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This is a $2 keyboard. This is a $20 keyboard. This is a $200 keyboard. And we're about to go all the way up to $20,000 to find out what you actually get by paying more with this guy. Professional keyboard enjoyer glasses. That's my calling card. Hello. So, if you want a keyboard, but you've got $2 to spend, you kind of have to accept that it might come in a tube. I think if you have $2, you should just not buy a keyboard. kind of like a wet sheet of lasagna. I'd prefer. Can I take this?
Listen to the It's just tables. It's just table. If you change the table, you're going to have a different keyboard. There should be no keyboard that has 11 keys on the bottom row. Where did you find this? In a tube somewhere. See, basically all budget keyboards are membrane keyboards where each key is resting on a little rubber dome that keeps it up. And by pressing the key, you're essentially squishing that rubber dome down until the metal contact pad on the dome connects with the metal contact pad on the board and the key press is registered. What would you give it out of 10?
The smallest gradient above zero possible. I'll give it a 0.1 because it is a functioning keyboard. I agree with that. You're not getting any more points out of me with something like this. Roll it out of it. $10 gets you a box. And not just a box, we even get a name on that box. Logitech. Wow. Right. So, still the same memory mechanism. Obviously, at least we have a surface behind it. It's still bad, but okay. I don't know, though. Something about the last one makes this feel like a luxury experience. I'm not just feeling the desk underneath my fingers, and I don't think I can roll this one up. I'm trying to feel precisely how consistent the key press is. It's very mushy,
not precise, right? Cuz there's no guiding structure here. I just feel a lot of variance. We do also now get these kickstands at the back, but I'd personally recommend people to not use them cuz they just mean you have to bend your wrist upward, which is more straining. I would call this a two. I'd call it a 0.2.2 a one. I accept one. Let's jump all the way to $30 because at this price, we can go wireless, right? But it's not just that. The key upgrade this time is scissor switches. Key upgrade and scissor switches should never be in the same sentence. It's better. Put my happy face on. Okay. Oh, it's it's better. So, like every $30 keyboard, what we have here is still membrane, but now the rubber domes are combined with an extra
plastic scissor mechanism that provides a more rigid structure, making each press feel very consistent. The sound doesn't have that jelly, you know, whereas the last one did. The sound 2 out of 10. No, none of them have, but this also doesn't. At what price point are you expecting these keyboards to start doing the janisa? 50 to 100. I would say having Bluetooth being wireless, I will give it a point just for that. Not having wires and whatnot is very, very convenient. How clean is your desk? It's very messy. Oh, yeah. Loads of wires. I like the idea of it. Okay. I don't know why I mentioned that point about wireless. I literally plug in wireless keyboards for battery reasons or psychotic ones.
No psychotic ones. I would go 2.5 out of 10. I'll go 2.5. I was going to go 1.5, but I'm giving it a point for being wireless, which as we've discussed is very important. Okay. I can't live without it. $50 though is where we shift into the gamer zone with our first entry level mechanical board. And this is a complete switch up because instead of squishing down a mushy piece of rubber, every mechanical key has a bunch of parts. When you press down the key cap, you're also pressing down the stem underneath it. There's a spring which makes sure you're getting just the right amount of resistance. And then there's two metal contacts sitting on
either side of that stem. They're separated, but it's when you push that stem to its actuation point that those contacts are allowed to touch. And that's what registers the key press. The benefit being that unlike a rubber dome, this mechanism is so controlled that it feels exactly the same every time you do it. And also how you no longer need to bottom out your keys, pushing them all the way till the base. In theory, that means less fatigue and faster typing. Oh, much better. Although, why is the keyboard rocking? Oh, that's so good. Can I just That's one caveat to look out for with an entry- level mechanical keyboard.
