I am doing what I can to find this information out myself, whether through experimenting or looking online, but one thing I am struggling to figure out is if my keyboard has hot swappable switches or not. I tried giving the switches a tug with a flat head screwdriver, but I am scared to break it and I don’t have a switch puller. They seemed to be coming up on one side, but when I would start working on the other side it would pop back down on the initial side. Also, the switches have a brown “actuation point” with a white “base” and say Outemu on them.
I understand this is a cheap GameStop keyboard, but I got it in pretty nice condition from a thrift store for about $10US. I just needed something to make uni work more comfortable.
Thank you so much for any help! I can send photos if that helps.
That is not sounding hot swappable. Did you disassemble the board and look at the underside of the PCB? EDIT: I did a quick search. This is not a hot swappable board.
Thank you very much! I have not removed the plate on the board yet to actually look at the switches from underneath, but when I find some more time to take off each key cap I will. Although, I was already kinda thinking what you are saying here. It seems like a really budget keyboard, but it does the job I require of it, especially for $10.
If your budget is $10, and you like that board, stick with it. If you can get to the $40-$60 range, I can recommend some stuff.
What would you recommend? I’m going to run this one for now, but in the future I could see myself getting a nicer keyboard. Desk space is limited, though, so I do like how this one is really compact.
At that price point I have had good luck with Redragon boards before now. Stick with their newer stuff, which is going to be have your Hotswappable sockets on the PCB. I think Redragon gives you a lot of bang for your buck. And especially with the gasket mounted ones like the one I’m throwing a link in here for, you get a lot of acoustic padding, just a lot of features for very short money. And they’ve actually been reliable for me even when I’ve beaten the crap out of them or ripped them apart multiple times. That said, I have mainly worked with their older style boards that are tray mounted. I’ve been meaning to try out one of their gasket mounted mount models, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Anyway, for this money, I don’t think you can really go wrong here. This one is 65%, but there’s plenty of other stuff to look at there. Just remember, if it doesn’t specifically say Hotswappable, then it isn’t. Full stop.
https://redragonshop.com/products/nova-k709?_pos=4&_fid=4b8f22c16&_ss=c