- Ribbon cables succ.
Can you see all those ribbon cables?
I've been thinking about buying a new keyboard
because I've been daily driving a 60% recently,
but I really still want that numpad.
And I don't wanna buy an extra one.
But Mountain, they've got a new 60%
and a numpad that can connect to it.
What?
If you don't know about Everest and Mountain,
they've been making keyboards.
I think the company is actually Mountain
and the keyboard is Everest.
They've been making keyboards for,
I think four years or something now.
I think this company started in like 2018.
Basically, they've got these really cool modular keyboards
where you can take a numpad and you can slot it into it.
Because for any of those of you who don't know
what a 60% keyboard is, it's basically a really small layout
using 60% of a full keyboard.
So you're missing stuff like your F row,
you're missing your numpad.
Sometimes you're missing arrow keys
depending on like the actual layout of everything.
You've often got some smaller keys as well.
Like maybe your Tab and Enter are a little shorter
than you're used to.
And it looks something like this.
So I've actually taken this one home a couple days early.
I really wanted to open it up and take a look inside,
because Mountain is doing a few,
or they're claiming to do a few things.
Mostly they're targeting the more enthusiast market
by adding silicone on the bottom and foam.
Silicone is sound dampening, but it's also just for weight.
And then the foam layer is mostly like a sound thing.
It does make things feel a bit sturdier,
but it mostly helps you absorb some sound and give you that,
like more thoughty sound that you're looking for,
or at least a lot of people are looking for.
On top of making this new 60% board
they've also got their three switches that have come out.
They've got a 45 linear, a 45 linear speed
which has a shorter travel distance.
And then the one I took home, which is a 55 tactile
that I actually really like.
I think that it's a little too heavy for me personally,
even though 55 shouldn't be to be honest.
But it feels great when you actually just sit here
and kind of randomly type on it.
But my issue is, as soon as I took it home
and I started actively like chatting with people,
or like playing games or whatever,
it was just a little bit too much.
They all come pre-lubed, which is great.
However, factory lubing isn't always the most uniform.
You'll have some switches that feel great,
and then you'll have some that don't quite feel as good.
I also think that you can typically do a better job
by yourself if you have Krytox 205g0
and a lot of time on your hands.
However, I think they've done a pretty good job frankly.
This is the 45 linear.
And we'll just take a quick listen to it.
(keyboard crackling)
But like that sounds pretty good.
It's not the best sounding keyboard I've ever had,
but it's pretty decent, check out the stabilizers.
These feel pretty good.
They're a little too stiff.
I'm not exactly sure what they lubbed them with,
or if they're using some kind of like foam mod
up against the bar, but they feel pretty good comparatively.
Oh yeah, we should probably look at all the other stuff
in the box.
There's more than just a keyboard I promise.
What else you get in the box?
You get a cable.
It's sleeved, but it's not coiled.
That's fine.
See, it comes with this handy dandy hot key guide,
which is really nice because QMK
doesn't work with the board.
At least not yet.
This is embargoed.
So maybe wasn't up yet.
But either way you've gotta use their Basecamp software.
Oh, on the other side,
there's a bunch of stuff about it.
So it's hot swappable, which is already a huge plus.
Basically any new keyboard coming out that costs
more than a $100, if it's not hot swappable
I'm just not really interested to be honest.
- [Jono] Corsair.
- Corsair.
(laughs)
But this is pretty neat.
It shows you how the numpad connects to the main board.
And then it shows you how, oh, another huge feature
that I actually love on this thing
is it's got three different USB ports
that you can connect to on the front.
Different custom cables
are going to be arranged differently.
Sometimes you want 'em coiled and going out.
Sometimes you want 'em going straight.
Sometimes you wanna go in left.
Whatever.
What happens is you have to plug it in,
and depending on where the plug is on your keyboard,
'cuz somewhere in the middle, somewhere in the left,
somewhere on the right, if you are on the side
actually even, it can look bad basically.
And I know that seems really minor,
but when you've paid like $60 to $80 for a cable
and you hundreds of dollars for a keyboard
you want everything to line up nice and flush, and straight
and perfect angles.
It's a minor thing, but when you care
you really care about it.
So on top of our cable and our little guide, which is great,
you get a handy dandy keycap and switch puller.
