Mike Dragon

*Rant mode ON*

Why is it so difficult to find a good keyboard, these days?

I've had this keyboard I am using for quite some years now. It's a great keyboard. REALLY comfortable to type with, it looks nice, it has a very practical multimedia panel and the command keys are very easy to reach without having to teach yourself to hit a specific spot if you are not looking at the keyboard while typing. The right Shift key has just the right length and the Enter key is only as wide as it should be. The Arrow keys are centered under the Insert/Delete/Home/Page Up/Page Down keys as they should instead of being cluttered together with other keys and the Num Pad has a space of its own. Oh, and my favorite: The keys are slim. It's a simple, but really great keyboard that I love to use and it has served me really well for almost ten years, now. It is great for work and great for games AND it is water resistant! In fact, I slipped milk on it once a long time ago and absolutely no damage was caused to it.

Everything in this keyboard is just perfect and it has never let me down. However, like everything in this world, some day it will malfunction or stop working completely and I will need a replacement. I've had it for almost a whole decade (man, time goes by so quickly!) and the more time passes, the more I worry about the arrival of that day so I have been trying to prepare myself and find a worthy replacement but holy balls! It's been impossible to find something decent that can live up to the standard my current keyboard has got me used to!

Let's begin by the basics and main thing: Key layouts. 8 out of 10 keyboard models I ever looked at so far have crappy layouts. Tiny right Shift key, an Enter key that's as tall as any letter key, arrow keys and others that are completely offset and crammed underneath the letters, tiny Backspace and/or CapsLock, etc. Like the one below (look at my keyboard above to compare and see what I mean):

Then there's the multimedia panel. Those buttons that are usually at the top of the keyboard and offer practical shortcuts to things such as your internet homepage, Back, Next, Mute, Volume Up, Volume Down, Play, Pause, Stop, etc. My keyboard has a button for Play and Pause and one for Stop so I can have full control of the music or movie I em enjoying, whether or not it is playing in the background or not. I can pause it if I want or completely stop it to start again from the beginning if I so desire. All other keyboard I find only have Play/Pause. No Stop button! Is it so hard to put those buttons on the same keyboard? Not to mention those who do have all these multimedia buttons, but they are attached to the F keys (F1, F2, F3, etc) as Function keys, so you have to press the Fn key to use them. Or the other way around, have the F keys as Functions, which is just as bad.

And then there's the key themselves. I love slim keys (those that are short in height, like on my keyboard) and I want them on my next keyboard but it's so difficult to find one that has them! It's all about the traditional height with all keyboards these days, it seems. And don't even get me started on those "gamer" type keyboards. The keys on most I've seen are huge and 8 out of 10 of them don't even have a multimedia panel. Also I find them ugly. I honestly fail to see their appeal.

All of those points are separate things by themselves and of course, there are keyboards that have some of the good features my keyboard has combined, like a decently practical multimedia panel, decent keys layout, etc. Though the keyword on most cases is "some". All few models I could find so far that are the least sucky in comparison to my keyboard either have one or two of the features I like in a keyboard. Never all of them (or at least most of them). It's either a good layout with a bad or completely absent multimedia panel or if it does have that, the layout is bad and in most cases, no slim keys. Look at this one, for example... the keys are not as slim as I like but the keyboard looks nice and it has a multimedia panel and decent layout, but the panel doesn't have Stop and the Enter key is just a slab, which makes it easy to hit the key above it by accident, instead:

And then there's also the comfort aspect. A couple years ago I did find a keyboard that seemed to have all the good attributes I like in my keyboard so I bought it. I bought it online so I could not check how the keys feel and what a deception it is! The multimedia panel has all the stuff I wanted, the keys are slim and the layout is good, but the keys are really hard to press! Type on that thing is absurdly uncomfortable!

Today I found what seems to be a good option, though. The multimedia panel has all the buttons I wanted plus a couple more, the keys, although not as low as on my keyboard, are said to be slim (they are definitely not the regular height), the layout is good, the size of Enter, Backspace, etc. is just right and it looks alright. But why must the keyboard itself be so large!? And why must the Volume Up and Down be so massive!? D:< :

https://www.kabum.com.br/produto/12932/teclado-c3-tech-multimidia-usb-preto-kb2202-2-bk

I am actually considering to buy this one to keep as a replacement but because it's an online purchase, I have no way of knowing how comfortable and soft those keys are, so despite all other attributes appear to be promising, it's still a shot in the dark. And I have been there! Don't want to repeat that experience once more.

Back in the day, find keyboards with all of the good attributes I listed throughout this text was not difficult. I actually could find many different options even at the local stores so... what the heck happened?! Why and when did it become so difficult to find such good keyboards that are capable of suiting all your needs?