I Finally Tried Akko Keyboards... (And You Should Too.)

okay okay I get it you want me to look at Echo keyboards howdy hey I'm hippiotech and I looked at over 40 keyboards last year and this was the most recommended but but why why well probably because most of what Echo makes is incredibly cheap but this is Monster tobacco coming in at under a hundred dollars I'm gonna be putting this board to the test and seeing if it's any good even when it pings don't worry it'll make sense in a couple minutes in this video I'll be building the echo or mods geek M1 and I'll be getting a little bit of help from my cat maybe a little bit too much help there's gonna be a lot of cat in this video she was bothering me the whole entire time speaking of bothering go ahead and bother the Subscribe button by hitting it as I'm trying to hit a million subscribers this year so I can dye my hair blue now before I show you five minutes of building a keyboard with my cat trust me it's worth it let me first tell you that this video is sponsored by Echo however I do sponsorships differently on this channel any keyboard sponsor doesn't get to give me a script they don't get to tell me what to say they don't get to review the video they basically just pay for a video slot and you don't have to watch an ad in the middle of it so all of these thoughts are my own and I'll have the board linked down below if you're interested now in the background you've seen a bit of unboxing and some of the accessories like this cable that's a USBC cable and oh gosh can I do this looking through the viewfinder can I put it back on please please go back on come on okay please say good job hipio very good good job putting that back on in the comments I think of things I need this keyboard does come with stabilizers and these might actually be my least favorite part of the whole board but I'll talk about that later and also included is a little bag of screws that I recommend you do not eat speaking of things I recommend you do not eat uh the keyboard itself you probably shouldn't eat that as I mentioned before this is the mons geek M1 it's a sub brand of echo if you're new to keyboards you hear Echo mons geek you know absolutely nothing of what I'm talking about they make decently affordable keyboard Parts keyboard peripherals and keyboards in this case the M1 comes in at 99.99 us but for the sake of my sanity we're gonna call it a hundred dollars now you're probably wondering hipia what's special about this board well I don't actually know again they didn't tell me anything about it they just send it to me so let's uncover that together ooh knob knob knob oh ping ping pain wait wait wait is this premium well hold on I'm gonna temper my expectations and we'll get into that later but overall oh okay that's better so this board is constructed out of full aluminum or if you're British aluminum which of those is correct is it aluminum or aluminum I don't know it also has a really nice recessed what I can call brass inlay on the side I actually really love this so much because if you're one of those sweaty Gamers that moves around your keyboard a lot during gaming uh gaming then this makes it super easy to just pick it up and move it around now they call this keyboard the perfect keyboard to begin your mechanical keyboard Journey with and I'm going to be putting that to the test in a minute by building it out but first let's look at this RGB now as you might have noticed there's RGB on this board and it's incredibly beautiful as you might have also noticed it's south facing LEDs so it makes it even more customizable south facing LEDs mean it won't have interference with certain types of keycaps if you or a loved one have interference with certain types of keycaps you may be entitled to financial compensation now RGB is a feature in a lot of gaming keyboards but you rarely see it in customs so it's great to see it here it's incredibly bright and fully customizable with via now speaking of fully customizable let's customize these stabilizers by lubing them I'll have all these lubing supplies either linked down the bottom left with the view products button or link down in the description down below to lube a stabilizer I get a little bit of cry tox on my brush and then I just Lube the inside of the stabilizer housings and move the cat out of the way Nola please this is my cat Nola by the way when I bought her I was told she's an independent cat this is so wrong she's not an independent cat next you just insert the stem into the housing and then add some lube to the wires and no I didn't Lube the stem if you're new to keyboards you're probably wondering what the heck is going on hippie what is what are you even doing is it Lube what huh now I'm doing all of this so that the stabilizers which stabilize your big keys on your keyboard like your spacebar are smooth and don't rattle but what I'll soon find out is that these stabilizers really are the worst part of the board but I mean at least they were included I guess that's a perk so now that we've looked at the keyboard it's time to get her open the keyboard comes with a little Allen key to get it open but you know we're just going to use our wow stick it's an electric screwdriver Lincoln bottom left and now it's time to talk about the mod ability now if you're new to keyboards some of us like to mod our keyboards to make them sound better or feel better what have you and this keyboard's disassembly is really easy so it gets some pros for that and what is this mythical paper not sure what to do about that one so the top housing of this keyboard is made out of a minion AKA aluminum and for a hundred bucks the overall construction is honestly really really solid next let's talk about the PCB now these are hot swap sockets meaning that you can take your switches out and put your switches in and you don't have to solder or desolder but there is a trick to doing this and I'll talk about that in a second now the case itself is a little bit Hollow now it's not like there's a lot of empty room here so I'm really not quite sure what's going on there maybe it's just that they use cheaper aluminum for the bottom housing however to combat this they include their own foam which fits around the bottom of your PCB now I've done a lot of different mods in my days and this type of foam tends to be the most boring sounding generally for a board like this I'd want a silicone style of foam oh and not a cat in front of my camera thank you very