What impressed me, although, is the Base 65’s RGB lighting—between the clear case, white silicone dampening, clear switches and keycaps, and the reflective aluminum plate, the RGB completely shines, making this keyboard a brilliant centerpiece on any desk. Sadly, programming the RGB is a little bit of a chore, and many of the manufacturing facility presets have extremely restricted customization.
Paying for Appears to be like
The saving grace is HiGround’s popular culture collaborations. You may get a keyboard made in collaboration with Minecraft, and beforehand there have been tie-ins with recreation and anime collection, together with Naruto, Pokémon, Assault on Titan, Gundam, and Yu-Gi-Oh. Nevertheless, this often comes with a tradeoff: Would you quite have a high-quality keyboard or one designed after your favourite media franchise? This keyboard is flashy, colourful, and an announcement piece. However moreover visuals, the Base 65 keyboard doesn’t do something new, or something that justifies the worth.
{Photograph}: Henri Robbins
I additionally need to word the “all gross sales are ultimate” line in many of the firm’s product descriptions. Mix this with huge model tie-ins and an emphasis on “restricted” drops, and I’m reminded of the collab-based hypebeast sneaker tradition of the 2010s; a advertising and marketing technique that emphasizes exclusivity and makes individuals soar at “uncommon” (i.e., artificially scarce) merchandise and assume they’re extra precious/higher-quality than they’re. I do know this can be a lot of promoting rhetoric that sits outdoors the standard of the tip product, however I believe it’s necessary to contemplate why the keyboards are the best way they’re, and why they promote properly regardless of among the points they could have. (As a aspect word, a number of keyboard collaborations from HiGround are presently being scalped on StockX.)
I additionally discovered some frustration when attempting to evaluate this keyboard as a result of, when HiGround had a launch arising, each single web page on its web site would redirect to a password-protected countdown. This meant that the keyboard’s documentation, drivers, and even fundamental product info had been unavailable for your entire time whereas ready on a restricted launch (on this case, the Minecraft keyboard assortment).
In the end, it is laborious for me to suggest HiGround’s keyboards except you actually need a branded keyboard for a sure media franchise and are OK with the sacrifices to the construct high quality and typing expertise.
