- As a PC gamer, it can be pretty hard to choose.
Do you play with a mouse
and keyboard or do you pick up a controller?
Well, today we've got the Megalodon Console 64 from DOIO.
You pronounce that DOIO.
You can find it on drop.com.
And they're currently doing a pre-release sale.
It's going for, well, we'll tell you later, but ooh,
this is pretty cool.
It does not come with key caps and switches.
Just so you're aware,
we actually put this together beforehand or rather belted.
What else do we get though?
Cable is okay, A to C.
Oh, isn't the, what's the arm span thing?
Your arms is like how tall you are.
Yeah, I'm like 5.6, 5.7 on a good day.
This thing is crazy.
Sorry, I lost my train of thought.
It's so weird having an actual keyboard that you can hold
like a controller.
I've been looking at a lot of handhelds recently
like the steam deck and the ROG Ally,
they're definitely not this big,
but they're also not that much smaller
to be perfectly honest.
And I'll be frank, I don't think you're actually
supposed to hold this keyboard like this.
The joystick is joy to mouse
and you can map everything through via, which is great,
but I'm pretty sure this is not the intended use.
The right side is also not a thumbs stick,
it's just a knob for anyone who is hoping
for an actual controller that you could use.
But you do also get four little mini buttons down here.
They feel terrible to press.
I don't like those at all actually.
They don't even feel like really good face buttons.
It's kind of just like a little pogo stick that's sitting
up and you can press it down. So I'm not a fan.
(button clicks)
Yeah, not comfortable.
Does not feel good to press.
But you know, you're not using this
like an actual controller, so whatever.
It's not the end of the world.
This is apparently a little screen that we'll see
once it's plugged in, it just displays a bit of information.
You can change it yourself, which is pretty cool.
You like, (laughs).
- [James] I wanna mention the other color.
- (laughs) sorry.
We got the red and blue one, which looks a lot
like a switch if that wasn't super obvious
to basically everyone watching.
It comes in a bunch of other colorways,
white, yellow, soy and pink.
Those are all sold out right now apparently.
I don't know if they're gonna change stock at some point.
It's currently a pre-order and ships July 7th
so maybe you'll get lucky
and they'll restock if you're not a big switch fan.
But for everyone else, yeah, should be fine.
If you like red and blue, then this is maybe for you.
If you haven't already noticed, this is a 60% keyboard,
but it's got 64 keys and part
of the problem is they've really squished it in here
and you've got a two U shift
and then a one U shift on this side.
And as you can see
from our key cap set, that is not included.
It doesn't match.
We've got our enter key sideways that's not
supposed to be there at all.
And then we're using a Windows key
for the one U, the nice thing but the one U is,
that's basically any other key cap.
You can put literally whatever you want there,
but two U is kind of a weird size
that you don't see super often
and you might need to buy a more expensive key cap set
if you wanna make sure everything fits perfectly on here.
GMK sets, for example, tend to ship
with basically every option under the sun.
Your options from Amazon that are like 30, 40 bucks,
they might not quite fit, so be careful.
It might be a 60% keyboard,
but it's definitely longer than average.
This is honestly almost a full-size board
in terms of length at least.
And it weighs, they advertise about 1300 grams.
Let's see how accurate that is.
1500. Wow, this is a heavy board.
Oh, it's probably 1300
without the key caps and switches and everything.
But then you add switches, key caps
and it'll add probably a couple hundred grams.
So, that actually sounds about right.
It normally has a 5.5 degree typing angle
which is pretty okay for most people.
You might wanna wrist rest just
because of how tall the whole keyboard is actually.
I don't know why it's this tall.
The case is a little excessive.
It's acrylic and aluminum
mostly acrylic and plastic though.
I actually don't know where the aluminum is in here
and I can't take it apart to find it.
So, that's all we're gonna get.
It's got a pretty cool see through bottom
for anyone who's been a fan of that craze kind of returning.
I'm gonna plug it in and turn it
on and see if it actually feels any good to type on,
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If you're spending a good amount
of money on a mechanical keyboard already,
it's not gonna kill you to just buy a slightly
nicer cable that's gonna look a bit better,
feel a bit better
and match your desk and accessories a lot better too.
