Royal Kludge RK987, white mechanical keyboard with backlit keys.

The first time I laid my child-sized hands on a keyboard was when my dad bought the family our first computer. It was one of those chunky, clunky machines. Huge monitors with 8-bit screens. Nary a colour to be seen on the screen unlike the monitors today. I remember when it was a two-toned screen. Green and black? Felt like it. My sister and I played games on it using a keyboard that seemed to resemble a mechanical keyboard.

I highly doubt it was. Then again, it could have been but I didn’t know what it was called. I only knew that it made a soft thocky noise like the one I’m using now. A Royal Kludge RK987 mechanical keyboard with backlit keys and hot-swappable keycaps.

But why go for a mechanical keyboard when I already had a physical keyboard that was still in good condition? Why go for yet another physical keyboard when I had two laptops (one for work and one for gaming) with equally good but “mushy” keyboards?

Well, I guess you could blame it on the trend.

What Came in the Box

I have been using the RK987 mechanical keyboard for several days now and I found that I loved using it. So, just a little background into the one that I bought for myself. Please bear with me as this is my first foray into mechanical keyboards.

My mechanical keyboard comes with red switches and has XDA-type keycaps that are swappable for other customised keycaps. It has a white backlight but is not transparent through the keycaps. There are other keycap types that will allow the backlight to shine through. The box comes with a Bluetooth (BT) receiver, a USB-C charger cable, and a keycap-and-switch remover. You can choose between going full BT or if you use it for gaming, I would highly recommend using the cable or risk having your character killed off when your keyboard runs out of battery.

Each mechanical keyboard comes with a pre-set number of keycaps. The most common keyboard sizes are full-sized with 104 keys, tenkeyless (TKL) with 87 keys (which is what I am using), and 68 keys. There are other layouts as well, with the less common sizes being 75%, 65%, and 40%.

As most, if not all, mechanical keyboards come in a raised platform design, you may want to get a wrist rest to work with. So your wrists don’t get tired of being suspended in mid-air while using the keyboard. This isn’t Wingardium Leviosa.

Who is Royal Kludge?

The name sounds weird, doesn’t it? Here I am thinking, Royal Klutz? Honestly, that was the first thing that came to mind. But I will say don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. There is really nothing klutzy about the keyboard!

Royal Kludge is a China-brand mechanical keyboard that has made its way to the international market. Apart from this brand, there are others as well that carry these mechanical keyboards, such as Keychron, Corsair, Redragon, and NovelKeys. I won’t dive in too deep about mechanical keyboards since I’m still new to them but I do know that there are a lot more brands and models out there that you can go wild and choose from. The reason I went for this is that it is probably the most affordable option for RGB mechanical keyboards I’ve known to date.

Hot-Swappable Keycaps

For those who don’t want to have too many options, there is always the choice of what we have always used before – a membrane keyboard. If you like having options or want to customise your own keyboard, then a mechanical keyboard with swappable keycaps is what you can look into.

Compared to a membrane keyboard, hot-swappable keyboards come with keycaps that can be removed using a switch-puller or a keycap remover. Simply pull off the keycaps you want to replace with keycaps of another design and pop them back on. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist or an engineer to know how this works. Time to make YouTube or Google your best friend!

There are also many different types of keycap profiles, of which I wouldn’t do a deep dive into it either as I am still learning and am unfamiliar with it all. I will drop this link here by The Keeblog for you to have a read if you are interested.

Buying a mechanical keyboard is similar to buying another tech gadget. Whether you are buying a smartphone, a laptop, or another keyboard. The idea is to know what you want and what you are going to do with it. But in order to know what you want, you need to do your own homework. It took me two whole days to read up about it on other blogs and watch endless YouTube videos on how a mechanical keyboard works. Planning to start your own mechanical keyboard journey?