James loves ergonomic keyboards but he doesn't understand why I've spent
hundreds Okay thousands on mechanical
keyboards switches key caps and other accessories so when eom maker sponsored
this video I wanted to get his opinion on two of the more standard sizes and
layouts eom Maker's tide 65 and Tide 75
mechanical keyboards I'm going to start with the eom maker tide 65 I come in now
later James later later uh this is a 65%
board triple mode aluminum gasket
mounted mechanical keyboard we've got a
pretty standard quick start guide it's actually pretty sweet folds
out into a giant quick start map yes
these are qmk via compatible I know that that is not only my biggest complaint
with evil maker but one of your biggest complaints is that it's proprietary
software well that's finally over oh this one is actually a barebones kit so
what I really want to look at before James gets over here is the 75 another
quick start guide and then this nice purple with side printed Legend also
aluminum chassis very nice we got our typical cable USBC to usba a then we've
also got my favorite kind of key cap and switch puller the double-sided guy
really easy to use with these thin wires and when you need switches you just grab
them and pop them out super simple super easy James is going to come in and check
out the unfinished keyboard so that we can kind of explain what's inside of
this thing and why I actually care about the multitude of layers within this
keyboard okay here's the thing plof it's not that I I don't understand why to
spend money on a great mechanical keyboard I get it the weight oh God the
colors the the clickiness the the feel the sounds I get it I like it I want it
what I don't understand cuz I don't have any experience with it is like you said
the gasket mounting and the O-rings and the luing liven that's what I just don't
have experience with I appreciate it but I just never have done that myself
today's the day today is the day well kind of we're going to at least open it
and look through it the tide keyboards only come preassembled but I've taken
this one apart so you can look at it it's actually really simple you've just got two pieces of the case you got the
top and the bottom and then what we've got is all of these layers so this is
our top plate so Flexi Cut means that there's little Cuts in the plate and
that allows for more flexibility why would you want that I thought the whole
thing with keyboards is rigidity kind of the whole thing about keyboards
realistically is customizability and
making it feel the way you want it to feel and sound and so some people like
all of that give I personally don't I like a more rigid plate and then as for
gaskets what we've got here are these little socks what these do is they help
keep it in place and they help add a little bit of cushion okay so you're saying with the socks on there's less
play with it moving like in these directions but there's more give in it
moving in this up and down Direction up and down yeah because it's got that little bit of rubber that'll help kind
of sink in when it moves so that's gasket mounted yeah that's gasket
mounted I always thought it had to do with the switches no no no no no it's on
the plate so now we've got just our PCB right except it's not just the PCB there
are five layers of sound dampening
materials oh my gosh okay so this is case foam this as you can see has some
more vertical height and so the switches are going to sink down right onto that
is this sound damping material because although there's a whole range of
different like keyboard sounds is there is the like consensus that you don't
want an echoey kind of Reverb sound it's
personal preference so I mean yeah Reverb and Echo is is not as desired
what you want is just a solid um Range coming between like a clack or click
down to like a creamy th mhm what is
something that nobody ever wants like a ringing ping like spring ping yeah and
that's why people Lube their Springs so that's a big one and yeah echo or Reverb
probably the main things and that's what all this foam kind of helps with so now we just shuffle them all together except
for the top plate and put the switches on pretty much yeah let's say we're
assembling from scratch take your bottom case thank you all right put your case
foam down running the ribbon cables through it so that goes through here
here you can just run that through and plug it in the ergonomics of this well
these aren't really ribbon cables but these tiny connectors are honestly my
scariest part they're weak and they're hard to pull out and if you're using a
tool to pull them out you can scrape the PCB which you don't want to do um cool
but yeah that was easy enough then we throw this guy on normally if you're
also not comfortable with doing this most keyboard companies are going to have a kind of a tutorial or guide and
if the company doesn't then there's so many YouTubers and personalities out
