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Comment by colllectorof | Hacker News Reader

$285.00? Too expensive. It's not even a matter of whether I can afford something of this sort. I simply feel awful when I overpay for something that seems like a hipster product.

Cut out the USB hub and seemingly useless RGB LEDs, bring down the price a bit and maybe I'll bite.

I do appreciate features like N-key rollower and programmable firmware, as well as being assembled in US. Ambivalent about aluminum chassis. (I.e don't mind it, but wouldn't mind good plastic either.)

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Smallish non Chinese or Taiwanese company producing a mechanical keyboard with replaceable keys, QMK firmware, LED's and you are most times at a price around this.

And for people which like a clean setup the building hub is grate.

Just kinda pointless in case you have a laptop and a usb dock.

EDIT: Also just guessing but no LED and no HUB would probably reduce the price by at most 50$. Most cost don't come from parts but producing in small amounts, development etc.

Not sure about that. I’ve got a Durgod K320 TKL cherry MX red silent switches and bought mac keytops for it and it’s half that price in the US.

Also doesn’t have some fucked up weird keyboard layout that makes it impossible to use another keyboard for 3 months if you have to change.

I believe that's not "non chinese/taiwanese"?

Sorry missed that. Had a long day :)

The LEDs are less than a buck each in any form of quantity. A USB hub chip is cheap too, but I don't know what the right search term is. If it lowered the price by $50, it is only if you have a time machine and the ability to get them to not design it with that in the first place. (high speed USB does have some interesting requirements on board layouts - but I'm not enough off an engineer to know how bad those are in practice) In reality doing a new layout so there is no hub will cost more than just selling these and letting people configure the LEDs off.

>Smallish non Chinese or Taiwanese company producing a mechanical keyboard with replaceable keys, QMK firmware, LED's and you are most times at a price around this.

Like I said, LEDs seem pointless in this design.

Also, I don't know of many US-based keyboard manufacturers, but I know of these guys:

https://www.pckeyboard.com/

Their 10-keyless version inspired by Model M is $120 dollars. Yes, it's pretty barebone, but that's exactly my point.

Edit: https://www.wasdkeyboards.com

Assembled in US, $170.

The LEDs cost nothing. I'm pretty sure they didn't design the PCB from scratch, it's just a thing included in essentially every OEMable design. Redragon, who sell keyboards from 20 dollars up ships RGB everywhere.

I bought an Akko 3108v2, best mech keyboard I have ever owned, for $95 new.

no LEDs, no hub, true. don't want LEDs in a keyboard (I am not this desperate to see colored lighting while staring at a color monitor) and I use a wireless mouse; no hub needed.

$285 is insane.

People will pay $50+ for a single keycap, just to put the keyboard market into perspective. You may think this is too expensive, but for many people that's totally within an acceptable price range for a carefully-designed keyboard that matches what they're looking for.

It’s amazing how much more expensive mechanical keyboards are now than when I bought my first one. There are $50 ones from China that break after 6 months, but most set you back $100-200 now. The prices doubled from years ago for the same tech

https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-c1-wired-mechanic...

Impressive prices

Not sure where the idea comes from that the Chinese keyboards break after 6 months - I have a royal kludge and tecware keyboards that were both around $50 and have excellent build quality.

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