- Hello, and welcome to our search for the ultimate mechanical keyboard. So Ken has spent many, many
hours and many, many dollars buying, customizing, and
tweaking to his heart's content, a wide range of keyboards
in our search for what could be the very best
keyboard that you can buy. Now, the thing is, when it
comes to a mechanical keyboard, you can get way into the weeds, right? I mean, there are people
who are incredibly hardcore, you can completely custom build keyboards like our friend Taeha Types does. But the thing I want to know
is which of these keyboards is closest to my own personal preference. And before we get to that,
of course I have to give a big shout out to the
sponsor of today's video, which is? - [Ken] Omaze. - Which is? - [Ken] Omaze. - Okay, it doesn't work when I try to lean in
too far to the camera. Thank you very much to Omaze
for sponsoring this video. Be sure to stay tuned to the
end of the video, to find out how you can not only help
support a wonderful charity, but also potentially win yourself some sweet new gaming gear. So to start out with, let's take a look at the Razer Huntsman Mini, which has the same, very
clicky switch that I'm used to and I actually use in my
Razer Huntsman Elite at home. So I have always heard gravitated toward the much more clicky style. Now, there are actually
advantages and disadvantages to the various different ones, beyond just your own personal preference. So for me, I like this, but
also as generally speaking a little bit better for typing, right? So, you know, as you're
typing away your essay, your report on why Ken
spent all the company money, then this gives you a little bit more of that sort of satisfying click. Now on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the linear keyboard. This is much quieter, as you can hear, but essentially instead of having that sort of very indistinctive click, so you press it down and
then you get the click, this is completely, as the name implies, linear from top to bottom. Now this is generally speaking
better as a gaming keyboard. Now what you get here is something which doesn't have that
like. (keyboard clicks) It doesn't have that same kind of feel, especially doesn't have
that same kind of sound. Well you have to think about it, if you're going to be be gaming and you're going to be
using a handful of keys for hours at a time there are
a couple of things you want. First of all, you want it to
be very quick sort of key. In fact, actually, if
you look at the Huntsman, the Tournament Edition, this
is a very light linear switch for the exact same reason, right? It's sort of very quick to kind of pop up. It's also very quick to press down and it's not going to be super heavy so your fingers are tired after your hours and hours of Fortnite. I wouldn't know, I don't do that, but I'm sure people play lots
of, (clears throat), anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, yeah, so linear,
very different style of key. Now, if you want to blend the two, then you get what is
known as a tactile switch. So essentially it has a
lot of the same advantages of a linear switch. But as you can hear, you have a little bit
more of an actual click. So this pretty much has no click, right, It just goes all the way down and it sort of, to the
feel just is like straight. - [Ken] Yeah, there's
a little bit of a bump when you press it, you can actually more
feel it than hear it. - [Austin] Yeah, like
right like this, right? So, click, click, click, You can see how it goes down a
little bit and then it drops? Same thing with this guy, right, but you have a much more pronounced click and of course you get a
lot more of that sound. - Yeah, basically it's
all about confirmation. Do you want to have the audible
and physical confirmation or do you just want the
physical confirmation or no confirmation at all,
it really just depends. So you can spend as much money as you want customizing these keyboards, but you actually don't have
to spend a crazy amount. So probably the cheapest
one that I have here is this SK64 board. So this has hot swappable switches for optical mechanical switches,
So kind of like the Razer. this board with the key caps
and the switches themselves costs about $90 unshipped. - Not bad.