I don't really fault them for not including a nicer cable.
It's a bare bones kit and it's fine.
The cable's gonna work.
It's gonna do exactly what you want it to do
and honestly it kind of matches with the black,
but you know, it's just not sleeved, just leave it,
make it, make it just that little touched better.
This is really cool.
The screen's got a one on it.
We're gonna type on it first and then I'm gonna check
out all of those sweet, sweet extra buttons that it's got.
I didn't install these switches and I am just finding
out now that a couple of them don't actually work.
I'm assuming that whoever did install them
just kind of bent some pins and it's a quick and easy fix,
but you know what?
You know, it's a lot better than that.
Watching me make a ton of mistakes on monkey type.
Oh, control doesn't work.
One nice thing that we can actually show
off I guess while I fix these switches is the fact
that this is indeed a hot swap board.
Ooh Lord. Yep. Bent pin.
That's pretty cool.
And it's five pins so any switch is gonna fit
into this board without issues except
for maybe (indistinct) 'cause they're thinner pins.
But that's okay if you also didn't notice, it's got RGB
which is pretty great, south facing and it looks
like you can set it to a bunch of different customizations.
It's QMK firmware, so you can use via to map it,
however you want, including the RGB.
The nice thing
about south-facing RGB is it's super compatible
with whatever switch you want to use.
The nice thing
about north facing though is it tends to shine
through the shine-through key caps a little bit better.
So take your pick, pick your poison,
whatever you want to use.
I personally prefer north facing just
'cause I like the shine-through on key caps,
but it honestly doesn't matter all that much.
I really do like this little screen with the one on it.
'Cause on player one, I don't know how to customize that,
but that's apparently also customizable
so you can just put whatever you want
on that teeny tiny little screen there.
One thing I wanna mention before we do the typing test is
that the switches in here aren't my personal preference
and so I might not like the feel
of the actual switches, whoever.
I wanna point out
that the gaskets in this thing, it is gasket mounted.
They're very squishy.
There is a ton of flex.
So if you like a soft bottom out feel,
then you shouldn't be disappointed.
Gasket mounting just means that the board
and the plate are basically sandwiched
in between these little rubber gaskets
so that when you press
down it has some give to it into the rubber.
There's a ton of different mounting styles.
You can have top mount plate mount, gasket mount.
Gasket mount actually comes
in a bunch of different forms too.
There's socks, there's bowls now.
One thing I'll mention actually is
that it looks like it's pretty easy to take apart
with all of the bolts being on the bottom.
However, there's quite a few of them.
Most of the time you're only gonna have
maybe 6 or 8K screws, maybe 10,
but this is got (indistinct).
13, 14, 14K screws.
It's quite a few.
It's not the end of the world.
It's probably because of all of their little
extra electronics, like for the thumbs stick
and the extra knobs on the bottom.
Oh they work.
So this knob on the bottom left acts
as an up and down scroll wheel.
The bottom right acts as a volume knob.
Cool. What's this guy do?
'Cause this is usually volume.
This is not doing anything.
The really cool thing is that the thumbs stick
while it doesn't do a great job,
this is not a good experience at all
navigating with the thumbs stick,
but it is doable.
So you could hold this thing and use it as your mouse
if you so desire.
I don't recommend anyone does that.
I think it's honestly just a really cool kind of fidget toy.
I've been sitting here playing with it constantly
'cause there's just so many little dials and buttons
and knobs to press.
You could map the thumbs stick to (indistinct)
and then use it as your, you know,
single-thumb navigation tool instead of using (indistinct)
like a keyboard.
- [James] What if you pick it up on that one hand?
- Like this (laughs).
Yeah, this just feels wrong.
It's one of the only keyboards that I'd actually suggest
that you pick up and handle constantly
instead of just finding the heaviest thing you can
and plunking it on your desk and leaving it there.
Let's open a keyboard tester
and see what they're actually triggering.
Launch the tester, sorry, this is actually registering
as a dash or hyphen when you press it.
This one doesn't seem to be activating anything.
This guy's also not set to click.
