Eudimorphodon
Veteran Member
There are lots of companies making mechanical keyboards, but you won't find them at OfficeMax. I would put Leopold near the top for build quality. iKBC is also pretty good and less expensive.
The high priests of keyboard snobdom are going to yell at me for admitting I'm this easily pleased, but I absolutely love the dirt cheap Cherry knockoffs you can buy on Amazon for under $40. I've bought four of them under various sketchy brand names ("Y-YOOSO", "EDJO"), and so far as I can tell regardless of the name they're sold under they're all using the same switches. A more well-known vendor is "Redragon"; their products sure look like they come from the same factories. They cost a few more bucks, but they *do* also at least have an actual website and other formal signs of support, which might be a consideration.
These things offer a choice of "Blue" (*really clicky*, my favorite), "Brown" (not so clicky), and "Red" (not clicky but more throw than a rubber dome) switches and I find they work remarkably well, especially for what they cost compared to the horrendous dreck Logitech will sell you at the same price point. There is of course a downside to these keyboards: They're sold as "gamer" keyboards and almost uniformly have rainbow-colored LED backlights to illuminate a clear key legend instead of normal "serious" keycaps. (And, of course, they offer a selection of silly patterns you can blink or pulse the lights with, if you're so motivated.) But if you can get around how ridiculous they look there's actually a plus to this: by necessity the light-pipe keys are double-shot molded so the legend is *never* going to wear off. I suppose the LED under it could go bad someday, but I haven't had any fail for over three years. (Putting all the keyboards like this I have together that's over 400 LEDs.)
Below is a picture of the keyboard I use as the daily driver on my work computer. I know, it looks utterly ridiculous, but... I paid $12.99 each for a pair of them in 2021. (They were 60% off for some kind of Amazon flash sale.) The round keycaps are weird, sure, but they grew on me and the keyboard's base is satisfyingly heavy with good rubbery feet to keep it from sliding around.
As dumb as this keyboard looks I would recommend it, even at full price, to anyone... if it were still around. But seriously, for $13 I feel like I stole it, especially considering the Redragon K552 for $42 is pretty much the same thing.
The hobby computer has an E-YOOSO K600 like this, but with more normal keycaps, because the ten-key pad is more useful there. The Redragon equivalent appears to be the K551; the keycaps are identical to the ones on my E-YOOSO.
Again, I've "only" had these for three years so I can't say if they'll last as long as a Model M. Heck, they almost certainly won't, but that $13 keyboard has been pounded hard five days a week for that time and it still works beautifully. I dunno, maybe the purple LEDs in the second to bottom row might be a little dimmer than when it was new, but... I think I can live with that.