| didn't notice this comment until now. This is a somewhat deep rabbit hole, but what I will tell you is that you'll probably have a hard time finding what you want in a chiclet keyboard because there's not much of a market for chiclet keyboards among keyboard enthusiasts. Chiclet is both a switching mechanism and a keycap; most of the keyboard-enthusiast community is working with setups that involve separate switches and keycaps that are interchangeable. What you probably want in practice is the following characteristics: a specific key layout, all of the keys should be the same height, the key travel should be low (i.e., the amount of distance you have to depress the keys before registering a keystroke). No idea if you want the keys to make noise or not, or how stiff you want the springs to be, but that's customizable too. If you want chiclet keys because you want low key travel, you have a lot of options. If you want something really thin, there are way, way fewer options. A single left column of macro keys is not something I've ever seen, but the one keyboard I can think off of hand that has a similar layout is the Red Scarf II, which has two columns of macro keys on the left side; unfortunately it's not currently in production. Some people use an external num pad and put the num pad on the left for this purpose. https://www.massdrop.com/buy/red-scarf-ii-ver-b-custom-mecha... I personally use a KBD75, which is an aluminum body, tenkeyless layout with a right-hand column, and it's all programmable with QMK so you can make any key do whatever you want. For example, I have a key that, when I press it, reverses the position of the Alt and Win keys, so that I can switch between layouts for either PC or Mac and have the Alt, Command, and Windows keys always in their correct location. Images and build information here: https://imgur.com/a/5pSva2A you can get keycaps that have a flat profile that are interchangeable with any MX-Compatible switch. DSA Granite is a super popular flat-profile keyset like that: https://pimpmykeyboard.com/dsa-granite-keyset/ it's pretty common to add rubber o-rings to the keys to reduce the travel. But chiclet keys are generally going to restrict the rest of your options. Anyway reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards has a bunch of info on all this stuff. |
Although my highest priority (by far) is low noise, I do prefer short travel/registration and a soft landing as well.
Prompted by your post, I did some more research and decided to upgrade(?) my gaming keyboard to a Logitech G Pro TKL https://www.logitechg.com/en-us/product/pro-gaming-keyboard. I haven't tried Romer-G switches so it will be interesting to see how they turn out.
Meanwhile, now that Corsair's exclusive rights to the Cherry MX Silent (Red) have expired, I'm hoping to see a lot more keyboards with that switch make their way into the market. The Corsair Strafe RGB was tempting, but the light spill from under the caps was far too gaudy and distracting for my liking.
Cherry MX Silent (Red) switches with landing pads and o-rings seems like a combination that would work well (for me) for gaming.
For the DB4 and daily driver usage, though, the hunt goes on. I'll keep using the wired Apple Keyboard until someone else comes up with a TKL clone.