Question for the mechanical keyboards crowd out there:
any suggestion for a good, Mac -oriented, 75% exploded, good sounding, under €100/150 keyboard?
I’m currently rocking an Epomaker/Ajazz AK820 Pro w/ Ajazz Gift linear switches, and I like it, but Mac support is abysmal, and more importantly keeps getting disconnected by the USB C dock every time the MBP goes to sleep, which means I have to unplug and plug it again every time I wake the Mac.
Thanks!
It just occurred to me that the problem could lie in the Sonnet Echo 11 TB dock to which the keyboard is connected, though. Hmm 🤔
I would definitely prefer not to have to bypass it though; having only one cable to connect/disconnect from the MBP is a huge plus.
Ok, small update: yesterday tried it without the dock, and it didn’t change anything.
But…
Today I tried tapping a key after a whole night of sleep, and both the keyboard and Mac awoke immediately.
Then I tried putting the Mac to sleep again, waited a while, tried tapping a key, nothing. Double tapped a key, and it worked 🤔
Tried again, left it sleep for an hour or so, tapped a key, nothing. Double tapped, nada. Tried stomping on some keys more, kb and mac woke after some seconds 🤷🏼♂️😅
@fmarini
So the microcontroller inside the keyboard boots slowly?
I have a trackball that takes half a second to wake up after it sleeps, and that's the trackball itself, the computer doesn't sleep. So it can be sleeping in the middle of playing a game and still be slow to wake up. Now that's annoying.
@leeloo @fmarini yep, seems like a slow boot problem from deep sleep on the keyboard part. Wonder if there’s a way to force it to always stay awake 🤔
Now, your trackball problem is indeed definitely much more annoying 😅
Edit: ok, there’s a way to disable the deep sleep mode, but I first need a Windows machine to do it, since obviously the driver and companion software aren’t available for Mac 🙄
@fmarini Could verify it’s the problem with a direct connection though. Replacement “hub” type dock would probably break cheaper.
I wonder if you need a powered dock.
@tewha yep, gonna try bypassing the dock and see how that goes.
Meanwhile I found out that Epomaker sells a $8 usb passthrough dongle that adds QMK/VIAL support to wired keyboards that lack it, interesting.
@fmarini I had a very old Keychron (original K3) that had crap Bluetooth and I hated it. Shopped a lot and ended up with a new Keychron that has great Bluetooth. It’s an expensive Q1 but I wouldn’t be surprised if the recent K3 had as good Bluetooth, or some of their less expensive non slim options.
I’ve used the old crappy one over USB-C a lot due to previously mentioned Bluetooth issues and it was fine but a bit laggy back then.
@g Q1 might be out of budget, though I keep hearing good things about it (and later/upgraded versions).
Just to be clear, I’m almost always using the keyboard over USB-C. Bluetooth is fine, though I prefer not to use it (battery, lag,…).
@iamkonstantin mainly a way to have the command/option/control keys in the correct position. The AK820 Pro has a win/mac switch that takes care of it.
VIA/QMK support would be nice to have, too.
I've got one of the way more expensive ergo keyboards
but they've got mac specific keycaps on their less ergo and more affordable keyboards
@fmarini If you can find one, the Azio Foqo Pro might work for your needs. It has excellent Mac support and is at least hotswap. Not really programmable and no QMK / Via support that I'm aware of. I'm honestly not sure how they'd get the Fn / Globe key and BT to work with it anyway.
https://www.aziocorp.com/products/foqo-pro-wireless-hot-swappable-keyboard
@fmarini Since I start to be a Nuphy fan. Maybe one of the Node Series.
https://nuphy.com/collections/keyboards/products/nuphy-node-series-low-profile-page
@obrhoff yep, NuPhy keyboards look really nice, but I’m personally not a fan of low profile, or compact (I.e., 75% not exploded) keyboards.
Btw, gonna post an update on the original post soon-ish, I’m doing some tests with and without the dock…
Francesco Marini
Leeloo
🇨🇦 Steve
Guillaume Ross
Konstantin 🔭
Diane
tw000
obrhoff