and it's just not a comfortable keyboard to use, and you might think, "Hey,
I'll swap out the keycaps to something that I do like because it's running Cherry stems". Problem is, they're running proprietary stabilizers,
so none of the keycaps that I had would fit onto this keyboard, which is honestly a big shame.
It is such a nice looking keyboard. The RGB lighting is really good,
they had some nice software that lets you do a lot of stuff with it,
the metal finish on the top looks nice,
the layout of the keyboard is good,
but there's so much I dislike about this keyboard that I can't recommend it to anyone.
And it's not the keycap or the switch individually.
Like, if they'd use this switch with a different type of keycap, it could have worked.
And if vice versa, it could have worked.
If you really want something like this,
so look, if you really want a
low-profile keyboard that is mechanical,
there is something else on the market, that I still don't think this is perfect.
This is a lower-profile keyboard.
It's the Keychron K1. And this is a better implementation of a low-profile mechanical switched keyboard.
So this is using chiclet keys as well,
but they've got a blue switch in here.
And they've just made a low-profile mechanical keyboard a lot better than
Cooler Master did, for a lot cheaper too.
And it's wireless.
So, if you want to check either of these things out, I'll link them below.
But seriously for most people I just do not recommend the Cooler Master SK650 or 630.
Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. See you guys next time.
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