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How To Ask for Help When Buying a Keyboard

Aug 28, 2024835 VIEWS

Figure 1: This is the keyboard of someone (0range) who clearly knows how to ask proper questions.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been lurking around the channels of a couple of different entry level keyboard forums and I have to admit that the experience is quite bleak. I’m not saying this because of “toxicity” or people being given wrong information, rather I see so many people’s questions going unanswered… and to be honest they’re kind of to blame for it. While I recognize that not everyone coming freshly into the keyboard space enters it with the same level of inquisitiveness that I did when I first joined back in 2017, these questions going unanswered really feel way under-thought or over-thought compared to where I was. On one hand, you get questions like this:

What is best gaming keyboard?

And on the other hand, you get questions like this:

Hi, there everyone! I am just now starting to look into mechanical keyboards as an avid gamer and I need some help in narrowing something down. I play mostly FPS games like CS:GO and Valorant, but I also occasionally play some MOBAs and need to do some writing for my job. I really want a full size keyboard with RGB as I’ve been using a special Christmas edition of a Durgood 109% keyboard that I bought on AliExpress some years ago and I really like how it feels when I’m typing on it. After some time though, I guess it doesn’t thocc enough for me. I’m hopefully looking for a full size board that has all of the thoccs, but also is on a budget. It doesn’t have to be anything super crazy but I don’t have an insane amount of money to spend on it. Oh, and I also need it to be hotswappble, wireless with Bluetooth 7 connectivity, and have lower profile PBT keycaps in white or black. Do you guys any suggestions of what I should buy???

Admittedly, I can understand how both of these people wind up in the help channels of these various places and asking the questions that they are. However, there’s very little that most people in the community can do to help at those ends of the spectrum. So, after having seen hundreds of questions get successfully answered, I figured it would be best to throw together a list of key points that I saw that made for the most successful questions. A sort of guide on how to best ask for help when buying a keyboard.

Figure 2: Or you can just be like me and buy random stuff off of EBay like this see-through Nixdorf keyboard.

In the most general of situations, almost anybody would agree that when you’re asking for help that it's best to have as much background information as you can. While we can all understand why the short and sweet question up there isn’t exactly an effective way to ask a productive question, not many people realize that a question that stretches for seven paragraphs, detailing every in, out, and little detail is just as hard for someone helping to parse. Take note from my own personal experience that people in this hobby don’t like to read anything beyond a few sentences, and if you make them do more than that they simply won’t help. If you are asking for some recommendations in buying a new keyboard, though, consider some of the following details that it would help to have fleshed out and listed in your question when it comes time to ask for help: A Budget Having a specific range of money that you are willing to spend in total for a keyboard is one of the single most important things to have right at the top of your question. The mechanical keyboard hobby is extremely deep and people have spent anywhere from no money at all to fish old keyboards out of E-Waste facility dumps all the way to multiple thousands of dollars for a super-premium product. Keep in mind, as well, that people’s perception of what is a “budget” board changes the longer that they are in the hobby and depending on where they are in life. What would have been a budget keyboard for me back when I joined the hobby in college is very different than where I am now seven years down the road with a full time job! Keyboard Layout One of the best aspects about buying into the mechanical keyboard hobby is that there are boards out there that come in nearly all shapes, sizes, and formats for you to choose from. Therefore, having some indication of whether or not you want a TKL or a 40% keyboard probably will make it easier for you to set your budget and for people to point you in the right direction. Even if you aren’t familiar with some of the layout names, even just saying that you absolutely need to keep your arrow keys, or numpad, but don’t mind about your function row keys makes for an easier time in narrowing down a suggestion. Do keep in mind, though, the more exotic your layout is or the pickier you are about these features, the harder it will be to find a board for you in your budget! What Kind of Switches You Want As a guy who is crazy about his switches, I’m of the opinion that the true spirit and performance of any good mechanical keyboard begins and ends with a proper choice of a switch. In order for you to fall in love with your first keyboard build, do yourself a favor and try and do any research you can on the different types of switches that come preinstalled in keyboards as well as ones you can purchase aftermarket to put in your board. While the best way to go about this is to buy and try sample packs until you’ve got a specific switch in mind, even being able to say something as simple as you want your switches to be “loud, clicky ones like Razer Greens” or “with some light tactile feedback” helps a ton for someone trying to narrow in on a suggestion for you.

Figure 3: Honestly, this is the only thing in the whole article I'm actually qualified to help with...