Oh, page up. Page down.
Oh yeah, that makes sense 'cause it scrolls
and then the thumb stick is just joy to mouse.
And then what's the click?
Click is not mapped to any buttons.
You could probably map it to your mouse theoretically.
I don't know if I'd want to.
And then these face buttons don't seem
to be anything either,
so if you wanna make use of these outta the box,
you're not really gonna be able to do that.
You're gonna have to actually go and map it.
Oh, they're doing the RGB.
Oh, that's what I get for pressing buttons
while not looking at the keyboard.
One seems to just turn RGB on or off.
That's like your A button,
but X and B aren't changing anything.
Y seems to also be changing the RGB
in terms of like solid color
whether you want flashing colors, whether you
want it to like pulse when it presses a certain key.
Oh, that's a mute button.
Oh, so clicking on this guy is a mute button.
Overall, you know,
I think all the extra buttons are pretty cool.
It's kind of like a macro person's dream.
I'm not really that person.
I tend to just use my keyboard as is.
Maybe I use a function button for a couple of keys
like F5 if I'm using 65% or 60%.
But otherwise I tend to just leave it as is.
I'm not even a big via user, but it does support that
and you can use it if you'd like to. Monkeytype.
You know, it's cool though
I'm not gonna use the track pad on the laptop.
Well, I don't have a mouse click
so I am gonna use the track pad on the laptop.
(typing)
Oh, my C button doesn't work (laughs).
That's definitely the worst I've ever done both here.
And I think in general I got 60 words per minute,
82% accuracy only part of that is
because of our C switch not being properly working here.
Otherwise, it's mostly the layout.
It's really condensed and I have a bit of a problem going
for some keys, especially my shift key when it's this small.
So if you're new to 60 or 65% keyboards,
it might take quite a bit of learning to get used to typing
on this smaller layout.
Otherwise, it's not bad though.
We've only got some pretty stock switches
and not the greatest key caps to be perfectly honest.
But the sound isn't bad.
It does come with a number of sound dampening pads.
I don't know what kind of foam or padding they are,
but it is included and I can hear it at work.
It's okay, not great.
You could probably mod this to make it sound
quite a bit better though.
And the stabilizers.
(typing)
Are not terrible.
There's actually not a ton
of rattle at all and they're pretty evenly spaced, so yeah.
Oh, one thing I didn't notice about the bottom as well is
that this DOIO logo is actually machined in.
So it's not just, you know, overlaid
or painted on or anything like that.
It's a pretty deep machine so you can actually feel it.
- [James] Hey, if you're using it as controller.
- Yeah, yeah, that's a good point actually.
If you're using it as a controller,
then maybe you are gonna care
about having a nice machine back like this.
Overall, I think it's not bad.
I think it's pretty cool in a number
of ways and it's definitely for a very specific audience
if you're a big Switch fan
or if you're looking for something
that's just unconventional.
I know a lot
of people that buy keyboards only because they're different.
And the reality is this is incredibly unique.
I've never seen something quite like this before.
The only problem is that they do charge a bit of a premium.
It's $219 right now down from 228, big sale.
Probably because there's only the one color left.
It's hard to swallow that pill when you've also
gotta buy switches and key caps on top of that.
And it's a little harder to swallow when the key caps
that you're gonna want are going to have
to be very specific to fit this very specific layout.
That being said, you know,
the build quality is not awful.
Either way, at 220 bucks, once you add in switches, you know
another 40 at least
probably more like $60 depending on what you buy.
And then throwing on a key cap set
especially something that's probably a bit more premium,
you're looking at an extra 8,000 bucks, if not more.
The price for this quickly adds up and I think that
if you're looking for just a regular mechanical keyboard,
one that's a little funky, that looks like a switch,
it's probably not worth your money.
However, if you want a really,
really cool macro pad that's got a bunch
of different functions that you could map
to whatever your heart's desire, maybe it is for you.
Thanks for watching Short Circuit.
If you wanna look at another keyboard short circuit
we did that was
at a similar price point that I liked a lot more.
Check out the Key Boom.
It's also clear, but it's just a bit more premium for like--