These are my favorite.
I really don't like the tiny plastic ones.
I think these are essentially perfect.
You can get switches out, no problem with this guy.
And then you can get keycaps off,
no problem with this guy here.
We also get little extra keycap with the Mountain logo.
And then you get this foam insert, which contains the feet.
This is another really cool feature on this board.
I think it's on their other ones as well.
But I haven't really used those.
I've only used this guy so far.
So instead of like a flip down feet, which are convenient,
I won't deny that.
These are just elegant and a really nice solution.
Basically, they're all magnetic.
And then you got them on the back of your keyboard as well.
So here's the base pieces.
This guy and this guy, and these can be taken off.
If you don't like the base angle that this is resting on,
what you can do is you can take these little pucks,
and then you can stack 'em,
and then you put the end cap on,
and now it's taller.
Yeah, that's much more comfortable at least for me.
(keyboard crackling)
So on top of these magnetic feet,
which is a super cool design,
we've got the connections, and these are also magnetic
for the USB-C ports, which fit our handy dandy numpad.
So I actually didn't know this,
but apparently a few people have been starting
to do this modular design that you can attach
multiple things to the same board.
And frankly, I love it.
I'm pretty on board.
So this actually confused me.
I haven't used one of these before.
And when I originally opened it up
I had no idea how you're supposed to connect it.
'Cause I'm like, well, this doesn't go together at all.
But if you flip it over
there's actually this really cool slider on the bottom.
Yeah, there you go.
It's a little stiff, but it pops out a USB-C connector.
And boom, just like that now you've got a TKL kind of.
TKLs typically have like your F row and stuff.
So it's still a 60% plus, really?
I don't know what I'd call this thing actually,
but I think I really like it actually, it's great.
You can just use your numpad,
and then when you don't like it, you take it off,
slide that, pop this cover back on, put it away.
So that's, the other really nice thing is that,
say you don't like it on this side for whatever reason,
it works both ways.
So now you can just slide it onto the other side too.
Boom, now your numpad is over there.
I really like this thing, but my one complaint
actually does center around the numpad.
Let's say you don't wanna use it on either side.
Let's say you want your keyboard here,
and then you want your numb pad up here.
That's kind of what I have right now at home.
I've got my keyboard here,
and then I've got my numpad up here,
and then I've got my mouse right here.
So that I can just go whatever, whatever, whatever,
I need numbers right there,
and then go back to my mouse.
You can't do that with this thing.
There's no front USB-C port, and I get it.
You can just hook it up to this guy, that's fine.
But it is a small minor complaint
that I kind of wish they would resolve.
Now that we've talked about some of the features
we should probably mention the actual quality
of the keyboard itself.
It's a little flexy.
It's a brushed aluminum top plate.
But aside from that it's pretty much plastic.
I'm pretty sure it's a polycarb plate underneath.
And then there's also this like layer of RGB
around the edge.
So we talk a lot of time, but like what's inside a keyboard.
We don't usually look inside them,
just honestly don't typically have enough time
on short circuit.
But I really want to take the time to do that with this one,
because these guys are claiming a bunch
of like foam inserts.
So for this guy I've actually taken off all of the keycaps
ahead of time.
And all we really have to do are take out these,
I think there's eight little screws.
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So there's one problem.
And I found this at home pretty quickly,
and it's actually the reason why I didn't take
the whole thing completely stripped apart,
is because when you open it,
can you see all those ribbon cables?
Typically you've got these tiny ribbon cables
for daughter boards.
So you'll have, often have the PCB up top,
and then you'll have the USB-C connector
on its own daughter board a lot of the time.
Not every board, some PCBs have 'em soldered on,
and that's fine.
But this, because it's got those two extra sides,
that's like three daughter boards
this thing is hooked up to.
You honestly, as a normal consumer
you probably don't wanna open this keyboard.
That's, I guess my other, I had the one complaint
about the numpad.
This is my one real complaint about the keyboard itself,
is that ribbon cables succ.
They're not that hard.
You get some tweezers, you unplug 'em, you plug 'em back in.
It's not that big of a deal.
But they're easy to break, and they are a bit of a pain
in the to actually put 'em back in.
