A little background, over the past month or so friends of mine have been talking about their mechanical keyboards. Features, and other things about them. Yes I said keyboards, they have spent upwards of 200 per keyboard, and own three or four, they buy replacement keycaps, replace the switches, make macros, change the LED patterns. And just in generally really really like the keyboards.
Last week I finally broke down, and started to look for one - I found a few Keychron keyboards on eBay for a reason price. See for the most part I'm cheap, and I don't want to spend much on a keyboard even thou it is something that I use all the time. $20 to $30 seems like an ok price, with $30 certainly being on the high side for me. (*Spoiler*) it turns out, I probably should have spend a little more and got something a little different.
Enter the Inland MK-87 TKL keyboard, while I was looking on eBay, I came across an Inland keyboard - it looked ok(ish), the seller wanted almost retail for it thou. So I looked at the Microcenter website, turns out a brand new keyboard was cheaper then what the seller on eBay wanted. I know shocker, sellers are always going to try to get more then they should.
The keyboard is actually an ok keyboard, it works surprisingly well for a $30.00 mechanical keyboard. It comes with brown switches, that are NOT hot swapable. The case is (I believe ABS), but feels good. And has a good enough weight to it. It doesn't slide around while typing, the keys feel good in my fingers, I am still getting a little use to them, but I've only had the keyboard for two days.
Unfortuntally I knew the day I got it, that I should have spend a little extra and got one of the used Keychron keyboards I had found. Yes, you can find pre-owned Keychron keyboards on eBay for a decent price.
I do feel like I type faster on my old membrane keyboard, but the online typing tests don't support that. In truth I type about the same on both keyboards. I have noticed I error a bit more on this keyboard. But I think that has more to do with how the keys are spaced and how I'm use to the other keyboard. And not anything this keyboard is doing.
This keyboard has "RGB" lighting, which is true and false. It has multi-color LEDs, each in a zone, so you have a "GREEN", "ORANGE/YELLOW", "RED(ISH)", "BLUE" and "PURPLE" Zone. It has I think 10 different animations, some of them are pretty good, others not so much. The speed of the animations can be changed, but I don't really see much point to that. The brightness of the LEDs can also be changed. They are top lighted LEDs, I've read various reason why this wasn't a great choice, but I think it's fine with the keycaps that are currently on it. Speaking of the keycaps - the font used on them is a little strange, I'm not really sure what font it is, mostly I notice the 4, 6, 8,9, 0, @, #, % and the Q, R O, P A, D, B all have little gaps in them. It's fine, just weird to me, and something I'm sure I would get use too.
OH I forgot the LED under the "R" key is barely visable, I'm not sure what is causing it - but it looks like the led maybe facing the wrong direction. I don't mean in the wrong place (Like it is at the top like all the other LEDs) I mean it kind of looks like it might be upside down. I need to explore this later if I decide to keep the keyboard. Or I just need to live with it like this. (Picture below)
The user guide, which is short and too the point, included with the keyboard does say you can program macros into F1 - F12 keys. I haven't tried that yet but I'm sure it will work fine.
The only weird quirk is that sometimes there seems to be latancy between a key being pressed and the input on the computer. I really only have noticed this when you do a double space, sometimes the next character doesn't register. Is this a problem? Well, yeah kind of. When you are typinging and use a double space, you think you hit a letter, but it doesn't register that is a problem. At first I thought maybe it had something to do with the animation pattern of the LEDs, so I turned them off, and it didn't change anything.
That is really the only "problem" that I've seen so far with the keyboard. And I guess if maybe you might get use to it, but it shouldn't do that.
The brown switches have a nice tactile feel to them, and there is a noticable "clunk" it's not really a "click" - but it's close. I have noticed that some of the letter will register quicker then others, so maybe not the best switches used? I mean after all this is a $30.00 keyboard.
The keyboard uses a SINO WEALTH controller, and from my understanding is either a 8051 or emulating a 8051. There are a couple of github projects that will let you flash new firmware. BUT I wouldn't do that with this keyboard, first you have no idea how the controller is hooked up to the leds, or how it is scanning the keyboard. Maybe you could dump the current firmware and figure out that information. It's my understanding Sino makes the controller, but OEMs can wire it however they want, the controller IDs the same for every keyboard "Device 020: ID 258a:002a SINO WEALTH Gaming KB" so it is really impossiable to tell what keyboard you might be using. So using something like OPENRGB or Via would NOT be possiable or advisable for this keyboard. As a number of people have reported a bricked keyboard after using OPENRGB.
I actually tried OpenRGB before I knew this, lucky for me OpenRGB took support for Sino controllers out of it's scan, so, that probably prevented problems.
In short, this is an ok basic mechanical keyboard, I would say it's ok entry to the world - but if you have the money get a Keychron. You can find Keychron keyboard for reasonable prices. As far as the switches goes, every one has a switch they like, the fact that I like brown or blue switches, was a bonus for me with this keyboard. But not being able to swap switches easy was kind of a bummer. I have to remember this is an entry level keyboard. And not all Keychron keyboards have hot swappable switches either. For just a little more then the cost of a membrane keyboard, this is an okay keyboard. It's a good replacement if you need a new keyboard.
It is probably a gateway to other mechanical keyboards. As I've said I've have the keyboard for less then 2 days, and already know that I should have spent a little more for a slightly better keyboard.
I'm now looking at getting a Keychron C3 Pro QMK/VIA with brown switches and hot swappable keys for $46. Which is probably what I should have done in the first place.