I’m sure there’s probably at least a few of you looking at that short list above and swearing I’ve missed a dozen different things that you’ve thought about when considering your first keyboard purchase. Keeping in mind that we want to keep your questions short, sweet, and flexible for someone to best be able to help you, the reality is that not everything you’ve probably considered matters as much as you think it does. After seven years in the hobby and having bought and built over a dozen keyboards from all over the price spectrum, I can pretty confidently say that beginners looking for help on buying their first board don’t need to worry about: Keycaps If you are truly just now researching your first ever mechanical keyboard and have never owned one before, you will not be able to tell the difference between something like a specialty grade PBT keycap as opposed to a cheap ABS one (though you can read about them here). The simple answer is to just buy whatever you like the appearance of the most and whatever fits your keyboard. I don’t care about what some keyboard YouTuber or TikToker has to say about different types of keycaps wearing in or breaking down either - I promise you that you will not wear through or break your keycaps, regardless of what they are, in any reasonable set of circumstances. I’ve literally written thousands of pages of free content for this community on only three sets of keycaps and I’ve never even come close to doing any more than smoothing their surface a tiny bit. I honestly could have stuck with only one set if I didn’t want a little bit of variety every now and then. Sound While I did say above that it does help your situation a bit if you know that you want something special sound-wise like clicky switches, asking for an entire keyboard that is “thocky”, “clacky”, or any other super specific sound profile is doomed to lead to failure. Sound is subjective and since it’s different from person to person, relying on the chance that some internet random in the keyboard help channel is going to give you a perfect answer that matches your own experiences will just never work out. In fact, I’d even suggest using sound tests on YouTube or TikTok over asking someone directly for this, and even those have issues with being edited, modified, or flat out lying to you. Regardless of what keyboard you end up buying, you’ll have better luck changing the furniture in the room where you’re using it or adding more deskmats to your desk if you want to change the sound of your board. The 'Use Case' of Your Keyboard At the end of the day, mechanical keyboards are no different than any other keyboard that is meant to hook up to a computer and send signals to it. There is no better keyboard nor style of keyboard for gaming or typing, and anyone who tells you there is a better keyboard for one purpose over another is flat out wrong. Asking for something like a “gaming friendly keyboard” is basically like asking for a “driving friendly car” in that that’s what it was built to do in the first place! People who are hardcore into computer gaming are especially bad about injecting this into their questions about buying keyboards, often expressing concern about actuation time, refresh rate, etc. To put it bluntly, you are not good enough at games for this to matter when buying your keyboard. If you even think that you’re good enough at games to where a microsecond difference in the PCB’s refresh rate is the difference between you winning and losing and you still need to ask for help in finding a keyboard to meet those demands, you’re wrong. Even though this is far from a complete list of things that you should and should not choose to include when asking for help in buying a keyboard, hopefully this helps you better shape the question to better increase your chances of getting help. Quickly highlighting or bullet-pointing your budget, layout, and switch type preferences are going to get you answers more quickly, more reliably, and more accurately than information dumping in your question. Just consider how much more easy it is to answer questions like this:

Hi, I’ve got $100-200 to spend on a keyboard for my buddy’s birthday. He likes the loud switches that make a lot of noise and has used a full sized keyboard from Razer for years. Is there another board I could get him as a gift?

I’m looking for a $300-400 keyboard that has a 65% layout and a hot swappable PCB. Are there any in stock keyboards that fit this? (Hopefully wired, if possible!)

Above all when asking for help in finding your first keyboard, though, keep in mind that the key is to be flexible in what you can and can’t live with. You may have to give up on a wireless keyboard if you’ve got some super specific layout you want. You may also have to get cheaper switches if you want your budget to be low. There’s countless tradeoffs to be had. In general, the more picky you are about what all you need from your keyboard, the harder it is for any random person passing by to know something that meets your list of criteria and can help you out. In the meantime, though, if you’re looking for some more reading to help you decide on what keyboard switches you might like, consider some of my other articles here on Drop such as an ‘Introduction to Mechanical Keyboard Switches’ or ‘The Three Main Types of Switches’.

(Edited)

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Aug 29, 2024

Great write up as always! A few months ago, I got to a point where my keeb-related purchases had another factor - whether or not I wanted to support said designer(s). I think after a while of making friends and being part of the community, you find designers/makers that you like, and even some of your friends can turn into said designers/makers. Nowadays, I feel like I still definitely base my purchasing decisions on aesthetics, but that "I also want to support (insert name here)" also plays a large role.

2-bit_Joe

Aug 29, 2024

I'm not sure I agree with you about the "gaming friendly keyboard" question. I really like the Unicomp buckling spring keyboards, but they're not my first choice for gaming.

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