So for the average person using this guy,
I don't know if they're gonna want to do much upgrading
to the case itself.
The switch is, yeah, you should probably lube them.
But other than that I would leave it as is.
So what we've got though, is this really nice silicone
on the bottom, and it's heavy stuff too.
'Cuz silicone is super dense.
And you end up with this like pretty nice
kind of foam layer.
I've put foam down here before,
but like thick neoprene foam not silicone.
So this is actually my first time using silicone.
And I think that it's done a fine job.
My other kind of issue is that the foam
that goes under the switches and under the PCB is,
it's not the most expensive foam.
It's not neoprene, or even anything better than that.
It's basically just like packing foam kind of.
It's a little nicer than what you get in the box,
but it's not stellar.
So we clean up a little bit,
and then I grabbed the keyboard that I took home
the other night.
And one thing we didn't really mention
is that this comes with ton of keycaps.
So they send all of these, and they're great.
We're not gonna open every single box.
We'll have like some visual on screen.
But basically there's something like five
or six different types.
And then each of those you can get the B variant,
which is the inverse.
So instead of this, like what turquoise with white,
you can get white with turquoise.
Pretty much everything for cherry cross stems
will work on these guys.
But these specifically from Mountain are PBT double shot.
You can see through them, the RGB shines through nicely.
It's not like the best keycaps I've ever seen,
some of the stuff could be a little nicer mostly,
the things with small holes in them like the A and the B,
on like Tab and Caps Lock and stuff.
It just, the light doesn't shine perfectly
through that ring.
Super minor detail.
They feel fine.
They look nice.
And I actually really like them.
And yeah, it's super simple.
I love how quickly it just works.
Like you just plug in the numpad
and it just instantly lights up and starts working.
It's awesome.
So yeah, as you can see the double shot PBT,
so you can see right through,
it shines through really nicely.
You've got this whole diffusion layer
around the outside as well.
I'm a really big fan of that personally.
It's taking forever to load.
I don't know why.
It let me go to the lighting effects,
and then it's just like, actually hold on a second,
we got some stuff to figure out.
- [Jono] Maybe unplug it.
- No device connected, all right.
It's like the software's running,
but there's like a weird loading circle.
- [Jono] Woah, look, it has a blue,
woah the RGB pattern changed.
- Yeah, like it's trying to do stuff.
Cool.
So we actually really wanted to show you Base Camp,
but the overall look of it looks great.
I'm sure it does everything that you want it to.
I can see all the effects and stuff.
They're just kind of great out.
You can make a bunch of profiles.
The problem is we're getting this loading spinner icon,
and I don't know why.
It only happens once I go into a sub-menu.
This product isn't out yet, this is embargoed.
So it's probably just in beta.
It'll probably be updated.
I'm sure at launch it'll work great.
For us for now we can't really try it all that much.
Sorry.
The overall price of this thing is pretty decent as well.
I think it's 140 if you want just the keyboard
with any of the switches.
And then if you want the keyboard with your own keycap set
from their selection, it's an extra $20.
So 160 for a board plus keycaps.
And then if you wanna buy them separately,
I think it's like 35 bucks for the keycaps.
And then, because you don't have to buy it with the numpad
you can then get the numpad for, I think 40 or 50 bucks
after that as well.
So it does add up to a little over $200
if you wanna buy this full setup
with a custom set of keycaps.
But I think by itself, like this is a half decent 60% board.
It's hot swap, it's got arrow keys on it still.
You've got three different USB-C ports
to choose from for where you wanna plug a cable in,
which is like, it's such a minor feature,
but I can't get over how much I like it,
because it's just nice.
It'll fit both five and three pin switches.
So don't worry too much about that.
Should be basically compatible
with whatever you wanna put on this thing.
I don't know if I would buy it,
simply because I'm not crazy about 60%.
Full price I personally wouldn't.
But if you're looking to buy a new keyboard
and you can't decide between 60% or TKL,
but you're okay with something kind of in between that,
then this is actually a really solid option.
So there you have it.
That's the Mountain 60.
It's pretty sweet.
If you like this video
make sure to check out our other videos
if you wanna see one.
Where I didn't like the keyboard so much,
maybe check out the Corsair K70.
It's just kind of a little bit behind the times
at this point.
Not this guy though.