It's trying to squeeze so much in that it's going to cut some corners. These are double shot keys, which means the letters are not like a sticker on top. They're actually part of them. So, this would be the first time we actually have N key rollover. So in theory, I can just go like this and every single one of those key presses would be registered. This how we test. Thank you. You're supposed to Oh, no. Please. No, no, please. The glasses. Yeah. This is the first keyboard with software. The funny thing about this software, you can't make it any bigger.
Try it. You need glasses. I guess just the fact that we have RGB lighting is in itself a big improvement. Yeah. Has a bit of like a clang. Oh, you hear that? Yeah. This open case design is not helping it very much. So, the last keyboard we gave a 2.5 to. I would actually go as far as to say this probably doubles that, but then take away one point for this monstrosity. I can get behind that. I might have given it like a 3.5 just to be different. But then, if $50 already gets you into the prestigious mechanical keys club, then you might be wondering why would you ever spend more than that?
Well, many people won't cuz really you got to spend $100 or more to get the next noticeable step up. Cuz it turns out there are different brands of mechanical switches. The ones you'll find in most entry- level keyboards are OTM. They're 90% of the performance for 50% of the price. But the Gatoron switches here in our $120 board should be in theory smoother, less scratchy, and even more precise. He's happy. This is more my speed. I've never seen him smile before. I haven't. It looks like it's got stabilizers built in. The structure of this key is more guided than before. I press the key here or I press the key here.
It's doing the same thing and it feels the same. Which is the point of a good stabilizer. I think we're at the point where this is the kind of keyboard I wouldn't mind gifting somebody to say, "Hey, this is why I like keyboards." Wow. This is okay. The other reason this feels so much better is at this luxury price, you can also expect sound absorbing foam in the body as well as something called gaskets, which are essentially a whole layer of tiny soft elastic pieces sitting between the hard components of the board, which reduce the internal vibrations and therefore the harshness of the sound. Having that bump in between the top press somewhere here and the bottom to tell you where you've actuated
that switch fills me with so much joy. And yeah, that's actually the other reason that this feels so good. There's not just brands. There's also three main different styles of switch. The main ones being linear, which feel very smooth and quiet as you press them down. Tactile, which are still quiet, but add a little bump usually at the actuation point of the key, so you can feel that you've pressed it right. and then clicky, which also adds an audible Q at that same point to really reinforce the activation. So, the $50 keyboard was linear. This $120 board has tactile switches, so the keys go down like this.
It's actually a world of difference. I also think these switches are lubed differently and probably a lot more heavily than these. I think the springs are a lot quieter on this one. And that's because the It's because of the lubricant. Yes. Good knob, bad knob. As far as knobs go, yeah, there's no way to It's a rotary encoder. It's fairly responsive. I'm not a fan of this. It feels like it's badly positioned. You're going to spend a lot of time brushing against backspace. I will say right off the bat, the software looks about a million times better than the $50 board.
It's filling up the screen, which is nice. But you can actually select the individual keys to apply effects to them. Oh, okay. That's really intuitive as well. The thing I like the most, which I really love about this, it's in your browser. I don't need to download some more bloatware or whatever. That for me already gets it like five extra points. Software. The soft keyboard. Only thing that kind of bothers me about this one is the keys don't have any transparency in them. So, you only see the backlight behind the keys, not shining through them. I've tried turning all the lights off. This doesn't allow
me to actually properly see the keys. Unless you are very comfortable at touch typing, this amount of light is not going to aid you in the dark. I'm thinking for this one, we go six to seven. Give it six, seven, I'm sorry. Do you I held that in for so long. Time for another major switch up in the world of the keyboard because at around $200, you can get yourself Hall effect mechanical switches. Well, that's interesting. The board's so fancy that you even get to build it yourself. So, the really cool thing about Hall effect switches is instead of metal contacts that only have two states, connected and
then not connected. These use magnets under the keys, which basically gives you a sliding scale of inputs the closer they get to the magnetic field detectors on the board itself. So, a lot of people would consider this the holy grail of mechanical key switches because it means well, first of all, you can push this key down and decide at what point during that process you want the key press to be registered. It's really impressive seeing it on this software. It's tracking it so precisely. So, you could decide if you wanted to just brush your keys or smack your keys. It's up to you.
