Not bad, not bad at all. Surprisingly, this awesome case comes with all the Cyberboards,
at least on the Indigogo run, which seems to be sold out, so yeh, sorry, but it did
sell out pretty quick. And, I can definitely see why, because look at this thing.
What a monster. Inspired by the Tesla Cybertruck, they came up with this super unique looking
board. And as someone who’s played around with a bunch, it’s always really cool to
see something different.
Especially this bit. With them calling it the first custom LED mechanical keyboard.
Let’s take the board apart to have a closer look. This plastic cover bit is actually just
held in by magnets, so you can use the included suction thingo to pull it out.
Oh we got keys for the case, pretty neat. And bunch of Allen keys, with this curvy boy.
And to actually build this thing, you do have to take it apart, which isn’t the most straight
forward process. And to add to that, this is just the board, so you need to supply your
own switches, and stabilisers.
It’s not 100% necessary, but it makes it easier, there’s 2 ribbon cables, one that
connects to the USB daughterboard, and another to the LED section. And a 3rd cable that looks
to be like a Bluetooth extension thing, I don’t know, let me know if you do. And the
PCB and plate just pop out.
Let’s have a quick look at the LED section, you wouldn’t need to touch this when building,
so don’t worry about that. But there’s a metal grid that separates the LEDs, and
then I counted 200 SMD LEDs, I think.
Check out this chonky piece though. It is a top mount design, so the plate screws into
this top piece. Nice custom feet too by the way, which are pretty low profile.
Now to the bottom piece. We have 2 solid 4000mAh batteries, totalling at 8000mAh. In comparison,
an Anne Pro 2 has a 1900mAh battery. But we definitely do need that extra power.
And yeh, let’s just get to it. This is a prototype unit, so not the final, and this
internal dampener; it is a straight up copy of the RAMA WORKS one, no way around it. In
fact let’s compare them.
Obviously, different size and thickness, but yeh they’re the same, even the pattern is
exactly the same. They did say they were heavily influenced by RAMA WORKS design, and I think
you can see that with other aspects of the package as well. And since they got called
out, they did apologise, and changed the design to this. Not cool, but that’s that.
And at the very bottom, here is where they’ll have the wireless charging stuff. I don’t
have it on mine, but that’s pretty crazy. They show it working on a wireless charging
mat which is sweet as. Personally, I’m a huge fan of wireless peripherals. I use a
wireless mouse, and most of the time, a wireless keyboard. So just imagine having a deskpad
that charges both your mouse and keyboard, how cool would that be, no matter how many
years it’ll take off your life.
Moving on. We gotta take the PCB and plate apart, in order to install the stabilisers.
Basically, you gotta take this board apart, just for the stabilisers. All for the stabs.
In the middle we do have this silicone mute piece. Again, called Mute. And this fills
up the space in between which is pretty cool. You could also remove this if you wanted to,
as it doesn’t interact with the rest of the case.
The plate is made from 1.5mm aluminium, and is also available in other colours. Quite
simple, we have the mounting points around the edge. And a few relief cuts between the
main area and the function row. But I guess it’s more for positioning the silicone piece.
Oh and there are these flat, somewhat thin o-rings for the mounts.
And finally the PCB. We have a button battery down here, so that’s quite a lot packed
in here, I wonder how easy this thing will be to ship. I dunno. It features Kailh hotswap
sockets. So no soldering required, and therefore it has a completely fixed design. So no customisability,
and no ISO, sorry.
Ok, so now at this point, we can start building it. You will need 3 2 unit stabilisers, and
a 6.25u stab. And as always, make sure you lube them.
The ribbon cables may be a little difficult for those who haven’t come across them before.
It’s a little difficult to show, but you need to have the port open, and then slide
the cable into place as far as possible, and then close it.
