Ah, good old Ducky.
Been here for ages, always been popular, but finally they’ve joined the 65% game in 2019.
The Ducky One 2 Mini was immensely popular, so it only makes sense to follow it up with
the One 2 SF, which stands for sixty-five, and I’d say that this may be the more suitable
choice over the Mini for a lot of people.
Inside the box we have the keyboard itself.
A user manual and warranty information.
There’s a USB type C cable.
A bunch of keycaps.
A wire keycap puller.
And another space bar.
Always nice when keyboards come with a dust cover as well, but here it is.
In the hands it feels fine.
Nothing special, with minimal flex and a bit of heft as it does have an internal steel
plate.
And straight away, we can see that it very much resembles the One 2 Mini.
Let’s chuck on these extra caps just because.
Awesome that they include these extra keycaps, which does include a regular enter key as
well.
And I guess to make it easier overall, they include the numpad enter keycap, which obviously
doesn’t fit on here.
And as with tradition with Ducky, they included the Year of the Pig spacebar, which is made
from ABS plastic and is laser etched.
So different from the rest of the caps, but it already stands out anyway.
So yeh, in regards to case design, it’s exactly the same sort of style as their other
boards from the One 2 range.
So there’s that split two tone colour, which just spices it up a bit.
And I quite like it.
It’s angular with a few more lines, but clean and simple.
On the rear there’s a USB type C port.
Again, nearly all keyboards are moving to USB C. And just some tasteful branding hidden
away back here as well.
But one thing I realised when taking video, is that the keyboard is warped.
You can clearly see that the case is curved a bit.
Like the actually keyboard isn’t as it does have that steel plate, but the enclosure does
curve upwards towards the middle.
So that’s actually pretty bad, although it may just be my unit.
And while it didn’t really have any twist, the middle is quite spongy.
It’s not particularly rigid at all, as if it wasn’t really connected properly to the
metal plate.
It doesn’t affect the typing experience or anything, but it still could have been
better, because it’s Ducky, you expect quality from them.
But yeh, it really is all about that 65% layout.
So the Ducky One 2 Mini was a 60% keyboard.
Where the percentage is relative to a full sized 100% keyboard.
The main thing that 65% allows for is dedicated arrow keys which is huge for some people.
And that includes myself, I don’t really like using 60% boards because I love arrow
keys.
And then we have some nav cluster keys on the right, and all that only adds 1 column,
so we still pretty much get the space saving and ergonomic benefits of a 60%.
But Ducky have done it a bit differently.
There’s 3 nav keys, which includes delete which is nice.
And home and end are on a secondary layer.
And it’s like this because of this unique look that they’ve gone with.
Like they could have easily put a key below page down, but went for a spacer.
And there’s a gap between the nav keys and the main area of the keyboard, but I like
that.
However, this is mainly due to the odd choice of having a 2u right shift.
So on a normal keyboard right shift is 2.75u, but on a standard compact keyboard, it is
1.75u.
With proper aftermarket keysets, 2u shift keycaps are usually included, but 1.75u is
like always included.
It’s not an issue in regards to actually use.
I kinda feel like they did this to differentiate themselves.
Because when you start doing these compact layouts, they do start looking the same.
These keycaps are made from about 1.2mm thick PBT plastic, and are doubleshot, so the legends
are another piece of plastic and won’t fade away.
They’re pretty nice.
They’re seamless, and the font is quite clean.
And this allows for that RGB backlighting to shine through.
So let’s look at the keyboards functionality, which is done by having all the other functions
and keys on layers.
So as you can see on the keycaps themselves, nearly every key has another function on the
front of the keycap.
So there’s the default layer.
And then 2 additional layers, with the FN layer, and the FN + Alt layer.
The FN layer pretty much has all the missing keys on there.
And we have the function row on top, all the nav keys like home, end, delete, insert and
all that on the right hand side.
We also have some media controls, and mouse controls if you really need it.
The FN + Alt layer is mostly to do with the customisability of the keyboard.
But mainly it’s all the lighting controls.
By pressing FN + ALT + T we can go through all the lighting effects and modes.
We can also record macros on board, which is pretty similar to how the Vortex keyboards
do it.
So we have 5 customisable profiles on the 2 to 6 keys, with 1 being the default, so
you can’t record to that.
To start we press FN + ALT + tab for 3 seconds, and the caps lock key will start blinking.
Pick the key you want to implement the macro to.
And then do whatever sequence you want.
When done recording, press FN + ALT+ tab for a second, and that’s it, you’ll have your
sequence saved on a key.
There’s a bunch more other little stuff that you can do, and the manual goes through
everything in more detail that I didn’t, because there’s a lot to cover.
So if you actually have or get this board, I’d recommend you read through it.
And that’s the thing, you gotta know this stuff because it’s all onboard.
There’s no downloadable software like nearly every other keyboard out there.
And for many, that can be a negative, because you don’t have that interface to easily
go through all the options.
Everything is done with all these somewhat complicated key combos that to be fair are
labelled, but it’s still not as intuitive.
In addition to that, we do have the DIP switches on the bottom to change a few things.
Ducky of course uses Cherry MX keyswitches.
I have Cherry MX Blues in mine, so a loud clicky switch.
But it will of course come in the other switch variants.
The typing experience is as expected.
The good thing is that the stabilisers are good.
I feel that companies are beginning to realise how important stabilisers are.
Because no matter how good the keyboard is.
If you have bad stabs, then it just ruins the whole thing.
But yeh, minimal rattle on these ones.
To take the keyboard apart, first we need to remove the top plastic piece by prying
it off, as the screws are hidden below it.
And then just unscrew the keyboard from the base.
The case is very simple.
The top piece is basically just a little cover for the keyswitches.
And the base super simple.
There’s no ribbing for reinforcement, and the standoffs are just plastic, which I actually
had an issue with screws just not stopping when you turn them.
The mounting plate is made from 1.5mm steel which is pretty standard.
And that gives the keyboard much of its weight and rigidity.
Here’s the PCB.
We have the SMD RGB LEDs for each keyswitch.
And it looks like there will be ISO versions, but that’s yet to be seen.
Okay, so all up, it is a slightly bigger version of the Mini.
And I do believe that this would be the more suitable choice compared to the Mini, for
a lot of people.
We all know how popular the Mini was and is, with people jumping on it following others.
But I’m certain that there would have been a heap of people that didn’t find the 60%
layout easy to use, but got it anyway.
This SF on the other hand is very similar in every way, but the dedicated arrow keys
are just something that I personally do love to have.
There are some issues with the build.
Mine was curved, which just shouldn’t be a thing.
And it isn’t the most rigid design and construction.
I do like how it looks though.
They’ve found a unique but simple aesthetic across their One 2 line.
And yeh, it’s great to see Ducky expand their line further into these compact layouts.