Brutio is such a great name. It's way more dynamic than the other one. It actually shows you in real time the effects on screen. Being able to customize the actuation point, the effects of individual switches is super cool. It's rapid trigger. So, instead of the key needing to return to the top each time, you can actually just let it come up a tiny bit and then reactivate it again. That was actually a Chico. was so good. I think for certain keyboards, it got banned because it was that much of a competitive advantage. That being all said, I do hate this keyboard.
I just think for $200, you're getting a lot of function, but not a lot of keyboard, and I like keyboard. Well, the other um side effect of the fact that this is Hall effect is this has analog mode. Let's say you're playing a racing game and you're driving. How much you push down one of the keys could determine how much gas you put in the car. I put my hands up. That's super cool. If you were to bring back the $50 one to compare it in terms of typing experience. So to me that feels like many subtle improvements. $100 keyboard for me and what I like typing on. I would take this 100 times out of 100.
I also think these keys have less resistance than these ones. It's not that hall effect switches naturally feel worse than non-h hall effect switches. It's just that you may prefer non. If I was gaming I'd take this. If it was office work, I'd take this. Which means we gave that a 6.5. I guess that's got to be a six then. Actually, I think it should be a 6.25. Okay. Six. Seven. I'd also give it a 6.5. I didn't say 6.5. I said six. Oh, the.5 was silent. I think this represents where keyboards kind of tail off into their own things. And I don't think either is better or
worse. So, I can't in good faith ask keyboard enthusiasts give this a higher or lower score. Yeah. Okay, fine. So, we'll say both are 6.5. You said six. So, where do we even go from there? Well, $300 buys you the luxury of being able to miniaturaturize key switch tech if you so wish. You can get a keyboard that is portable, low profile, and somehow still mechanical. This actually very impressive how thin that is considering these are mechanical switches. Lighting is a little dimmer. They probably had to sacrifice the size of the LEDs because of the thness. I quite like it because it's low profile.
It has a similar feel to like the Apple keyboard, but with the extra tactility and stability of mechanical is definitely better than the Apple keyboard. 100%. Let's just get the $100 keyboard here for comparison. What I liked about this is you push it down and it's smooth and then you hit the actuation point and then suddenly you feel that little bump. Whereas here, the whole thing is bump. It's still a nice typing experience, but it almost feels a bit less sophisticated.
I think it's the best you can do with such a short travel distance. This is the best iteration of any kind of knob or roller in my opinion ever made. I don't brush my keys on it. I can quickly find it when I'm doing something. I want to turn the volume down versus it's not perfect. I would give this a 5.5. I would go 6.5. Evening out to a six. So, it's a 5.5. What do you think it should be? Please, please help. Please, don't say that. Don't encourage him. There you go. And we agree, don't you?
Sick of me. I'm sick of me, too. So, the concept of this video is meant to be here's the features that you can normally expect to get at different price points. But let's just go completely off the rails for a minute because I want to show you something crazy at $350. The Final Mouse Centerpiece Pro. How did you get this thoughts on the keyboard? How did you get this? I've been trying to. Anyways, um, holy moly. I have made many a comment about what this would and wouldn't be. I didn't think I'd be typing on it today. You're almost scared to. Uh, yeah. I don't know if you can see it from my angle, but seeing the legends letters being off
because I'm looking at it at a different angle is maybe the stupidest thing I've ever seen. There's one in theory upside, which is that you can customize the keys. So, if I click that, for example, can you see it blacks out every one of the keys for better visibility? So in theory, you can also then move around the letters. So let's say you decided that this was the angle that you sat from your keyboard. You could put them in the top corner. Having a keyboard that prioritizes looking at your keyboard is about the dumbest thing ever. The keyboard is a periphery device. If I make the periphery device the main device, why do I have a screen? This one's called
paintball. Oh my goodness me. every single key. It is really cool though. The key caps are also really quite clear. This also has its own GPU which is allowing it to make the effects interactive. Oh, this is going to be interesting. So, what did you do today? I played Flappy Bird on the keyboard. You played Flappy Bird. Flappy. This has everything we've covered so far. You know, it's Hall effect. It's got the magnetic switches, but also it has a 2K resolution display underneath the keys. I will give it a five. The issue for me, you know, like I'm getting reflections on the keys themselves, which means that even in its standard form, it's still dumb. I'll give it a three. Sorry, the score is going down. I think we should just top out at five.
