When I join a group buy, I consider a variety of things from a confidence perspective.
One of these is the runner’s track record, so when I chose to join in on the Xeno, run
by Zealpc, I thought I was in good hands.
You can learn more about the saga that unfolded in Manofinterests review linked below.
I don’t think the robot voices were as bad as people made it out to be.
Anyway, all I’ve got to say on the matter is that even though the boards were or is?
(is this still incomplete?)
delivered, my confidence in Zeal is lowered to oblivion.
As always, I never have or ever will have a financial relationship with Zeal.
To the best of my knowledge, Zeal had no way to link my order to the channel.
The packaging is arguably the most impressive part of the Xeno.
The exterior box is attractive and the unboxing experience is quite something.
The only downside is that if you didn’t get any Zeal switches bundled in with the
board, you’ll get these empty boxes.
This feels like blank buttons on a car.
The Xeno uses a plain jane box on a wedge design.
Some people call this classic; I call it boring.
I’ve never really liked the absolute cliff of a rear that these have.
I’m a big fan of the layout though.
This 65% plus separated function row approach to 75% is my absolute favorite beating out
anything with exploded arrow keys.
There are three holes on the upper right that share an LED.
Because the window is not frosted at all, you could clearly see the source of the light
which ends up looking a bit unrefined.
A better approach is the one on the KBD19X which uses one LED per hole.
All plate options for the Xeno were brass and shiny, so under certain lighting, you’ll
see some reflection come through.
This was more popular back in the day, but I think it’s held up.
The side profile is about what you’d expect from a design like this.
The lips are pretty deep so picking this up is no problem.
The rear as mentioned before is a cliff interrupted only by a USB Type-C port.
This is correctly recessed so that the cable shielding doesn’t peek through.
On the bottom, you can see the prominent brass weight with Pwner’s logo as well as these
extra long rubber feet.
I really like these screws here which are a warm silver that you’d expect from either
nickel or silver as opposed to the cool silver on steel.
I think the design is inoffensive, and if you’re into plain stuff, this will work
well for you.
But then again, you could find a bunch of other boards with the same design.
I think the most standout thing is the layout that makes 75 the best it could be.
It looks visually balanced, and I think every 75 should adopt it.
When it comes to customs, a marketing feature is good finish quality.
It seems that nowadays cheap boards have pretty good finishes, but KBDFans used to be much
worse back when the Xeno was running.
So from a $460 custom, you’d expect perfection, but that’s not what you get.
From what I’ve seen, I have one of the better ones, but it’s still got some issues.
The biggest is the color or texture mismatch between the top and the bottom.
If you look head-on, the shades of silver are pretty close, but at any other angle,
you can see that one is lighter than the other.
This is just a guess but it seems like the bottom has a thicker grain than the top.
Before you say this is just an angles thing that happens with every keyboard, here are
some examples that look fine.
The PVD on the brass seems okay.
I don’t know if I’d call it rose gold, but it’s definitely got a little something
on top of the usual brass finish.
The interior of the case seems mostly fine with just a couple screw holes having some
residue that resembles rust.
More on that later.
Another strange thing is this smudge that appeared on the weight on the interior.
I don’t remember seeing this when I first got it, but I noticed it when I brought it
back out for a shot in a video a couple months later.
I can’t seem to wipe it off with a microfiber towel.
It’s on the interior so no harm done, but I’m slightly worried about it appearing
on the exterior.
Starting with the bottom, we see the brass weight as well as the daughterboard.
I don’t remember a ton of boards with daughterboards around this time so this is great to see.
Another thing is this channel to route the cable to the main PCB.
Certain other customs like ones from Rama don’t do this so this is an appreciated
attention to detail.
Undoing the daughterboard reveals something really odd: a whole heap of what looks like
rust.
But this is an aluminum keyboard and neither the screws nor the daughterboard seem like
they were damaged at all so what could possibly cause this?
This stuff does wipe or scrape off so at the price point I would have liked to see this
get cleaned up a little.
A sidepoint is that the screws have a really hard time going into the threads, so maybe
these weren’t treated properly.
Taking a look at the weight slot, there’s a large gap on one side that I can actually
see through.
With a weight design like this, this issue might be unavoidable, but the gaps were never
big enough for me to notice.
The small gap on the bottom side is what I’d expect, while the top seems like a mistake.
With the weight off, we can see a bit of damage to unseen parts of the case -- dents on the
both sides, as well as a couple dings near a screw hole.
Again, interior, so not such a big issue, but there is one exterior facing ding on the
rear.
It’s right on the mating edge and it’s tiny but for such an expensive board, this
should have been caught.
The weight itself looks mostly alright from afar, but some machining lines can be seen
in the engraving through the coating, which gives it an unfinished look.
This is even more evident on the interior engraving.
I think at some point it was mentioned that this is a technical limitation.
If that’s true, nothing much we can do about that, but still a bummer.
One last point on the bottom is something Manofinterests mentioned.
The bottom edge that you pick the board up by has no fillet unlike all other edges.
Not too worried about discomfort but sharp edges like these are more prone to damage.
When we bring the top into the picture, we can see that there are alignment guides that
secure the top relative to the bottom.
Not the tightest fit but it works.
Inside, you can see the little window for the LED.
I guess if you wanted, you could buff this out to make it more frosted.
I’m just going to keep the light off though.
Under close inspection, the top has similar flaws as the bottom.
Rusty screw holes, a shiny spot next to a thread and a couple light scratches.
But this piece has a flaw that really takes it up to the next level of badness for me.
When I screw together the top and bottom, taking care to align them as best as I can,
there is an unmistakable bow in the center of the rear for a length of about 3 inches.
The aluminum in the area isn’t particularly thin and nothing else is bent out of shape,
so I think this must have been a machining mistake.
It is small and it barely captures on camera, but it’s really a major downer to have pieces
not mating correctly.
The plate doesn’t seem to have any problems, and the PCB looks good to me.
One issue here was that when I shock the case, the board would turn off until unplugged and
replugged.
It seems like I could potentially mod the daughterboard to ground the case to resolve
this issue.
I might take a look at that down the line.
When it comes to evaluating keyboards like this, there are two sides -- design and execution.
I think Pwner’s design is just fine by today’s standards, and maybe ahead of its time.
I have full confidence that if the Xeno had a 2021 redesign, it would address case grounding,
weight gaps, indicator LEDs and all that.
On the other side, the execution here, especially for the money is poor.
Yes this looks mostly fine from an everyday use point of view, but at such a price premium,
you’re looking for the small stuff.
I think by most people’s standards, mine would be B-Stock for the price and some of
the other ones I’ve seen wouldn’t even qualify for C-Stock.
I’d pay maybe up to $300 for what I have here.
My plate is brass half which is implemented by letting all of the alphas and the numbers
sit independent of the plate.
The bottom out feel on the alphas is about what you’d expect from a half plate without
PCB cuts.
A bit of bounce with a fair bit of dense vibration transfer.
I think I want a little bit more from it, but it’s alright.
On the alphas, you can expect the familiar plasticy sound of plateless builds, and the
brass portions, expectedly, sounds hard.
As always, I put sound tests in as a matter of convention.
Don’t come to purchasing decisions based on this alone as there are many factors that
make sound tests not representative of real life.
My Xeno is a poorly executed okay design with a rocky history.
I think I would have been really happy with it if it didn’t take so long, but while
I waited, I got to try a ton of other stuff that I liked better.
While minor, the board has many flaws that are inappropriate coming from such a well
known figure in the community.
The communication during the buy has been shockingly terrible, and well, this for me
cost all of Zeal’s credibility.