Hi, my name is Manuel. I have loved everything related with peripherals since I was a kid. Now that I am older and have my own money I can spend it as my mom says on “nonsenses”. I love keyboards and I have owned differente types of them, however I never had the time or money to be buying and trying different switches, stabs, cases… Now that I am looking forward to build my very own custom keyboard (ck) I am realizing of some stuff that really makes me feel uneasy.
While surfing through the reddit, some of the well known keyboard websites I realised that building your ck is very very expensive. Because of that I went straight to aliexpress, bought myself a hotswap keyboard which had a case that I liked. Looked for some switches, I bought Silent Tactile TOMs, and a set of keycaps of PBT, which as far I know is the best between PBT and ABS, the most common plastics keycaps are made of. Also I bought a coiled cable that costed me only 5$, compared to other sites where the price of a simple coiled cable are more than 20$. And a foam.
I build a “custom keyboard” for only 53$, which leads me to lots of questions. Why simple 60% whiteout cases from etsy or kbd, and similar shops sell them for nearly 50 or 60$. Yes, there are better materials, but is it not overpriced? Why sets of keycaps you could buy in aliexpress for 20$ less are sold way pricier in these shops, I am aware of dropshippers but it is way overpriced and sadly and surprisingly very concurred by people looking to buy their custom keyboard.
Is the keyboard market way overpriced? I see pcb plates listing for 60$ and I do not see a very critical difference. The only thing I am okay on spending money are switches and stabs, but why I should spend nearly a 100$ on a wooden case? Or 60$ on “artisan keycap” which is probably dropshipped or made for less than 5$? Why is etsy so used if there are lots of dropshippers? Even shops as kbd and someothers sell way overpriced keycaps sets that I do not think are very different to the ones I could buy on aliexpress?.
Am I too pinchpenny? Are there heavy arguments of why I should spend lots of money on a simple case? Or even on a set of keycaps?. A build as Wooting 60HE could be done with the plate and the same switches, and maybe using some config firmware programs?
If anyone is wondering about the keyboard I built, here it is…
I’ve been in this hobby since 2015 and at first I gawked at the price of custom keyboards back then. Even GMK sets at $100 a piece seemed insane to me and I choose to opt into building cheaper builds so. KBD Tofu was probably one of the cheapest and most available builds back then compared to now.
You don’t need to spend a lot of money to build a nice keyboard, but I do think once you’ve narrowed on the type of switches you enjoy the comes with a higher expense. If you want to go your own route and start lubing/customizing your favorite switches. You need a lot of time and money to buy the lube. But, I generally opt out on just buying them already l+f by someone else.
The other part of it too, is a lot of readily available keyboards just look the same. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but if you want something a little bit more special you’ll have to pay for it. For example, one of the TKL’s that really caught my eye was the Saevus Duality and that keyboard is around $600. Multiple parts, different weights, and the samples probably cost a lot. To me it’s basically a customizable piece of ‘art’ and I can those little things that I enjoy that make it my ‘own’ such as switches, stabs, and keycaps.