Way back in September last yeaer I mentioned I'd been considering purchasing a new keyboard and dipping my toe back into the world of mechanical keyboards. Well, in December I purchased a Durgod HK Venus and have been using it ever since. After a good few months I usage I figured I'd write about my experience.
I'd actually had my eyes on the Durgod Taurus K320, after seeing it used in this video but it was difficult to find a UK layout model for a price that I was willing to pay. In comparison I picked up this HK Venus for a fraction of price: £19.99.
Build quality
I'm pretty impressed with the build quality of the keyboard, altogether it feels very well made. Despite its compact size it's quite weighty, so when typing it doesn't slide around the desk.
I've had issues in the past with previous keyboards where the lettering on the keys fades over time. It might be too early to judge yet, but so far I don't notice any letter fading on this new board. However after a few months of usage the board is showing slight wear on the front metal base plate where some black coating has worn away to reveal the metal underneath.
The keyboard came packaged with a variety of accessories, including both USB and USB type C adaptor cables, a key cap remover and a little drinks mat, which I think was a nice touch.
Typing Experience
The gateron brown switches feel great to type on and the keys don't seem too loud (I work from home so noise isn't really a major issue like it would be for an open office environment).
Unlike previous mechanical keyboards I've owned the case doesn't produce loud metallic pinging sounds when hammering out the keys. I tend to be a really heavy handed typist so the lack of 'ping' on this board is a real positive for me.
When the board is working perfectly (read on) this is the best typing experience I've had so far. I've had previous experience using Cherry brown switches but I think the build quality of the board and case construction makes a huge difference.
60% Sacrifices
Perhaps the aspect I least enjoy about this keyboard (which is admittedly my own fault for purchasing it) is the lack of arrow keys. I'd assumed this would be fine and there'd be a simple/straightforward way to quickly access these keys.
Frustratingly in order to emulate an arrow key press you have to toggle the keyboard into a special mode with Fn1+Caps, then certain keys effectively become arrow keys. I find the choice of keys (which I've pictured below) a pretty bizarre choice.
What's frustrating is that once you've switched to the arrow key mode, entered
the combination of keys you need, you then have to toggle back to the 'normal'
mode with Fn1+Caps again. I've found myself in multiple situations where I've
forgotten to do this and wondering why my cursor is moving up when trying to
type the / or ?
I spend a lot of time in the terminal, so I've wired my muscle memory to hit the up arrow to go back in my shell command history. I've found the lack of arrow keys on this board really interrupting my workflow.
Some tools I used frequently like ipython and pgcli (both built using the
same underlying libraries) bind Pg Up and Pg Dn to go forward/back in command
history so I've fallen back to using this where I can.
For regular shell usage I've considering remapping keys to work around this shortcoming, but instead I've found myself using my terminals built in command search much more instead.
Device Support
Plugging this into my Windows PC everything works as you'd expect. I didn't have to fiddle around with selecting a specific keyboard layout or remap any keys to get things working.
Unfortunately on MacOS there appears no key layout/mapping that matches this
keyboard layout (Perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong place). I've settled on
using the GB (ABC) layout, but this requires you do have to perform some typing
gymnastics with modifier keys in order to type commonly used symbols in
programming such as | and \ and ~ .
I've learnt to touch type around these issues, but it does make it confusing when using the same board on MacOS and Windows.
Connectivity Issues
I'll run into an issue at least once a day where certain keys just stop working, or a key starts repeating and the rest of the keys become unresponsive. I've seen various threads online suggesting it's a pretty commonplace issue.
To demonstrate what I mean see the video below:
The only way I've found to resolve the problem is to unplug the keyboard and plug it in again.
Conclusion
This new board is definitely a better overall typing experience that my previous keyboard, but with some rough usability edges.
Typing is more than just the feel and satisfaction you get from clicky keys. In achieving a 'nicer' feeling board I've have to suffer through the lack of arrow keys on a 60%, intermittent connectivity issues and weird key mapping support on MacOS.
Because I picked up this board so cheaply I don't really have any regrets about my purchase, but had I paid original retail price I'd be pretty disappointed after experiencing the issues I've faced.
Consequently I doubt this will be the last keyboard I ever use, and I've already got my eye on some other models. In particular some of the ergonomic boards offered by ZSA, particularly the voyager keyboard, but I do wonder if I'd suffer again from the lack of arrow keys.
