Hello friends, today I’m excited to check out a prototype unit of the PLX from Peac
Design down in Melbourne, Australia.
First up, gotta love a nice hard carry case.
Personally I do prefer them over a box, because they’re genuinely useful, but that’s me.
Nice Peac design logos too.
And just a reminder that this is a prototype unit, so things are subject to change.
Opening it up we have the PCB.
Then I have an assortment of plates, and yep, we’ll try them all.
Got some hardware.
The daugtherboard.
And a bunch of gaskets and feet.
Strap test.
Not the best, not the worst, could be better.
We get a really nice large branded cloth, which we do need because of this thing.
How good, shiny parts always get me, and this is a pretty big one.
Then we have the top piece, some foam, and the mid piece.
Starting with the top aluminium piece, which is in the beautiful Bliss colourway, so a
white E-coat finish.
Being a gasket mount design, we have room for those on the inside along the top and
bottom.
And notice how we have our winkey blockers, as we have the winkeyless version.
If you’re not a fan of that, it’s also available in winkey or HHKB.
Looking at the middle piece, we again have room for gaskets.
There’s quite a precise cutout for the JST cable which leads to where the daughtboard
mounts.
And there’s 3 screw holes in the middle which are for the weight.
And we’ll see how that comes together later.
Let’s stick on the feet before we check out the weight.
This probably won’t excite you, but I love differently shaped feet.
Woulda been cool if they weren’t just flat, but rounded, but super cute nonetheless.
Alright, so I’m just gonna remind you again that this is a prototype unit, and has been
played around with before I got it, so there are some marks and scratches and all that,
which is fine.
However we can still see the quality of the PVD finish.
Being a large brass piece, with a lot of empty surface area, we know it’s not gonna be
the easiest to achieve perfection, because we already see other boards with much smaller
PVD pieces struggle.
And to add to that, we are really getting up close and exposing the imperfections here.
The logo actually looks really good, there’s no circular machining marks inside the letters
which we often see, like with the feet holes.
Looking at the rest of it, we can see the kind of texture it has, with some light swirling.
From what I’ve seen with the other prototypes that some streamers have checked out, they
look really good, the black PVD one in particular looked sick.
But this admittedly isn’t great when looking up close like this, but I dunno, in real life
it’s really beautiful, and it's a genuine mirror finish.
However, I have been told that some of these proto pieces are kinda scuffed, and the way
they were packaged from the manufacturer as well, so supposedly they will be much better,
but that’s yet to be seen.
And it weighs just over a kilogram by the way.
Okayyy, let’s get to the build.
I previously showed the solderable version of the PCB, but because I want to try all
the plates, I asked for the hotswap PCB.
Solderable will give you slightly more options with the layout, like ISO, full backspace,
full right shift.
However the bottom row is completely fixed, with a 7u spacebar.
With the hotswap PCB, you’ll be stuck with split backspace which may not be to your liking,
like myself.
But I really do appreciate that they didn’t lock us in winkeyless or HHKB or whatever,
but give us the choice.
Alright the plates, the default is aluminium, which will be in Rose gold for Bliss, and
black for Phantom and Rosso.
We can see a leaf spring like design around the perimeter of the plate, which should induce
flex and possibly a bit of bounce, we’ll have to see.
If you want something different, you can add extra plates with FR4, POM, and polycarbonate
available.
And notice how each plate has different cuts.
I chucked in my Durock V2 stabs.
I did try Staebies, but they didn’t work with this.
So there has to be some adjusting there.
And I have some OP blacks lubed with Krytox 205G0.
Gasket time!
There’s a variety of poron foam pieces.
Starting with the long ones.
These were actually pretty finicky to apply because I kept going up the side of the case
if I was off by like 1 degree, and when I would try to reposition them, I’d stretch
them, so they wouldn’t fit anymore.
Fortunately they provided a bunch of spares, so yeh just take your time with the long thin
ones.
Otherwise the rest is easy work.
Putting the daughtboard in, the top 2 threads weren’t threaded properly I think, so those
screws weren’t really in, and I also noticed that the USB C port sat slightly too low,
both easy fixes for them though.
The cable channel, soooo tight, which is good for acoustics and not disrupting the board
too much, but still a struggle.
Next up we gotta place the screws in for the weight, which we screw in later.
And they provide these small o-rings which are also pretty tough to get on, but I got
there.
And that should provide a nice fit.
After that we screw the two aluminium pieces together like a normal keyboard.
But this is different, because we have this huge weight that covers the whole bottom.
So we just hold that in place, turn it over, and there’s 3 holes in the plate where we
can thread our hex key in, and we just screw in those screws we previously placed there.
For keycaps, I grabbed Domikey Hush.
There’s been a lot of talk about GMK with waiting times and all that.
Keep an eye out for other manufacturers that are coming up, because these are pretty nice
triple shot Cherry profile keycaps, without warped spacebars too!
