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NOTE: YOU MUST SELECT A SET OF FEET AND A CASE FOR EACH CASE! ONLY ONE PLATE COMES WITH EACH KEYBOARD.
Is a no compromise 65% keyboard designed and produced by Boardsource. The keyboard is constructed from 3 separate pieces, each coming together to form a sandwich case with a gasket mounted plate. The fully assembled SMT PCB included in all of The Mark: 65’s kits is hot swap compatible allowing you to easily change out your switches as your tastes change or new switches are released.
The PCB is also highly customizable, offering ISO/ANSI layouts with split shift, split space, and split backspace, all while maintaining hot swap compatibility. The back of The Mark: 65’s PCB features individually addressable and programmable RGB LEDs diffused by clear frosted polycarbonate allowing beautiful light to pass through. When the RGB lighting is turned on, the interlocking design of the separate pieces ensure no light escapes from any seam. All components come together to create a beautiful, minimal, and feature-rich product offered at a competitive $344 (CAD) price point.
Base kits for The Mark: 65 include an anodized aluminum top and bottom (front) piece in silver, grey, or black, and a flat rear portion made from machined (clear) frosted polycarbonate.
An aluminum plate of your color choice is included in the base kits that is compatible with any PCB configuration. The base kit is also available in a Full Frosted Polycarbonate Case variant, allowing even more diffused RGB to be visible from the bottom half.
If RGB isn’t your thing, the polycarbonate version offers a unique view into the inner components of the keyboard. If you prefer your keyboard to have an angle, The Mark: 65’s lower rear PC portion may be replaced with a larger variant lifting the back of the board and resulting in a 5° tilted keyboard.
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I picked up this keyboard as I was looking to replace my aging HHKB Lite 2 with another 60/65%. I wanted to have a split backspace, and also wanted to experiment with a split spacebar. This keyboard is supported by qmk_firmware, and it was a blast to design my own key mappings for it. I matched these up with some dark amber tactile switches, also from deskhero, and they perform pretty similarly to my HHKB.
It's a bit pricey, but a solid build, and I don't really care for the underboard RGB. If you care about that sort of thing, make sure to get the polycarbonate case. The black case only shows the LEDs at the top, and so you lose 70% of the effect.
Overall I'm pretty happy.
I bought one of these during Black Friday as part of the extras sale, for a total of 220 USD (275 CAD). Shipping and delivery from Deskhero were totally fine, but immediately after receiving the kit, I noticed some issues. Primarily, the plate I ordered as part of the kit was unusable in its original state. The holes for a full 6.25u spacebar stab (I used Durock V2, which I imagine is the most common stab for a build like this) were not large enough to accomodate the stabilizer housing, so the plate could only be installed with a huge amount of PCB flex (and of course making the spacebar stab horrible.
I was able to fix this thanks to having sandpaper and eventually dremeling out some extra space for the stabs, but this should not be the case for a board at this price point (or any board, really). Additionally, it's hard to recommend the board at all without the 5 degree foot currently available, as typing on this board without it is not the greatest (this review was of course typed on the board)
At the end of the day, it looks nice (Black w/ light gold plate, I have JTK Suited Up Assassin on it) but I would not buy this board again, even at the lower price point it was during the sale, let alone at the current price point near 300 USD. It has some cool ideas and sounds relatively nice with Gateron Ink Black V2, but this build will be staying on the display shelf, doing the one thing it does do well (looking cool)