much Nola here you get scratches one like on this video equals one bonus scratch for Nola okay but not not too many likes though I don't want to scratch her forever as you saw in the last clip the plate and PCB were screwed together so I had to unscrew that and Nola really wants me to talk about the gaskets okay I'm gonna talk about the gaskets geez Nola so this keyboard comes with a polycarbonate plate and the plates have little spots for gasket these are little silicone nibs that go on the plate and basically it makes your typing experience a little bit softer and a lot more dampened it's kind of hard to overstate it but it's a great touch for a budget board and nola nola please just a side note here if you ever want to build a keyboard make sure your cat falls asleep first before you build the keyboard please as cute as she is she's draining my sanity next when building a keyboard you got to install the stabilizers and this board does support screw and stabilizers which is great however I reckon recommend using duroc V2s instead of these stabilizers Nola was very excited about me putting in a stabilizer so she decided to meow at me and get kisses I guess now it's time to celebrate the next step I put back on the knob and let's talk about switches the most important part of any keyboard build I guess now I've tried a couple different Echo keyboards and a couple different Echo switches but I've never made videos about their keyboards and I made one video about their switches these are their wine red switches and they are Factory lubed they're a linear switch kind of similar to a Cherry MX red but hopefully a lot better My Hope here is that you don't have to lube them yourself and that this board will just sound good but we'll put that to the test later of course there's nothing that special about these they do have a clear top housing so that your RGB will shine through just a bit better that's not something that most people care about but you know similar to deodorant it's best to have it when you need it like at a gaming convention please these switches come in at roughly 20 US dollars for 45 so that's about 40 for this whole build as we soon realize with keyboards sure the keyboard might be relatively affordable but the other parts start to add up quite quickly also as you just saw there I installed the switches by supporting them from the back I don't do this with every switch but you definitely should otherwise you might risk popping out a hot swap socket now when you're installing switches I recommend you have a cat nearby to push the switches towards you so that way you don't really have to stretch very far in my case I decided to use Nola a little bit like a conveyor belt as she played with the switches and then pushed them right towards me when I was ready for a new one such a great cat right they say you can't train cats look at her go if you don't have a nola at home maybe bribe your little brother with a cookie or something now apparently that mysterious paper from earlier is tape so you could do your own tape mod very easily now I love the tape mod I've done a whole video on it Link in the top right but this definitely doesn't seem to be it generally the tape mod makes your board poppier and a little bit deeper sounding but in this case it actually just made it so the keyboard didn't fit back together like you can use this tape mod but then you can't use the included bottom foam because it fits around the bottom of the PCB so I I had to tear it off no tape mod here sorry guys sorry hypotech fans no tape no one but after that I got the board screwed back together and I appreciated the gasket performance next it was time to go for the keycaps and Echo sent me a set of one of their 39 keycaps and their keycaps are great I just didn't really like the aesthetic for this build so I decided to go with something from drop these are the dcx dusks oh that was a tongue twister these keycaps come in at 99 the same exact price as the keyboard we'll talk about that in a second but just a side note the included stabilizers kind of just end up feeling gummy even with a little bit of lube if you're using a light spring switch so I had to use gather on Oil Kings for all of the stabilizer switch spots this is why I talked about disliking the stabilizers as I think duroc V2 is a different brand of stabilizer end up a lot smoother every single time and these just felt gummy and cheap but yeah anyways the keycaps aren't cheap and in a budget build like this I don't necessarily recommend you splurge on some double shot ABS keycaps I think the standard Echo keycaps would be just as good and it just depends on your aesthetic but this does look so clean just like the gasket performance being actually kind of there it's not amazing like it's not knock your socks off but it does make this board noticeably softer to type on the knob is definitely a nice touch as you can use it to adjust your volume and all of these keys on this keyboard are programmable using the amazing software via now here's where I gotta get a little bit dirty with it though at 99 for the Bare Bones is this board worth it over something like a keychron V1 that's fully built for Less if you're tight on money no not really however as you'll see with the final sound test despite the case being decently pingy the board actually ends up sounding decently premium so something like this might be a way better option than something like the kikron q1 but maybe not the q1 pro I have to look at that in the future and it fits into an interesting little mid-range Niche spot at 99 bucks now I'm going to be leaving you guys with a sound test and make sure you do a sound test of your own in the comments to let me know what you thought of this video and what boards you want to see me check out soon as this was user suggested please watch the whole thing to support my YouTube algorithm overlords

Channel: Hipyo Tech

Views: 376,965

Keywords: keyboard, mechanical keyboard, mechanical, switch, switch review, novel keys, keys, gateron, kalih, sound test, switch sound test, keyboard sound test, keyboard asmr, asmr, typing asmr, mech keyboard, aesthetic, wholesome, reddit, id80, panda, alpacas, krytox 205, krytox, type, test, keyboard mod, keyboard asmr mod, TKL keyboard, red, 65%, 60%, RGB 65%, taehatypes, :3ildcat, 3ildcat, tech, MKBHD, Linus tech tips, Taeha Types, Tech Review, Banggood Review

Id: z3cTzbgDosM

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 21 2023