8BitDo’s Mechanical Retro Keyboard is the keyboard I want to be buried with

destructoid.com:

I’m a bit strange with my keyboards. I spend more time touching one than I do touching absolutely anything else. However, I couldn’t tell you what makes one mechanical keyboard better than the other.

Until now, because without hyperbole (okay, with some), the 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard is the one I want to be touching until I die. And that’s not because of ergonomics, reliability, or how hardcore the key mechanics are; it’s because of its look.

Gosh, it’s gorgeous.

I’m a bit of a weird choice to review a keyboard, but I wasn’t going to say no when I was offered one for review. I only know the general details about what makes one keyboard better than the other. I worked in IT for nearly 10 years, and the only thing that lawyers and engineers cared about was if it put letters on the screen. Some people wanted weird ergonomic models, but that was rare. I didn’t even care about how they sounded.

Until I watched the 1995 film Hackers.

That film features some of the clickiest keys I have ever heard, and I knew that my current keyboard wasn’t enough. I need something louder. I have to have that aesthetic for when I play the hacker games that make me feel smart. I need my neighbors to be able to hear my WPM from down the hall.

Initially, I was going to try and find a keyboard from the ‘90s before I discovered the audible greatness of mechanical keys.

The 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard has some great key sounds. If you’re not down with the particular key switches, the PCB is hot-swappable, so you can fit in something that suits your needs. Built-in is Kailh Box White Switches V2, which means absolutely nothing to me. However, I immediately fell in love with the sound. It has a lot of click, but less sharpness than my old