Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsOK it's awesome
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2019
I'm sort of just looking for an excuse to type with this keyboard as it just came today and so this is a very initial impression. I was a little worried about getting one of these from Unicomp, I hard heard of the legendary quality of the old IBM model M's and that these new Unicomp keyboards don't quite live up to the name. I had seen in some YouTube reviews that the plastic body often had weird defects from the molding process and that the key caps were somewhat sub par when it came to their dye sublimated legends and overall feel. While the plastic on the body of my keyboard isn't entirely defect free, I really have to look to find something that I would consider out of the ordinary or ugly. The key caps feel pretty nice to me, the tops have a nice rough texture and they feel pretty solid and heavy overall. It seems like some of Unicomp's model M's had issues with misplaced legends on the keys but I'm happy to see that mine are all where they should be. I really like the white and grey key caps, they look better in real life then they do in the pictures. One sort of interesting thing is that my keyboard came with both of the windows key caps on the right side and that weird left click key on the left between the ctrl and alt, though the actual keys function as they are supposed to, I think I'll leave it because it makes it feel like it was put together by someone, which is cool. Many of the key caps have a bit of a plastic nub on their far side from where they were cut out of the mold which is a little disappointing for a keyboard of this price but I might be able to sand it off on my own if I'm determined enough one day.
The feel of this keyboard is fantastic, I've been using a keyboard with cherry MX browns up to now and I got tired of the lack of tactility and click, so I thought I'd finally give buckling springs a try. The buckling spring mechanism of this keyboard is the polar opposite of cherry MX browns, these keys are loud, they are tactile and they are awesome. One thing that is sort of throwing me off is that the key travel feels a lot shorter on these than browns, but that is by no means a bad thing and I'm getting quickly getting used to it. Every key press feels so much more substantial than on any other keyboard I have every typed on, the thunk of the keys, the click of the buckling spring, the sound of the key rebounding back into place, all incredibly satisfying. The only downside is that I imagine this keyboard would annoy the heck out of anyone around you and it sounds like a tiny machine gun once you really get going. The awesome thing is that the tactile bump, click and actuation are all perfectly synchronized, on cherry MX browns I could get past the tactile bump without actually actuating the keys if I tried hard enough, which is completely impossible on this keyboard.
It does creak a bit if I pick it up and try to flex it or if I press on the bottom edge of they keyboard, but the keys themselves don't actually move at all so I don't think this should affect functionality at all.
This is my first time trying buckling springs and I would definitely say that they live up to the hype, but I wish the keycaps were a bit higher quality and that the body of the keyboard wasn't as creaky as it is.