- Not too bad at all. - [Austin] I love the NES style,
color scheme going on here. - It's a cool color scheme, right? And again, it came with
all of this stuff already. The only thing that I had
to buy apart from that was I ended up taking the
liberty of getting some kit stuff to help with the process
of taking keys out, right. So, as I pop that guy
off, don't worry about it. With a little bit of labor you
can actually make your keys feel and sound better
than they did before. If I actually take this
apart you guys will see that there are these
extra little stems here. Those are the stabilizers,
those are for the longer keys that kind of need a
little bit of stability because the switch just
won't cut it on its own. On the other end of it, so
this is a Massdrop CTRL, we've looked at a lot
of these on the channel. The Massdrop CTRL is one of the ones that you see around on the internet a lot. The biggest thing is that
this keyboard on its own costs around I think 200, if
not slightly, more than 200, but you can't hot swap the
switches off these things to whatever you want. Again, these Gateron MX
switches you can put in here. I think this is a lot of money
though for what you can get. I actually found that for
$120 this GMMK compact board was actually a really good
balance of price and quality. So why don't you hold this,
why don't you look that, 'cause I'll hold the camera for you. - So this is interesting
because what you've done is you've given it those linear switches, but then you've put these
very interesting key caps on which are sort of very
much domed on all sides. Now that's great if you want
to hit F to pay your respects, you don't want your
finger to fly off of it. But on the flip side it means it's a little bit harder
to move from key to key. - [Ken] Also, the key caps
themselves are about 90 bucks. These are from Drop. So does Anne Pro 2 we have pudding key caps in this really nice like
cyan and pink color. These were only about $15 on Amazon. So you can go either really crazy at $80. You can get even more for like a couple. You can get them for like 200
bucks, if you really want to, or you can get something really cheap. But of course the feel is different. These definitely feel a
little more substantial, a little thicker. These are obviously a
little cheaper plastic, a little lighter as well. There's a lot of things
to chase Austin Evans, keyboards are hell, also this cable, $50. - So I think at this
point we have a good sense for the various different
keyboards we have. The different switches, different caps, the different sort of chassis. So now, what do we do now? - [Ken] You just want
to try 'em and practice? Well, let's put it this way. The first step is to
get a computer in here. We should probably get that set up. Hey, there we go, there we go. So we got a computer. And I think what you should do is we'll start with a typing test. Literally, let's see which one
you like to type on the most and then we'll go into gaming and we'll see which one
you like gaming the most. And then we can kind
of just gather opinions and then we'll see which one
walks away your favorite. - Okay, I like that, but you
didn't say dramatic enough. 'Cause don't forget, we need to keep people watching the video. Next up, we're about to do the most extreme keyboard test possible. I'm about to try all of these keyboards in a wide variety and
challenging conditions. I'm about to find out
which is the ultimate mechanical keyboard. See, if you say something like that, the people are a little more interested. 'Cause otherwise it kind of sounds boring 'cause we're just playing with a keyboard. - [Ken] You did that for the
four people that are left. Good job. - They probably can't figure out how to find the escape key
on their custom keyboard So they're stuck on the video. - It's the big red one.
- Yeah, well. - [Ken] That sounded
pretty good, actually. I'm proud of my work. - So start out with,
let's try the Huntsman which I am a little bit
more comfortable with. So... 74 words per minute,
so that's about right, I could be a little bit faster but, okay, that's I think a pretty good baseline. So obviously this is something
I'm really comfortable with. Let's try one of the linear switches. (keyboard clicks) All right, 78, so almost exactly the same. Although interestingly, I was actually a little bit more accurate. Okay, let's try one of the tactiles now. (keyboard clicks) Oh, okay, slightly messed up. A little bit faster,
wait, is that really true? 77, have I gotten exactly the
same on all three keyboards. Does that sound right to you? - [Ken] I mean, just says
that you're consistent. - 83, so a little bit faster on that one. Now one thing I definitely
noticed is a, pinging, that's the phrase, right? So you actually hit that
space bar a little loud, can you hear that? (keyboard clicks) - [Ken] You get that twang, right? So what you can do is essentially dampen the body on some of these keyboards, you just straight up, open
up the whole entire thing, put a little bit of foam
between the body and the board. This one, my favorite one that I spent hours and hours slaving over, this one, the GMMK actually
came pre dampened already, it came with the foam. (keyboard clicks) 64, yeah I was significantly slower with that one. You know, in theory, I could
probably be pretty fast with this one but the weight and especially
the keycaps on that one it would take a lot of getting used to
I’m not, no offense, I’m not a huge fan of this one particularly. (keyboard clicks) - 73, okay. Now why don't we try--
- One of the CTRLs? - Yeah, which CTRL should I use? - [Ken] You can try both of them but they're very, very
different from each other. - Yeah, I'm making a lot of mistakes, but it does sound nice. It's crazy light. - [Ken] I think the
rating is like 35 grams. - Okay, 69.