Okay, let's go five. Now, your first impression of the $500 keyboard might seem a little basic compared to that light show that had some keys on it, but this is what happens when you absolutely master those basics. This budget buys you a truly everything board. I think every feature we've seen so far, but now instead of just sound reducing foam, there are three separate layers of dampening. The gaskets, the cushiony bits inside are now adjustable. The switches are even higher quality. And there's even a little OLED display to control lighting modes. I've even set mine to type subscribe every time I flick it down.
It looks like a weapon that I would use some kind of shooter. It feels like one, too. Like, hold it. Oh, that's solid. We've kind of noticed as the price has got more expensive, the keyboards have felt more and more weighty and planted. This is like the ultimate version of that. This is the most wondrous of sound keyboard so far. I quite like this light, clacky sound. I'm pleasantly surprised. So, there's another important stat here, which is polling rate. Essentially, just how frequently the keyboard reports to the PC. Let's get the $10 keyboard back. Bring back good memories.
No, not at all. This $10 keyboard, which is wired, by the way, has a 100 Hz polling rate that has 8,000 wireless. Can you tell? Yeah. No. [clears throat] Which is interesting in itself, right? The two absolute extremes and it's still difficult to tell. Gaming, you'll be able to tell, but you're probably not good enough for it to matter is the assumption. The equipment probably helps. You also get a wrist rest, which in itself is unusually heavy. Okay, that is a dense wrist rest. and then OLED display, which feels so extra for this tiny like 1.5 in thing over here. And then that will just allow you
to control brightness, but also things on the PC itself. Like actually, funnily enough, fan speed sounds good and it feels like there's no resistance when I'm typing at all. Rating wise, I am siding with 8.5. I will give it a 7.5. So me, me in the middle, eight. through 7.5. I'll give it an eight. And so you might be thinking now, $500 already gets you every single prolevel feature that exists. So why on earth would anyone ever spend more than that, let alone $20,000? Well, beyond this price, I would say we enter the wild west. It's not necessarily that everything gets better, but you can absolutely get crazier. And just before we start jumping to those extremes, $599 gets you a very different but no less
impressive keyboard. The Roly Piano, our sponsor. I had this whole thing. I was going to get you back and you just sat there rookie mistake. Just so you know, 3 years ago, this guy came to my house and built me an entire keyboard just to Rick Roll me. And today was the day I was meant to get my revenge. You ruined my entire sponsor spot. I had a whole thing. You're two and a D. Do you know the idea of this keyboard?
Yeah. So, you connect to a mobile app, the app shows you the notes coming, and it you kind of play along basically like Guitar Hero. It's got the upside that it's teaching you a very real instrument by the end of it. I actually really like this. Uh, [clears throat] there's one level to this that you might not see coming. A few moments later. Try and play. Oh, that is infrared cameras that are looking at all 27 joints in each of your hands to make sure that you're playing each note with the right technique.
This is kind of cool though. But now try to play with a different finger. Oh, that's good. And it highlights the finger I'm supposed to play it with. So, I'm becoming technically a good pianist as well. Oh, link below for Roly. Now, for the crazy keyboards. For example, $725 gets you the Angry Meow Neon 80, a keyboard with apparently fourdimensional RGB matrix lighting effects. It's buttery. What is that? Just extra loop. Is it double loop? Triple loop. Triple. PE phone is one known to change the sound to this kind of like thcky sound that you're hearing.
