I have the ENTR in silver and white with Halo Trues, and upon first impression is seems like a beefy Apple keyboard. Imagine if you could take the magic keyboard and stretch it out from the table so it’s taller. The board is very solid, the keys are satisfying to type on, and I find it quite easy to get up to speed on it. It’s also much quieter than my other boards, and the switch travel is much smoother. The spring weight is a little heavy for my liking, but I think I’ll get used to it soon enough.
My only concerns are a slightly uneven “W” key with a little backlight bleeding through, and the backlight is a little on the Yellow-ish side, but that’s just personal preference I suppose. I plan on swapping out the keycaps anyways, so the W key isn’t really an issue for me.
This is my first TKL board, so at the moment I do miss the numpad, but on a desk with limited space, I think it’s a welcome trade-off.
I would absolutely recommend this keyboard to anyone looking to dabble in the mechanical world. It would be a great introduction, as it doesn’t carry the sticker shock of most other mechanical keyboards, and it still offers excellent build quality and feel. I just bought a Surface Go 2 and spent more on its detachable keyboard, so I think this has the value proposition in the bag.
Now, time to get to work using this thing!
This board feels ridiculously well built when you consider the low asking price. The White lighting gives a lovely clean effect with the stock caps, but I personally opted to replace them with some solid caps I had in stock. The stock caps. However, are of a wonderful quality and are now happily living on an RGB board I use for gaming.
My unit has the Halo True switches. These differ somewhat from regular tactile switches in that they have a somewhat soft feel. I wasn't sure how I felt about this at first, but I've grown to love them. They don't fatigue the fingers while still having a nice solid bottom out feel. Great for extended use throughout the work day, though they are not my favourite for gaming.
Overall, a solid recommendation from me.
goldene1o2We worked with Yuemi and the original contract manufacturer that made the MK01. However, we've made a handful of critical upgrades such as the mechanical switch type, keycaps, case color/finish, USB connector as well as some PCB tweaks. It was a great platform to start with and we believe we've made it better.
I mean $100 for a tkl aluminum case with gateron yellows is pretty enthusiastic to me. There isn't any premade boards with gat yellows around this price point, let alone aluminum board.
I just got mine a few days ago.
@Helmanfrow FWIW, I was able to "easily" decipher these differences between them by comparing the product pages:
CTRL is RGB while ENTR has only white backlight
CTRL switches can be swapped, while ENTR are soldered
CTRL prebuilt has more switch options
CTRL has "barebones" version, ENTR does not
Different color options
What's clearly missing is a "compare" feature with a table of feature differences, like this one on keychron.com. That would have been nice when trying to decide.
@Fresco313 Awesome feature list. Two comments:
7) Correction maybe - I think ENTR is QMK compatible? I haven't tried flashing any changes yet, though. The QMK tester registers my keystrokes, if that's any indication... edit: looks like I am wrong.. I see confirmation of no QMK in another thread.. my bad
9) Correction: Mine definitely included a keycap puller
It’s a funny keyboard related way to say “Damn son! Without any punctuation, the intelligibility of your comment is pretty low. Why would that even happen?”
It’s also probably the nicest way to answer that question...
CornerstarThey're not bad, but there are FAR better options out there. Not to mention everything is based on preference. Personally, I'd rather not be limited to retooled cherry switches, and if I'm gonna be soldering might aswell get something a little nicer
cooldogone5We're making very slim profit margins on this keyboard to make something available to the community at an entry price-level, without cutting too many corners on build. Indeed you're correct, basically the keycaps and the halo switches cover the $90 price tag of the whole keyboard.
So, I'll be honest, I'm not sure what the point of this keyboard is.
People who are regular keyboard enthusiasts will go for the other options, like CTRL, ALT, and keyboards found on other websites, etc., because they're willing to pay the premium to not compromise for lost features.
But for entry-level? Why would someone go for the ENTR vs. the GMMK?
https://www.pcgamingrace.com/products/gmmk-tkl-tenkeyless-brown-switch
From an entry-level standpoint, GMMK has far more features, WAY more options for customizability, both at purchase and afterwards, and its base configuration is only ~$9 more than ENTR.
This seems like an attempt to reuse CTRL parts for a more entry-level option, which makes sense from a business standpoint, but from an overall market standpoint this keyboard seems like it can't really compete with other more feature-rich keyboards at this price point.
Can anyone explain to me why this keyboard is worth it? Only things that come to mind is that the default GMMK keycaps are ABS (which is a matter of opinion, honestly) and the ENTR has edge lighting, though that potentially ties with GMMK since GMMK is fully RGB while the ENTR is only white.
Depending on the price of this, this could be a very nice entry level board especially with the choice of gateron yellows. If it is not too expensive I may consider picking one up.
Why have you still not done south facing switches designed PCB? That is literally how cherry mx style switches were meant to be facing and designed. North facing switches (your Drop keyboards) sound and feel scratchier and higher pitched compared to the standard south facing switches which is how pretty much all actual DECENT prebuilt keyboards on the market has. This just speaks lack of any thought behind this terrible design, you can see north facing switches like these in a lot of cheap $20 mechanical keyboards on amazon and they are absolutely garbage.
A lot of new mechanical keyboard users probably won't even notice because these Drop keyboards are their first mechanical keyboard and they think it's the best thing ever but it is not. Someone like me who has gone through many different RGB gamer, cheap Amazon boards, before I got to higher end expensive customs will know that the difference in feel/sound between north vs south facing switches is night and day, at least with cherry profile-like keycaps.
This video should demonstrate it pretty well, you can tell that the north facing sounds higher pitched compared to the more whole rounded clack sound of the south facing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFySgr0xmPw