If You Ask Me What To Buy, This is It! Varmilo VA87M with EC Sakura Switches Review

hey guys welcome back to the channel and in today's video i'll be reviewing one of my favorites ever stock pre-built mechanical keyboards that is just perfect straight out of the box no mods necessary and it's just wonderful [Music] hey guys this is betty from switch click and vermillo sent us the koi version for us to check out their new ecv2 switches but alongside that a while back a few months ago i actually bought the v87m in the moonlight edition and that's because we were looking at well what what keyboard should we recommend to people and everyone was saying you know the formula board they're perfect they're wonderful so we were like okay let's just shell out some money and buy it so we did and it was a really good experience i wrote the website review on this board and now i'm glad that they reached out and they gave us a chance to review their newest boards alright so what's in the box in the box you get the keyboard itself of course in the koi version you get a red key cap puller it's wired it's really nice to use but in the moonlight edition you get the black one so every one of these boards is going to come with a wire kick out puller you also get a rubberized cable with the color matching your keyboard and the downside of this is that it's mini usb you're going to have to exchange whatever custom cable you're currently using to use a mini usb cable not my funnest thing but you know i had to do it and it you know if your computer is all wire managed up then it's sort of a pain in the butt you also get a recyclable plastic dust cover i don't really use these things but they are tall enough to cover all the gaps and make sure that dust doesn't enter your board i really should start using these things though alongside that in this version you get a bunch of their postcards with their different koi designs they're all different one is red a black one a blue one a purple one so pretty pretty nice pretty nice it's a not something that i'll use but i'm glad they included it and then you also get this little warranty information card as well as where to download the manual and i did try it but i couldn't find the manual online it's okay because i did a lot of finicking with the board to figure out all of its features and stuff it also comes with these two extra keys for caps lock and scroll lock with a little space for the light to pop through so if you like seeing the lights visible then you can just swap out the keys and that's really convenient as well all right as far as build quality goes there's a reason that this is the wire cutter's number one recommended keyboard it is super sturdy it's quite hefty there's no flex at all it has an aluminum plate and it does have a sort of floating keycap design but the top plate is like over the aluminum plate so there's a little less switch that's popping out than in those other keyboards that we've seen before on the back there are two kick-up feet here with rubberized feet there are five additional rubber feet alongside that and if you look closely here there's like textured designs all at the bottom here that you can feel with your fingers that pop up and it's really nice i sort of wish whatever is here on the back was actually on the front side instead because we're missing a lot of the visual appeal on the back side and then there's also this metal plate that's telling you the name and the brand and all that you you get your mini usb port right here in this little boxy area and it's got some routing channels to go up left or right so that was really good to see one of the downsides of that though is while i was routing my cable to the left side every time i picked up the board the cable would sort of fall out of its channel and then my board would be like sort of tilting a bit so i would have to put it back in so that was annoying if you have your kickstands up or you don't plan on routing your wire to either side and you're just routing it straight up you're not going to see that problem so that was annoying to see definitely the keycaps on here will definitely not disappoint they are pbt no shine no grime they're slightly textured a little bit rougher than other boards and alongside that the legends are dye sublimated so on the koi version when i first looked at the legends i was like oh is that a misprint or something on like some of those modifier keys but when i looked even closer i could see that they were just little koi designs or little fish designs or water splashes or things like that rather than the letter itself so that was a weird trick of the eyes but i'm glad that it's not a misprint and that they actually planned for it to look like that on the koi version the legends are strange at first because they're sort of stylized and they are definitely unique in their own way but eventually you sort of just get used to it and take them for what they are it is definitely unique and the arrow keys have their directional water splashes and i thought that was pretty cool to see above the arrow keys here you have the design of one of these girls and a koi fish and on escape space bar and enter you also have some artwork on it as well but what i really would have liked to see is the back side get transferred to like the entire plate of the top side and that would have been really awesome so with the black on red keycaps in dim light the legends will be a little bit hard to see and then you also have some of the side printed secondary functions as well on the function row for the media keys on window for windows look and things like that and there's also some things that they don't tell you on the board itself as well and that took a while for me to figure out so some of these features is that you can swap the fn key and the left windows key so if you're wanting to use fn on the left hand instead of the right hand you can do that by holding fn and windows for about three to five seconds and then they'll be swapped the caps lock is going to flash three times when that happens so you'll know when the keyboard did the switch alongside that similar to the hhkb you can also swap the functions of caps lock and the left control as well