Bazalia 8839 Mechanical Keyboard w/Chocolate White/Mini Choc switches ABS Keycaps, RGB LEDs

Alright, kids, line up for this excellent keeb, but be prepared for a couple of caveats.First off: the spacebar is complete garbage. Stiff and unresponsive, it returns incredibly slowly.The backspace key trickery is equally terrible. I hate it when compact boards do this. Move the tilde and accent keys to an alt setting on the Tab button, don't mess with the backspace! I keep typing ====== when I want to delete a word.The number keys are very weird. I guess they want the letters all top mounted, but usually you list the numbers to the left, special characters right, even though that makes your 1 look very excited. Also, the centered printing is nonstandard, can be a bit offputting in the dark if you're not a touch typist, which I am, but I'm looking out for you kids who didn't have Mario Teaches Typing.The pros are many. The keyswitches are Kailh's new choc Whites. They are excellent for what they are. I am replacing a 60% with MX Blues because this is about 40% of the height of that board, and the same overall imprint LxW. The keytravel is low, but better than a laptop by far, and the clickbar goodness you get from Kailh's new switches is excellent. You don't really feel a ton of tactility because the key is done before you have time for that. If you keep your presses light, this should be amazing. If you're a heavy pusher, might want to wait until they release a Jade or Navy or Pale Blue version with either a heavier spring weight or a thicker click bar. I think, though, once you get over the backspace weirdness and the spacebar garbage, you could be very fast on these little shorties.The RGB goodness is quite good. The runner RGB lighting on the sides is very good, full RGB, and quite bright. The keyswitches have the typical lighting modes inherent in just about any Chinese board, wave, starfield, breathe, patterns when you press keys, and some solid color options. It's not really highly programmable, but onboard options are my favorite anyhow since it travels so well to have the options directly in the keeb.As mentioned before, this sucker is THIN THIN THIN. It also weighs next to nothing. You'll get some noticeable flex, as well, and there is not adjustable height to speak of, so make sure you're ergonomic with a mid height wrist rest or you'll be feeling it if you're a real typist.As it is, a great keyboard replacement for a laptop keyboard, should travel EXCEPTIONALLY well, and you're paying a good $25 price premium over comparable quality mech keyboards with full sized switches, but the RGB goodness, light weight, and portability keeps it within reason.It would be a five star recommendation if they could:fix the backspace weirdness,the spacebar responsiveness,add bluetooth compatibility,rib the casing a bit more or maybe do aluminum, hell up the plastic thickness a mm just up the board quality a bit more. As it is it feels quite breakable.I'd pay $85 for that board. As it is, this one barely makes the cut, but it does until others get to market with these switches. This would be a 3.5 star if it wasn't a rare type of board, you have to give some points for their risk and innovation on that front.

Pros:1. The switches that come with this keyboard are awesome. Clicky, low-profile, and short travel distance.2. The keyboard is recognized on boot. No need to hold two buttons at start-up for the computer to recognize it (looking at you Anidees Prismatic).3. The size is a plus (60%), especially when desk space is at a premium. I game on a lap desk so the size is perfect for me.4. Not a huge fan of RGB lighting in the internals of my PC but I love the RGB on this keyboard. Go figure. The keys have multiple patterns and colors as well as RGB around the perimeter of the keyboard. Although the lighting has a limited number of modes you can control the speed and brightness of the patterns. The keys and perimeter RGB have different RGB settings.Cons:1. It is difficult to find a micro usb cable that fits this keyboard. The port is deeper than most so the male end would have to be of the longer variety and the plastic material on the perimeter of the male connector would have to be thin.2. The key caps on this keyboard are difficult to read, see the pictures for an example.3. I'd prefer the tilde key to be next to the backspace key. The layout of this keyboard shifts all of the number keys one unit to the right. This causes me to mistype numbers on the daily but I can live with it.4. If you_really_try you can make a switch 'click' and yet not register a key press. You have to really be trying though (quickly hitting the same key multiple times, semi-lightly). Not really a con in me eyes but thought people should know.

This could be a top-tier low-profile keyboard, and a great mechanical keyboard in general, but the bizarre key layout makes it a chore to get used to, and ultimately difficult to recommend. I really, really dig the feeling of the Choc switches, there's so much potential here for lightweight but also wonderful feeling keyboard. That said, the layout is crazy. Two Fn keys on the left and right of the spacebar (???) and a strange "APP" key make the modifier row feel simultaneous cluttered and non-functional — with this many keys there was no reason to not offer the full suite of modifiers on both sides. The top row has huge problems as well, with a dedicated tilde key next to escape key pushing the whole number row over by one key, which feels almost hostile to the user. This also results in a 1u delete key, which, for my typing style, is extraordinarily hard to develop a reflex for... I'm constantly hitting the = key by accident. Would be much better for that tilde key to be on a function layer, making room for a 2u backspace.LED lighting is nice, but as someone who rarely uses it, it would be great to have some more intuitive keyboard shortcuts for controlling it... at least offer the ability to turn it on and off with a single key command. Instead you have to cycle through a bunch of random modes before getting to the "off" mode. Pretty tedious.I'm thinking about trying to remap this keyboard in software, to see if I can get it working more like how I'd like it to. If the manufacturer reads this, I hope my criticism is taken constructively. With extremely minor changes to the PCB, and a little bit of firmware magic, this keyboard could be a low-pro dynamo. And the Kailh choc white switches and lightweight design of the keyboard is awesome.