So a few people have asked basically the same 2 questions, being

1. How many keyboards do you have, anyways?
2. What keyboard do you use the most/is your daily driver?

The answer to the first one is “a lot”. As far as actual number, I think it currently stands at 12 (and I have a few more headed my way). Not all of them are in the same place at any one time though, as I tend to lend them out to friends to help them find a keyboard that suits their needs.

The second question is pretty simple. The keyboard I find myself using is surprisingly not an MX-based keyboard. It’s also not a custom keyboard either (yet, at least), and is probably a board most people have never heard of before.

My daily driver board is an ABKO HACKER K945P, which is a Korean electrocapacitive (i.e. a Topre-clone) tenkeyless keyboard with 55g domes, and has been for awhile now. I cycle in and out with other boards, but I always end up coming back to this.

For those of you familiar with the Royal Kludge RC9030-87 (2nd gen), another Topre-clone, from what I understand is that the internals of this board are the same (or similar).

Right off the bat, I know many will ask “so how does it feel compared to real Topre?”. Having used a few Topre boards (sometimes Realforces or HHKBs come through here), I’ll have to say this:

Does it feel just like Topre?

No.

But it’s pretty damn close.

I enjoy the “rain on the rooftop” sound you get from electrocapacitive boards. The switches feel smooth, and all of them have a consistent feeling. The sliders are silenced, and the method used is similar to the dental band mod used on other Topre boards. Eventually I will try replacing them with Hyperspheres to see how much that changes things, but for now, I’m OK with it.

Outside of that, there are plenty of reasons for me to like it that drew me to it over other actual Topre boards. Asides from being 55g (my preferred Topre weight), there is a lot going on for this the K945p. It uses Cherry-compatible sliders (similar to what the CM Novatouch has, but a touch less smooth), so that’s a big boon for those who like to put on custom keycap sets. And it’s programmable! Using their software, you can change the layout to whatever you see fit. I don’t have anything crazy going on with mine, just remapping the Caps Lock to Fn, as well as setting a function layer that has IJKL set as arrow keys to mimic how that function layer is on a POK3R, and setting right-CTRL to Caps Lock.

Per-key RGB illumination is a feature on here as well, long before the Realforce RGB came out. The implementation is nice, and the various RGB settings (color, modes) can be set either via hardware shortcuts, or through the aforementioned software.

The stock keycaps are actually nice for being stock. They’re white PBT shine through with Hangul on the alphas, and use Leopolds Step Sculpture 2 Profile. With my board, I have replaced the mods and nav cluster keys with GMK Electric Bluegaloo, and chose a static light color that matches well with it. I will eventually replace the stock alphas with some enjoyPBT Hangul caps (probably cyan legends with pink Hangul, as while it looks good at night, shine through legends are actually hard for me to read during the day (when I’m working and using the board the most). The artisan I have on the escape key is a Secret Garden: Peony from Just Another Keymaker, which I found to look best with Bluegaloo, and is just a beautiful keycap in general (I’ll have a writeup on the Peony later, I promise).

I paid about $150 USD shipped for this board used from a seller in Australia off of Reddit’s mechmarket, which is a decent price, as this goes for $200+ on eBay.

I only have 3 issues with this board, all of which I can take care of at some point.

The first is that some of the stabs are rattly. They’re Costar stabs, which I loathe, but if I lube the stabs and sliders, that should go some way to making them quieter. Right now though, there’s a little bit of a rattle when I used the spacebar. Nothing major, but just a touch annoying considering how the rest of the board sounds (I’ll have to make a YouTube video at some point for typing sound).

Second issue is one that drives me nuts on any keyboard, which is the lack of a detachable cable. I seriously hate when a keyboard comes with an attached cable, it makes it more annoying to take around, and limits my customization options. While the cable on this board is a white braided one that isn’t too offensive, I would have preferred that it were detachable.

After opening it up however, I should be able to mod it to be detachable using a USB breakout board of some type (I might go micro just for the smaller footprint), and the stock cable connection to the keyboard itself just uses a standard 5-pin motherboard header connector. All I need to do is get a new soldering iron (I am going to cave in and finally get a Hakko), and I’ll bang out an adapter cable.

My third gripe is related to the second, which is that this keyboard is hard to take apart. This isn’t an issue for say… the majority of you, but I like being able to open up my boards so I can mess with them (for detachable cable mods if needed, or to add more weight to the board), and the ABKO only uses plastic clips around the perimeter of the board. While on paper this is a nice design (my Drevo GRAMR 84 and Keycool 84 are held together similarly), the tabs themselves are somewhat large, which makes it hard to get them to release. I actually cracked my case in a few cases from the stress. This is an easy fix though, as the next time I open up this board, I am going to use my side-cutters to trim the tabs down so they’re easier to release. This shouldn’t compromise anything, as there are a lot of tabs, which should be enough to keep it secure.

All in all though, I really enjoy this board. I’ve tried many many boards, and have tried many many switches, and I just like the way this feels.

Will this stay my top board? Time will tell. Once my KBD75 comes in and I build it up, we’ll come back to how I feel and if it remains my main pick. I am also toying with the idea of picking up an HHKB Pro 2 Type-S and one of Hasu’s controllers to dip into the Topre-end game, but that’s for later.