Sydney Mechanical Keyboard Meetup 2019, this
Saturday, November 30. If you’re in the area, definitely come along
to try out everything to do with mechanical keyboards, and we have a load prizes from
our generous sponsors to give away in the raffle. Be there! Alright, today we check out a mechanical keyboard
that I believe may be a very attractive choice, as it has a bunch of features that you don’t
often see together. And this is the iQunix F96, and I have the
Joker edition, but it comes in a range of interesting colourways, including this very
Bunnings looking one. And to be honest, I should have went for the
white version with the KAT profile keycaps, because that one looks clean as. In the box, we have a USB type C cable, unfortunately
doesn’t match the rest of the board. We have a plastic ring keycap puller, and
an awesome addition is the wireless receiver. Most of the wireless boards as of late that
I’ve reviewed, haven’t come with one, so that’s awesome, especially if your PC
doesn’t have Bluetooth. Always nice to have a dust cover. And here is the keyboard itself. In the hands it feels pretty good, with a
bit of heft coming in at 1.17 kilograms. And as it is aluminium, there’s no flex
to it, so nice and sturdy. Confusingly, we usually call this sort of
keyboard a 96 key layout. But this actually has 100 keys, which did
legit confuse me, as I was trying to figure out what keys were missing. So for reference, a standard ANSI full sized
keyboard is 104 keys. Basically it’s like a compressed full sized
keyboard, removing all the gaps between the clusters. So to do that, we squeeze in the arrow keys
here, which removes one key to the left of those. And the 0 on the numpad is now a 1u. Then we have the typical 1.75u right shift
that’s seen on majority of compact keyboards. So what’s missing is insert, pause break,
scroll lock, and menu or windows key. And all of those are available on the secondary
layer anyway. And that gives us the primary functionality
of a full size, in the form factor of just a bit longer than a tenkeyless, which is awesome. It does use standard extended keycap sizes,
so replacing these won’t be an issue, but then you give up the Joker theme. And it does it pretty well. So we obviously have purple for the case,
and as the mods for the keycaps. And white for the base, and green to tie it
up. We do get those extra keycaps, but I think
it looks pretty good in this form, and not too in your face. The case is a design that they’ve been doing
for a long time. And is similar to the Keychron K2 that I recently
checked out, and like the Keychron K4, but this is in my opinion, the real way. So we have that frame design, which you may
or may not like. With the joints in every corner, and of course
the visible screws. But the purple anodised finish looks great
on the aluminium. Nice and even, and is a very aesthetic looking
deep purple. On the bottom we have this weird bulge that
we’ll see later. There’s the classic aluminium cone feet. There’s our switch to go between Bluetooth
and wired modes. And this piece of plastic here, which honestly
just looks horrendous is to allow the Bluetooth to work, as the whole thing is enclosed in
aluminium. I don’t usually disassemble this early in
the video, but let’s do that now. Very different from the Keychron design. And it really is just a frame, like a picture
frame sort of construction. We have these aluminium pieces that screw
together, and a backboard, which is also aluminium. The aluminium pieces are solid, so not like
the sheet metal stuff. And are about 4.2mm thick. Not heavy or anything, but solid. And the base is about 2mm thick. So that bulge, yeh that’s just for the batteries,
two of them. On the keyboard it says it has 3000mAh worth
of battery. But yeh, this is the biggest amount physically
that I’ve seen in a mechanical keyboard. The plate is made from 1.5mm steel, so nice
and sturdy. And here’s the PCB. We have RGB SMD LEDs for each key. Here’s where our Bluetooth magic happens. And I always get asked this in videos. This is not hotswappable, you will have to
desolder in order to change the switches in this keyboard. So, we just saw the internals. And yep, this is a full RGB backlit keyboard. However, we do not have backlit keycaps, so
it’s more like an underglow sort of thing for the caps. They’re about 1.2-1.4mm thick, and the lighting
does bleed through, which doesn’t look great, but I guess it does illuminate the legends,
which are dye subbed by the way, so nice and durable. The other big feature of course is the Bluetooth
capabilities. Pairing it is super simple. Make sure you have the switch on Bluetooth. As well as have Bluetooth on on your device. We can pair it up to 3 devices, which are
on the 1, 2, and 3 keys. So hold FN, plus one of those keys, and the
board will start flashing. And then pair it on your device. Easy as. The wireless experience has been flawless. I don’t have a way to measure latency, if
there is a way, let me know, but it feels very responsive, although I didn’t game
with it or anything, just the typical work stuff. I didn’t have issues with missed keys or
anything, and I’m just genuinely happy and comfortable using it in Bluetooth mode. As for battery life. I used it on and off, and got maybe a week
out of it. Tough to say as I always never keep track
properly. The thing with wireless is that you don’t
really appreciate it until it’s gone. It’s kind of like using a compact keyboard
for the first time, and then you go back to a full sized, and you realise how different
it is. Wireless is obviously convenient. And personally, because I often switch and
test between keyboards, I always had this on the side that was always connected, and
that I could always use. So that was cool. And just a lack of a cable on the desk is
so clean. I have Cherry MX Reds in mine, so a light
linear keyswitch, that has no tactile bump or click. It is also available in Browns and Blues. Typing experience is decent. It’s kind of tough going from a lubed linear
top mount board with GMK keycaps to this. It feels like a typical Cherry MX Red keyboard. Bottom out is kind of quiet actually, but
still loud overall with the top out noise. The stabilisers are decent. They’re Costar stabs, so a bit annoying
to take out these keys, and I actually broke one of the spacebar inserts which is just
yeh, annoying. So overall, I think that it packs a lot of
very marketable features. The main ones being Bluetooth, along with
having a numpad, which we don’t see often. The compact form factor, making it a little
easier to take around. The RGB backlighting, although we don’t
have backlit keycaps. And just a range of different designs and
colourways which makes things interesting, and all packed into an aluminium frame enclosure. It starts at 189USD for no wireless and no
RGB. But goes up to 239 for what we have. Pretty pricey. Especially considering the Keychron K4 is
like half of that. But the build and quality is better on the
F96, and we have more design options. I think with a lot of high end prebuilts,
having Cherry MX keyswitches does hold it back a bit in my opinion. Because the rest of the keyboard improves
in quality, as the price rises, but the keyswitches don’t. Like I said before, the white version with
the KAT profile caps, looks like one of the picks for me. But yeh, let me know what you think. And sorry, just another reminder. Sydmeet this Saturday, 30th of November. Be there.