there that they're probably you're going to be able to find an assembly guide pretty easy for step-by-step
instructions next layer we want to put our nice poron foam in here poron poron
my dad used to call me that was a kid poron y on and then after that we'll put
our plate on okay and then let's put four into the corners oh God I don't
know man so you're putting it in at an angle if you put it in just like
straight down you have the easy side okay we can switch turn it flip it
around switches on this table I'm just going to jiggle jiggle and press it's
okay yeah let me do it yeah yeah you do did you bend that one uh slightly you're
getting it bent it's okay if you ever bend a pin just flatten it out with some
pliers no problem oh yeah that one doesn't go in very easily Vindicated
he's right he's right oh come on mine went in so easy here we go does this
puppy come with switches or they totally sold separately or how's it work uh yeah
they come with switches they're hot swappable though so if you want a different switch easy look at that well
that was easy yeah no problem and then do they have switch options depending on
the color you choose you're going to get a different switch and then since these are hot swappable we're just popping
these in we're not having to solder anything you can just get different switches down the line take them all out
put the new ones in you're good to go Bob's your uncle that's it see how easy they go in now that it's all aligned
though that's why I always do the corners first this is like a like the
game of Go like I can grab I can grab some territory over here you're not
allowed to left of these switches once you start putting them in though it's
pretty easy though right like now you're putting these in no problem no problem
also uh some of these foam layers when you're fully assembling it for the first
time they're a little sticky so you can like kind of get it in place and it'll
stick in place and you don't have to worry about sliding the layer all around what kind of switches do you like you
like tactile or clicky really I'm more of a typist than
a than a a wasy guy I kind of go all
over the place sometimes I like linear um and sometimes I like tactile but I
don't like clicky and I want to hear my keyboard I don't want to hear my switches if that makes no it doesn't
what I don't get it I guess what I'm trying to do that I never explained is I'm trying to lead with the two pins
that are going to go in so I do put it in ever so slightly angled up with a
little bit of a roll yeah with a little bit of a roll yeah now you got it when
did the power come on here when probably just hit a button these are south facing
RGB the cool thing about those is that this is a side Legend So it's going to
light up on the side I'm leaving this a space bar to you oh yeah it looks like
the space bar is upside down which one thing we didn't really talk about is
stabilizers these were already mounted into the stabilizers being on this large
Space Bar Key these little white guys over here yeah cuz if there were no stabilizers to keep the whole Long Key
stable exactly it would wobble so when people are lubing up their switches
that's that's like on the spring on the switch itself that's right like inside
here that's right so we don't have a switch opener here but what you normally do is you pop open these four tabs on
the side um and then this top housing comes off and you take the spring off
and then what you Lube is the inside of it as well as the stem so this guy here
and your Springs as well it's nice to lube those otherwise and that's purely
for the sound they do feel a little nicer as well like I find that switches
that are unlubed feel more scratchy yeah but the thing is in the last couple
years Factory lubing like these Feel
Factory lubed and it's gotten a lot better okay to the point where like I
don't even buy unlubed switches anymore I just buy lubed Factory Lube switches
and I just run them sounds tus process what is the typical effect soundwise of
looping them uh sounds a little deeper and a little less scratchy typically
yeah let's get that top on oh yeah beautiful just like okay here we go yeah
there you go then that's that then we got those four bolts oh yeah bolts
that's good I was like is this just gravity like yeah some are
magnetic yeah wow all right now let's get the key
caps on it's all we got to do all right we're done there they are
both keyboards fully assembled you got purple though I did I like purple is
there any other difference looks like you have more keys than I do yeah so the
main difference here is that this one's a 75% and this one's a 65% you've got
the F Keys I've got the F keys I like that little known trick F4 in Excel or
Google Sheets is repeat last action that's pretty good it's really good
you're like delete this row and you just want to do that a bunch more times oh that's that's a really good one actually
