This board can’t be real.
You can’t tell me that theres a board under 100 dollars that sounds good without PE foam
or tape.
Right?
The gas67 breaks the record for the cheapest board we’ve ever reviewed on the channel,
previously being held by the nk65.
But for a mere 60 dollars, cheaper than a lot of prebuilts, how does it stack up?
This board was sent to us by keebmonkey for review, but as always that will not affect
our opinion and statements in any way.
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First, some stuff that isn’t included with the base board.
We have a lavender colored aviator cable, and a retro game system artisan with a removable
cartridge.
Onto the stuff that is included.
First is a very pleasant surprise.
Stabilizers.
These are screw in PCB mounts.
While the price tag doesn’t have me holding onto any expectations, if stabs are included,
they better be decent.
There is a non aviator coiled cable included with the board.
It’s a slightly different shade than the aviator.
Next is this bag with the board itself, this pretty pale lavender color.
We have some gaskets and build components, And I’m not exactly sure what these are,
but we’ll find out in a second.
Some manuals, And inside the board is the polycarbonate
plate, plate silicone, and some sort of PE foam sheet.
Under here is our PCB, and a switch and keycap puller.
The gas67 is a polycarbonate compact 65%.
While it is hotswap, and does have a daughterboard, meaning you can have your flexy flex, unfortunately,
it is north facing, meaning that you need to use long pole switches or something other
than cherry profile.
And being a prebuilt, you also need that flashy rgb underglow.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any layout options or extra plate options, which honestly
probably isn’t a huge bummer to that many people.
For mounting, we’ve got our tried and true poron gaskets.
And finally, it comes in a black, lavender, my favorite, and a green, which is mysteriously
3 dollars above the other two colors prices, which both sit at a modest 60 dollars.
First lets do our stabs.
We’re going to test out the included stabs today.
I’m going to lube these with 205g0 and the wires with XHT-BDZ.
And these absolutely need to use the included stab pads.
That was a horrible application.
Ignore that.
And look at that!
All the stabs are installed, I’m so fast.
We’ll use the optional plate silicone, set our polycarbonate plate, and start installing
mint chocolate chips.
These are long pole tactiles lubed with 3203.
They should allow us to use cherry profile with the north facing pcb because of their
long pole.
Next are gaskets.
Don’t forget to apply them on the bottom as well.
Now we can connect the daughterboard.
And put the assembly together.
We’re using GMK shoko because I thought the pastels would be a nice mix.
I got a little excited and forgot to screw the board together first.
Those weird unknown plastic pieces from earlier turned out to be kickstands if you want a
higher typing angle, because the default one is kinda flat.
And also the regular bottom feet.
Let’s take a listen.
Its… decent.
Even more impressive when you consider this is a plastic case with no case foam and there’s
almost no hollowness.
But if you have sharp ears, you’ll be able to hear a big issue: there’s still interference
on row 3, so these switches are not usable for this board.
Interference aside, the sound is just a bit thin, but I would much rather have thinness
over hollowness.
And of course you do have the optional included PE foam sheet if you want that sound profile.
I’m pretty impressed by the stock stabs.
These weren’t even balanced, and they still sound alright.
There is some ticking, but I’m sure balancing will be able to fix it.
There is a very small amount of bounce because of the gasket compression.
But there's not really any flex beyond this since the case is not very roomy.
Besides that the feel is akin to that of a low level custom keyboard.
Sure the polycarbonate plate and gaskets have their natural softness, but there isn’t
a whole lot beyond that, making it feel balanced, neutral, or in my case, pretty boring.
If you have functioning eyeballs, I don’t need to reiterate that the board is transparent,
polycarbonate to be specific.
Theres a slight raised lip near the keycaps on the top case that goes all the way around.
Nothing else really stands out that much.
We also have a on off switch here, which I thought was for turning the board off, but
actually changes the windows key into function.
Pretty neat.
The top and bottom case do have separation around the edges.
On the back is the centered recessed USB port, and the bottom has this interesting aluminum
strip with a bit of branding.
All the edges of the board are chamfered.
I’d be careful when applying gaskets, because as you can see, all your slight mistakes will
be permanently visible from the outside.
I was a little bit taken aback by the prebuilt style kickstands.
They’re completely unnecessary, but whatever.
I really just wish that design effort could be put into making the PCB south facing instead.
The last and scariest area, which is the main one that usually justifies cheap keyboards
being cheap, is the material quality.
It’s…. good.
It’s good.
There’s a tiny bit of streaking here and there, but not in noticeable areas or anything.
Which honestly disappoints me more knowing that there’s realistically only one flaw
to this board.
So to answer the initial question, it holds up really well.
But this one fatal flaw keeps this board from being an instant recommendation for beginners.
Usually north facing is used by manufacturers to more easily add RGB, because for some unfortunate
reason, north facing has become a standard in the prebuilt world.
In 2022, asking for south facing PCBs everywhere really isn’t a massive deal.
North to south facing isn’t a huge change, but it gives us so many more viable options
for switches and keycaps.
And if this change could be the case for the GAS67, this board really might be something
incredible.
And that's all I have for you today.
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