KBD67v2 MKII RGB (KBD Fans) Mechanical Keyboard Review

Reading Time: 5 minutes.

Yeah, this one doesn’t have a catchy name. The KBD67v2 MKII RGB is a mechanical keyboard kit form KBD Fans. I’ll probably just call it “The Keyboard,” or “This keeb” from here on out. So, this keeb is a 67% keyboard with an aluminum body, brass plate, hot-swap PCB, and RGB lighting. The profile is considered “high” that is, it protects the sides of your switches, and the edges come up to just over where your keys begin. This improves the sound of the keyboard, allowing it to resonate inside the body, giving it a deeper sound. That’s further improved by a few other easy modifications you can make, as well as the included brass plates.

I have this keyboard set up with Zealios V2 78g tactile switches and MT3 keycaps from Drop. It’s a tall keyboard that feels amazing to type on. It’s one of my favorite keyboards to just type on. Type anything. I even found myself using it more regularly than my Tada68 with those fantastic Box Jade switches. KBDFan’s custom “67%” keyboard also uses QMK firmware, meaning it’s easy to customize. You had better be familiar with it though, as you may have to do customization frequently.

Setup

• KBD67mkii RGB V2 (E-White with hot swap PCB)
• Zealios V2 78g
• Drop + Matt3o dev/tty MT3 keycaps

A quick rundown of each of these components. The keyboard is a 67 key keyboard with a compact layout. It’s assembled from a kit and comes with highly customizable firmware. The switches are some of the most tactile switches available, with a large, pronounced bump, and a high force required for actuating the switches (78 grams of force). Finally, there’s the keycaps. These are a high profile keycap (tall) with deep dish-shaped indentations in the top to perfectly cradle your fingertips. They’re matte textured, with a white, gray, and red color scheme.

Assembly

Assembling a keyboard isn’t too difficult. The most time-consuming part is ensuring you have the stabilizers put together properly, especially if you’re clipping and lubing them and doing the band-aid mod. That’s more time consuming than difficult though. I do recommend at the very least clipping and the band-aid mod, but if you can get some dielectric grease, your large keys will sound fantastic.

Putting everything together was easy. A surprisingly tricky part was the spacers for the PCB and plate. You screw into both sides of these, and they can spin in place if you’re not careful. The screws are also quite shallow. This is a tricky step I’ve seen in many keyboards with a plate, so it’s par for the course. My suggestion is to use small needle nose pliers or tweezers to hold the spacers, then screw in the bottoms tight and use two screwdrivers to put the top screws in, securing the plate to the PCB.

The stabilizers are Cherry-style, making installation far easier. It’s also less hassle to take your keycaps off with these stabilizers for cleaning or maintenance. Furthermore, the PCB came in a nice foam material that was perfect for sound dampening. I cut out a portion of the material the size of the bottom of my keyboard using a pocket knife, and put it in the bottom of the case. This went under the PCB and plate. It makes just enough contact to deaden some of the sound of ping. Doubling it up, that is, making two layers of this, was perfect.

I recently completely disassembled this keyboard and put it back together so I could clip the stabilizers and add the band-aid cutouts below them, for a little cushioning. I did this to remove some of the ping of the spacebar, both for myself, and to record a video. It didn’t take long, but I wish I had done it the first time I assembled this.

Typing Feel/Sound/Weight

When you’ve got it all together, you have an incredibly heavy setup, 1,445g, or just over 3lbs. In comparison, most keyboards you’ve likely used are a third of that, or less. I tested one of my lighter mechanical keyboards to compare.

That heft lends itself to one of the best sounding keyboards I have. The high profile combined with the heavy brass plate and my Zealios V2 switches means it has proper thock. I could improve it further, with lube all around. But again, I’m lazy and already love how it sounds. Maybe someday I’ll have a perfectionist streak and take the entire thing apart and lube every single switch and stabilizer part. For now, I’m happy with this sound and tactility.

While I wouldn’t throw this keyboard in a bag to take to work, I could. No one in the office would really complain about the sound. It’s more the fact that I think the weight would throw me off balance in a backpack.

With the Zealios V2 Switches, this has the best typing feel out of any of my setups, though I do find myself still sometimes switching to my (now repaired) keyboard with the lovely Matias QuietClick switches. It’s a different tactility, and I’m glad I have both, but I do ever so slightly prever the strong bump and smooth feel of the Zealios. There’s a lot of required force, and that high activation point makes them my favorite switches. Putting my favorite switches in what is my weightiest case, and you have something truly enjoyable to type on.

Firmware

 

This uses the QMK firmware. That means updating it or changing it can be as simple as creating a new map on the QMK Configurator, compiling it, downloading it, and using QMK Toolbox to flash your keyboard. You will have to hold down the Escape key while you plug in your keyboard to put it into DFU mode so you can flash it, but that’s it. It couldn’t be easier.

Personally, I like to take a few configurations from my 60% keyboard and add them in, as well as replacing the Caps Lock key with a second function layer key. This way I have 2 function layers as well as the primary layer. I often use the second layer for shortcuts and macros. For example, since Android Studio has some finger contortions for items like renaming items or debugging, I set them up to be easy to remember 2 finger shortcuts on my second function layer. I also often set up a function layer so WASD and PL:” can serve as arrow keys, as I’m used to using them on my 60% keyboard.

Bugs/Issues

This has also been the buggiest keyboard I’ve ever owned. I don’t want to jinks it, but it seems as though it has stopped acting up on me. I’ve been using it without problem for months now. However, when I first got it, I experienced a few issues within a month of owning it.

This included the keyboard becoming completely unresponsive until I reset the flash memory to a blank state and then loaded new firmware. This had the potential of bricking, but fortunately that didn’t happen. For a friend of mine, who has the same keyboard, she had to use the terminal to reset it. We each had to do this twice. Each time I tried to fix a problem, I downloaded the latest firmware generated by the QMK Configurator to see if any bug fixes were made. It’s open sourced, and it seems as though there were a few updates this year as well as late last year. It’s possible that these firmware issues were fixed already, and this is why I haven’t seen them again. So far, even the worst problem has only required a re-flash, no bricking or PCB replacements required.

Aesthetic

This has an understated elegance to it. It’s all aluminum, with a curve along the side, following the angle the case tilts the keyboard at. The bottom has a brass plate with the KBDFans logo. It’s not something you’ll actually see often, but it’s nice to see it when you decide to take a peak.

Plug it in, and you have a plethora of RGB options. From high definition swirling rainbows to your standard color transitions. I usually have it on a solid red color, with splashes of color appearing under the keys I press. However, the options and the color selections are endless. You can even decide the hue and saturation of the backlight.

This is a versatile keyboard. Get it with a dark frame and the colors will pop. Get it with a light frame and it’ll look crisp. It’s a great canvas.

Overall

I love my Tada68. It now has Pulse SA keycaps, a beautiful artisan enter key, and clicky and tactile Box Jade switches. However, this keyboard became my primary board. I didn’t mean that to happen. I just wanted to experiment with a lighter color scheme, as I usually prefer dark setups. But I fell in love with how this keyboard feels, sounds, and even looks. The QMK firmware has allowed me to set it up perfectly. When I added my new favorite profile (MT3 really is an amazing high profile keycap) and these fantastic Zealios switches, I had something I couldn’t give up.

I haven’t reached “endgame” yet, but this is the closest I’ve gotten.

For now.