you can do all of that you're not limited if you hit the function key I
hate using layers though I know me too so if but if you hit the function key
you can go function alt 4 and that's alt
f4 essentially or function alter beside each other yeah yeah so you can do them
over there and there like it's not the worst um this is nice yeah the knob it's
good to is is that knob larger let's compare knobs this my knob is larger
larger diameter knob other than that they're basically the same they both have qmk via compatibility which is a
huge upgrade for emaker most of their other keyboards are using proprietary
software if you don't like layers you'll probably never use qmk via but if you do
like layers and macros then with qmk via
you can set up whatever you want you can assign Keys you can change the RGB you
can do tons of stuff and most other big
Boutique keyboards use qmk just cuz I don't like layers doesn't mean I
wouldn't use that to program this the way I want maybe I want to move a couple Keys around fair enough you have a
gradient I do so I've got a nice anodized purple coating very pretty very
pretty what do I have you have an electr foric coating and look at this mirror
finish in the bottom that's pretty wait wait hi wow there it is good weight on
these guys yeah they're full aluminum shell full aluminum chassis which is not
always the case for eil maker they use a lot of plastics it does help keep the
cost down we'll get to the price at the very end they're the same
switches and then they've also got the same 4,000 milliamp battery which is a
lot if you have the RGB on it's not going to last nearly as long they've also both got south facing RGB so you
get that cool shine through on the legend oh yeah looks pretty cool it does
see the tea is blinking for some reason you can they're basically the same so
now the only thing left to do is this a little home for the USB dongle deliver
that is so nice to have thank you my
only complaint is uh the same as a lot of aluminum CK uh keyboards is that
there's no adjustable feet oh cuz so if you don't like this typing angle you're
kind of just hooped it's more ergonomic to have it flat than I know up there so
you should anyway it's fine but I like up a little bit which which one are you
going to take if I'm going to have at my desk I would take the extra keys and I also like purple so fair enough that's
perfect what the heck I have page up and down and I have end but I don't have
home oh yeah you are missing a home key you might also be missing a delete oo
yeah I use home and and a lot and I use delete a lot I use delete all the time
Mac people don't even know what that is no they're fools it's like backspace but
it goes the other way so good actually
have that on my thumb on my oh that's genius that's why I like the I like the
thumb clusters now with all this being done and said would you switch from ergo
to a straight just regular cuz you can get mechanical ergonomic keyboards yeah
uh mine's Optical so happens to be but um no at my desk I think I put enough
hours in it that I want to be an ergo keyboard but at home I actually have a
lesser mechanical keyboard and I it's
pretty old and cheesy at this point with his RGB and stuff and I would love to
replace that with something like one of these especially when you have those like
Curly nice coiled cables those cables are cool you could take your keyboard at
home and mod it a bit yourself we have our own uh keyboard diet on LT it has a
plastic chass rather I'd rather get a
kit like this that's all exploded out and spend quality time with a family
member like my little sister or something building it together it's great for stuff like that good gift idea
that way yeah cuz I mean as you saw like that was pretty simple yeah there's not
that much to it I think people get a little worried when they're taking any
kind of electronics apart especially when it's more expensive um but like
that was such a simple kit it's just a bunch of foam layers you plug the PCB in
in a couple spots and then you put put the switches in and you're basically done boom easy and we're basically done
that's right except for the price oh it's 120 for the 65 and $140 for the 75
bro you're not even in the realm of Ergo keyboards yet I know I'm well aware
that's actually pretty reasonable normally I I was actually expecting $350
$400 so sweet a few years ago that would probably be the case for something like
this but the prices have come so far down on full aluminum uh Wireless full
mechanical hot swap keybard RGB that you
can get them for a little over 100 bucks now you can get cheaper ones um but
something like this is pretty reasonable thanks supermaker for sponsoring this video if you want to check out these
keyboards they'll be linked in the description below and thank you guys for
watching if you want to look out another video maybe check out the dino tab
75x you know that's Tusk and Raiders baby Star
Wars no relation