And here’s the Humble PLX by Peac Design.
I gotta say, the colours are so calming, super chill desk vibes right now with the grey deskmat.
The Bliss white PLX suits Domikey Hush unbelievably well.
And that comes with the simplicity of the enclosure design.
We have relatively thick bezels, but nothing excessive, and it allows the keycaps to have
a visible backdrop, which I really do enjoy on keyboards.
But it’s softened by the subtle but prominent chamfers on both the outside and inside edges,
which I really do like the look of.
Too much of a chamfer, it starts to look aggressive and angular.
Not enough, then it looks too sharp and monolithic.
So I think they hit a great balance here.
The exterior walls are all flat, with a seamless design super clean, and yet another chamfer
which works beautifully to reveal a hint of the weight, but also kind of elevate the board
off the surface.
Looking at the side profile, very clean again.
Probably has a 5,6, or 7 degree incline, I actually don’t know, but it’s comfortable.
Looking at the rear, there’s a nice little Peac design logo, and then the previously
mentioned USB C port that is sitting too low in mine.
Turning it over, and we have that big shiny shiny weight.
While the finishing on mine isn’t the greatest, it’s still stunning.
The simplicity of the PLX logo is perfect, and the L shaped bean feet really frame it
nicely.
Even though it’s obviously gonna be a fingerprint magnet, it’s still so pretty to look at.
Don’t forget though, it does also serve a function in how the board feels and sounds,
so let’s have a listen to the board, and we’ll
give 30 seconds or so for each of the 4 plates.
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
I love it.
There’s a lovely balance between a bit of pop, some clack, with a nice solid but slightly
dampened bottom out.
It does have a little bit of bounce and vibration to it with that plate design, and we can see
that there is a decent amount of flex avail here.
So it’s not a harsh experience.
The density of the board is quite apparent, with the large brass weight, which contributes
to the more rounded and deeper clack, rather than sharp and thin, and that’s something
I personally really enjoy.
It’s that sort of characteristic that exudes just a premium sort of feeling.
The mods though weren’t amazing.
Kind of dull.
And the top row which I usually like, was also not as lively as the rest of the board,
personally not a fan.
I struggled to get the spacebar right, but that’s probably just me because other people
seemed to do fine.
So perhaps not the greatest representation.
They might not like me for saying this because one of their intentions was to create a board
that feels and sounds good without foam, which it does, but honestly, I like the foam between
the plate and PCB.
And this is personal preference, but it just tightens everything a little bit, removes
most of the vibrations and bounce, without really affecting the sound.
Unfortunately the FR4, POM, and polycarbonate plates didn’t fit properly, as they were
scraping against the case notches.
Therefore the flex was drastically decreased making everything way stiffer.
So we can’t comment too much on these for now.
I recommend checking out the other streamers which I’ll link below.
But you can still kinda get an idea from the sound.
Alright, so with that out of the way.
Something that I noticed when I used the keyboard with my leather deskmat, which is harder than
the usual cloth, sometimes the bottom corners would sound a bit different.
There would be a thuddy kind of sound.
Thought that was weird, and suspected something was wrong, which I then confirmed by placing
it on the table.
And yeh, you can hear and see for yourself.
To the naked eye you can’t see it, and also because most of us use deskmats, and because
of how heavy this keyboard is, it just sinks into the mat, and any unevenness is pretty
much negated.
So I guess that in itself isn’t really something to be massively concerned about.
However, it’s still present, and you know you’re paying big bucks.
From what I’ve seen, no one else has complained about this.
I also had a chat to Peac, and they have since checked the others, and they’re all fine.
We do know that this has always been an issue for large brass PVD pieces, but from all the
information that’s been given to me, the fact that this is a prototype, and now they
do know to check this thoroughly in QC, I’m optimistic that it won’t be a major issue,
hopefully.
And that’s the PLX from Peac Design down in Melbourne.
Big congrats to the legends on their first keyboard.
It’s been in the works for well over a year now, and they’ve come out with something
that they’re passionate about because it was designed with their preferences first.
I think it looks stunning with the super clean seamless design.
The proportions, the chamfers, and of course the weight make it look classy.
And it feels that way as well, for the most part.
As we saw, the build was a little scuffed, there’s a lot of just little bits here and
there that need to be addressed, fortunately, they all seem like easy fixes, and that’s
what prototypes are for.
The main thing will be the weight, if that’s all cool, then we’re all cool.
The board starts at $450 USD, which at first glance is pretty pricey.
Looking at the parts extras pricing, it looks like a lot of that is going towards the PVD
brass weight, which makes sense.
And if you question why have such a piece, that’s a huge part of the board’s character,
so it is what it is.
If you don’t have it, it won’t be the same board.
The groupbuy will be ending in a few days, so suss it out in the description.
Thanks for watching guys.
Bless, stay safe, and stay humble.