- Nice. - But my accuracy was among the worst. - [Ken] Yeah, so these are a little bit of a heavier, tactile switch. - 93 and 100% accuracy, that is so much better
than the other ones. So if I'm going to do all of these, I think I need to really
narrow it down to a couple. So it is a new day. I have come in with fresh eyes and we have an actual gaming
PC, unlike yesterday, ahem. So now let's play some CS:GO and see which keyboard I really like. So first impressions, I
definitely like the Razer, right? It feels good, it feels
sort of very responsive. And this is what I'm used to, right, this is the way I always game. It's funny, when it comes to gaming I almost feel like the mouse
makes more of a difference than the actual keyboard. Right, would you agree? - Not really.
- Really? I feel like for something like CS:GO I care more about sort of tuning my mouse than anything else? - [Ken] You're not really playing like a CS:GO player though. - No, cause I suck. Of course, we already
have established this, I'm not a good gamer. So this, if I remember
correctly, is our tactile, right? - [Ken] Yes. - Immediately I like the sort
of lighter feel of this one. So something I'm noticing with this one, it feels a little bit more
sort of the lack of clickyness actually means that I feel like I can get the key down little bit quicker. It does seem like it's kind
of an interesting blend. I really want to go
back to the Drop though, 'cause I feel like this was my favorite when it came to typing and my thought is, it's probably going to
be better for gaming too. All right. Oh, I love that feel. So I think something that
is really jumping out to me about the Drop is it feels, like for my personal taste, I
like the way that it sounds. And especially when it
comes to actually gaming, it feels good, right,
like I don't know how to, I don't know how to best describe it, but like, I guess the
responsiveness of the keys. I'm a little bit torn between the Razer and the Drop right now. For typing I actually
really liked the Drop. For gaming I do like the tactile feel, it does feel like it's a
nice sort of middle ground. This is one of the most
expensive keyboards here. Obviously you have the full
rainbow puke if you want it. But especially if you get into something like maybe some custom key caps on this to kind of give it a
little bit more style. This might be the move. Like, I love my Razer, right,
I love the clicky clackiness, but I think it actually may be time for me to move on a little bit and go to something which
is just a little bit more, sophisticated for your finest
mechanical keyboard needs. - [Ken] The goal is to get you to try better things so
much to the point where certain things don't feel as good anymore. - Are you trying to tell
me the difference right now is using my Razer, like this
is like a prebuilt gaming PC whereas this is like building my own? Like, is that the difference? - [Ken] I think the differences
like, this is Alienware. This is iBUYPOWER.
- Okay. - [Ken] And then this is
like your budget $800 PC that you built on your own. - So with all of this I'm curious, what happens when I go to the extreme end of mechanical keyboards, what happens if we actually
build a full custom one? - [Ken] Well, I can find
someone to help you with that. It will cost you about, a
couple of hundred dollars or a thousand dollars. - Oh, okay, that sounds much more like it. Luckily we have the
sponsor of today's video to help out, Omaze! See what I did there? You made a joke about
money and I was like, oh, well this video's sponsored so hopefully they'll sponsor our video on a building a computer keyboard. - [Ken] They justified me
purchasing all of these. - Omaze is partnered with Gamers Outreach, a charity which is dedicated to providing children in hospitals with access to gamer gear
as well as entertainment. And you can help support as
well as potentially win yourself a $20,000 ultimate gaming PC, as well as some sweet Razer gear, including a mouse, keyboard,
as well as headset. When you donate you're
entered for a chance to win and you can do that by going
to omaze.com/AustinEvans and entering the code AustinEvans50 for 50 additional entries. If you're not familiar with Omaze, they have a wide range of
other things available, including giving away stuff like cars and one of a kind experiences. But if you want your chance to win a $20,000 ultimate gaming PC, and don't forget that also includes taxes and shipping included, head over to omaze.com/AustinEvans and use the code AustinEvans50 for those 50 additional entries. Thank you very much to Omaze
for sponsoring this video and thank you very much to Omaze for giving you guys a sweet opportunity. What are you waiting for, head over there and until next time, I will
be playing with keyboards and not a $20,000 ultimate gaming PC. Well, that's a future video, okay, that's not, that's a different thing. Don't worry about that.