The RGB is absolutely bonkers. It's also the heaviest keyboard by a decent amount. It's 389 LEDs. It's the most similar to the final mouse. Which would you pick? I wouldn't really have either, but I could turn this off and still have a good keyboard experience. And when I want to turn it on and show people like, "Wa, look at my thing." It does that. Please say that again. Boy. Oh no. This is the art of keyboards. [snorts] 8.5. I'll give it an eight. So 8.25 is our highest joint score. It's an eight.
$1,000 gets us something completely custom. This is a oneofone Mr. Who's the Boss edition keyboard, which is absolutely giant. This is the kind of keyboard that would show up on the glasses channel. There's what, like 200 keys here. Super and hyper and meta. Do you feel like you should be piloting the Death Star? Hot take. I don't like this as much as the last one. This is cool. I'm a fan of this. I also just love how this looks logo at the back. Oh, that's so cool. I'm so jealous. I don't like it as much as the last one.
I'd say seven. I'd give it a hyper seven. We agreed. Oh, we actually did. Fine. Fair enough. Now, it is difficult to spend more than that, even if you try. I actually had to commission someone to upgrade an existing keyboard they made to be able to spend $2,000. So at this point it's all about hand craftsmanship. It's about 24 karat gold and Paduk wood which apparently has a natural light fragrance to it. [snorts] She smells upper class. It doesn't smell that great to me. Having actually upgraded to very nice keyboards. This feels like a step back to me.
99% of the budget was spent here and 1% of the budget was spent on the key caps. This is like 50 cent gold. And this is I think that's real gold. Real gold. Wow. First time I've seen gold on a keyboard. The $50 keyboard is about this level. Yeah. Not much sound dampening inside of there. Given that the basic mechanical keyboard was a four, I'm thinking five. Yeah, I give it a 4.5. So, if $2,000 is basically the upper limit of what you can buy, you might be wondering how on earth do you get to 20,000 on one keyboard? Well, that's what happens when you try and build your own. I've built a lot of keyboards. We
made yours, but that was only maybe a couple hundred. Wow. Cheap out. A couple years back, we built maybe the greatest keyboard and the worst keyboard of all time. We decided that the keyboard record had to be ours. Mhm. At the time, Razer had a 5ft keyboard, and I asked them to buy it and they said, "No." I said, "Okay, I'll make my own. So, this is I hate to think what it looks like underneath there now. Oh my god. Finish off. Everything here is built 27 times larger than original. Wow. These are Novelties. Big switches. Was a collaboration to make a novelty switch that actually had all of the functioning components of an MX switch. And so I'm
assuming they made this for someone to buy one of them, not to We sold them out globally everywhere. They actually had to make more and put in an order to fulfill our order. That's actually like the best possible way of seeing how the key works. I'm actually starting to wonder how you managed to do it within $20,000. Did you just type what I think you typed? Straight fire lyrics from a song that is really dear to your heart. Do you know what's funny? [snorts] Oh, no. It's really funny. What's funny? Every single time my finger has touched a key this video, I've been writing notes.
I wasn't aware of your game. 2-1. It's crazy. It's blowing my mind. But this is possible. What do you rate out of 10? Why is it 12? A one. Two is about the right for park. I prefer the $300 keyboard. I prefer the $100 board as well. I also prefer the $50 board. There's a lot of boards you're preferring over this keyboard. You've named like half of them. Anything else you want to get? I don't take this seriously, but I can't. Anything else you want to get out of the way? And I guess you prefer the $2 one as well.
No, actually. Okay, good. I think it's fair to give you a four. Out of three. What? Whatever number you want, you can have it. I want it to be a 12 out of 10. Fine. So, we're agreed as a four out of three. Thanks for having me on the channel. Uh, I make more videos. Okay.