and you do that by holding the fn key and the left control key for about three seconds or until caps lock blinks three times and there is white backlight it took me a while to figure out how to turn it on at first but you press fn and either the up or down keys to switch between the two effects that there are with a white backlight which is the static effect and the breathing effect you just press fn and the right arrow key and that's how you go in between that fn and up and down will turn up and down the brightness of your backlight so i like the whole white backlight thing it looks super sleek it's going to match with any setup pretty much and just makes it easier to use at night a convenient thing is that the secondary media function on the function row goes from f7 through f12 and that makes it easy to just do it with one hand rather than two hands to change your media keys and of course there is windows lock fn and windows and you can access the menu by fn and the right control so it's a quick overview of some of the other functions that it has that's not really super straightforward and easy to figure out all right so on to the switches so these are the new switches the sakura is very similar to cherry mx reds it has a 45 gram operating force it's a linear switch they are electro capacitive switches so rather than having metal on metal touch each other for the switch to activate or actuate the switch actuates via meeting its capacitance level and then it'll actuate via that way instead i don't know too much about the details but of course varmilo has a bunch of details that you can read about it the main point here is that they are really really really really super smooth they're so smooth and after breaking down some of the extra switches that they gave me i do believe that they are slightly lubed there's like no spring ping at all and they're smooth as butter smooth as a knife through butter smooth as a hot knife through butter there's three different easy v2 switches available i have the sakura switch but there's also the row switch and then the daisy switch as well they differ in their spring forces primarily because they're all linear switches the daisy is the lightest one at 35 grams it's extra light and it feels very similar to a nicely lubed cataron clear switch the sakura feels a little bit similar to cherry mx reds but due to the smoothness it feels sort of lighter than mx reds and then the row switches are the heaviest at 55 grams operating force and they're a little bit lighter than cherry mx blacks for sure so they're super smooth and there's no spring ping there's no wobble or anything like that the stem of the switch is sort of boxy and it appears to protect itself from dust and similar things trying to enter the switch as well so they're very satisfying to type on it makes a deep nice sound there's no housing wobble or extra sounds that are present at all another thing i'd like to say is that to take apart the switch you do need a kale style switch opener because it has those types of housings and the stabilizers the stabilizers are pre-looped and there is nothing to complain about or nitpick about or say anything about they're just they're perfect they're cherry style plate manage stabilizers they are wonderful especially that space bar on any varmilo keyboard that we've used like their stabilizers are a dream all right it's time for the typing test do do so so so so what's the verdict on these varmilo boards the ecv2 switches are a little bit more pricey than the cherry mx which is you gotta pay a ten dollar premium for these ecv2 which is sort of similar to how when you have to pay for the speed silvers or the silent switches that you pay a premium for those as well so these are about the same price as those switch options vermillo is starting to push these acv2 switches more and more so you'll find them more readily available in all of their models and their different colorways and you can pick these switches on their 65 on their tkl on their full size their wide variety of different colorways and keycap designs as well the prices of va 87ms range from about 120 to 160 it's a little bit more pricey than the range that we're used to looking at and reviewing but if you want to buy a board just one board and not look at any other boards not look at any more reviews and things like that these are the boards to buy they have really nice super really nice stabilizers the switches are already lubed the keycaps are phenomenal and the build quality is amazing the only downside is that you're going to have to use a mini usb cable but you can always find a custom one or tell someone to make a custom mini one is 100 worth it and it's going to last and it feels amazing if you want a board with similar features but you want the 65 percent then get the va67m they also sell these in the full size the va 108 m i believe so different sizes to work with for sure and a ton of different colors most of them do have white backlight but they also have a few here and there with rgb as well it's just you gotta look through all the models because there are so many we've used a lot of boards over a hundred dollars these past few weeks and from what i can see like varmilo boards are at the top they're absolute winners they are wonderful to type on if i had to stick to any board for like the entire next year i would probably pick a varmilo mia pro or the va67m and just stick with that probably with these easy v2 sakura switches because they're so smooth being lubed and all that you can check these out in the links down below if you want you can get these on mechanicalkeyboards.com and use switch and click to support us you

Channel: Switch and Click

Views: 211,451

Keywords: varmilo, mechanical keyboard, best mechanical keyboard, tkl keyboard, varmilo va87m review, varmilo va87m koi review, varmilo va87m koi tkl, varmilo va87m ec, varmilo ec switches, varmilo ec sakura sound test, varmilo ec sakura v2, varmilo ec sakura switch, varmilo ec sakura switch sound test, switch and click, the best mechanical keyboard, varmilo ec sakura v2 sound test, varmilo va87m sakura, varmilo review, varmilo tkl review

Id: U_mrnSnMI50

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020