I got a bunch of Gateron Yellows from my mate Hong Hobbies here in Australia, which he lubed
up. Big thanks buddy, I’ll chuck a link in the description for his building and lubing
services. But I did end up changing them in the end, I’ll save em for another build,
but I switched over to Alpaca’s.
And yeh, hotswap is awesome. Super easy, just make sure the pins are straight when you push
them in. If a key doesn’t work, it’s most likely a bent pin.
And done. I actually am really digging the look. It’s just so different. Just the shape
of it, very angular, sharp straight lines, just like the Cybertruck I mentioned before.
But it’s still clean looking, nothing too too crazy. Especially when you just have it
in front of you, while it really holds a presence on your desk, it’s not wacky.
It looks and feels like a stab, and in front of me, it looks quite low, and flat. Even
though it does have a 10 degree typing angle and is pretty tall, but because of its large
sloping down forehead, and the very low profile feet, like look there’s hardly a gap between
the board and the table, it just feels good.
Honestly in the renders I thought it looked a bit much, but personally I feel that this
is a case of a board looking better in person.
We do have a 75% layout. The function row is separated which I like, just gives us a
bit of breathing space, and makes it a little easier to navigate with that separation. They’ve
also opted for a blocker here and here which again clusters off the arrow keys which is
nice. It has a very basic bottom row with 1.25u keys and the 6.25u spacebar, so all
easy peasy. So I like the layout, basically a slightly more compact tenkeyless, so we
get everything besides the numpad.
Now let’s get to them LEDs hey. Definitely it’s defining feature, this array of 200
LEDs. Right now, the configurator is not available, so I can’t muck around with that. But look
how cool this is. For sure people will say what’s the point, but when you’re dealing
with these high end boards, sense kinda goes out the window to be honest. It’s just an
extra novelty thing that makes it unique. At a normal sitting position you can actually
get a very decent view, like looking at the time, it’s fully legible and easy to read,
and yeh, it’s actually quite visible. I seriously love it, and I can’t wait to be
able to configure it.
Another big feature is that it has Bluetooth 5.0. I believe this window on the rear allows
that signal to transmit out. And there’s a switch on the bottom. It’s really cool
how it shows the Bluetooth profile that you’re on, in which there are 3, so you can connect
to other devices as well.
Bluetooth performance felt good. A tiny bit of latency from my tests, but very similar
to wired mode, so no real issues for me.
Let’s have a quick listen.
The board feels great. The bottom out is nice and solid, with decent thock. It’s not too
hard, and I think the silicone piece between the plate and the PCB plays a part in that.
And also just the solidity of the board gives it that depth with so much underneath it.
So it’s quite tight and dense feeling, without much vibration at all, but again, not too
hard of a bottom out. Definitely the sort of feel that I think a lot of people will
like.
And that goes for the sound as well, it doesn’t spill out onto the table, it’s quite self
contained which I like. With the dampening internals, everything is slightly muted to
give that thocky sound, kind of low pitched, even with my light lube job. There is a bit
of metallic ping around the edges, more of the right side keys, in particular, I found
just hitting the Enter key normally produced a bit of a ping. But for the rest of them,
you gotta hit them pretty hard to get that ping, so it’s absolutely fine for me. But
overall, I think the board feels awesome.
And that’s the Cyberboard. Honestly, amazing. For me, it’s just great to see something
different. Something other than the norm. And no doubt there’s those who will just
laugh this off, because it veers from general consensus, but that’s why I love it. It’s
fun, it’s a little out there, but with all these crazy bits put together, it works, and
the execution was there. Although there is the shifty stuff with the RAMA design pulls,
and that sort of stuff isn’t on, so they better learn from that.
Again, these sold out pretty quick on their Indiegogo campaign, which I’ll link. I don’t
know if they’re gonna run these separately later on. I don’t know what this 40% off
means, but we’ll see. I’ll also link their Instagram if you want to keep an eye out.
Anyway, maybe I can use this board for another project, not sure, but stay tuned :)