Everyone knows I only love two things in this world, displays and keyboards.
So, when the DS Pixel Key Pro was being showcased all over the internet, I just
had to have it. And it's finally here. Wow.
So, we've got this giant keypad that rests on top because this is all
capacitive touch. And so, theoretically,
once I turn this on, I could type directly on the screen. Do I want to?
No. It's probably going to be a very bad experience. As for what this experience
is going to be like, I don't know cuz
this feels honestly worse than like your regular membrane keyboard. Um,
actually feels really bad. I was not
expecting it to be that bad. But before we get to it, let's take a look at the rest of this thing. It's got two ports
and a switch, and those are for data and
power. So, if you want to charge this thing, uh, you have to leave it plugged
into power. And if you want to actually use it with your computer, you have to
also leave it plugged into data or use the wireless mode. And then it's got
these other weird little plates. They look like Christmas ornaments. I think
you can There it goes. Yeah, they're just held on magnetically. And little
nice gold color. And then here
we've got an HDMI port because yes, you
can absolutely use this not only as your keyboard, but as a secondary display. Do
I want to? Probably not. Will I do it for you today? Absolutely. But now I got
to turn it on because like I don't know. There's a switch. Does that work? Oh,
okay. There's lights down here. DS Pixel
Key. Oh, and there's slight RGB, too.
Rattles around. There's something sliding ever so slightly. I got so
excited, I forgot about what else comes in the box. We've just got a pretty typical uh USB cable. I would have loved
anything with any kind of sle considering the price of this because it's expensive. We'll get to that later.
And then we've got what? Some extra screws or something. Oh, a USB dongle,
right? Because this guy is wireless. It'll do either Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz.
Also, this is a very minor complaint, but when you order really expensive
boutique boards, they tend to come in a nicely designed box. And I understand
that this is probably a bit of a limited product run and everything, but uh I
would love if this was just slightly more than brown box with dspixel key.com
and mwp parts@gmail at the back. As for
this keypad thing, um I'm really excited to try it out because it seems terrible.
By the way, if you don't like a split space bar, good luck cuz this uses a
split space bar and I don't know how you're going to ever switch that. As bad
as it might feel, I'm actually genuinely impressed that they've managed uh to
come up with something like this. It's pretty cool. Kind of a major complaint
actually, I guess, is uh I'm pretty sure that screw rattling around was supposed
to be right here. Yeah, this one's clearly there. That one is clearly
missing. Um and then this guy
has some give to it. So, I don't know if it's just not screwed down all the way
or whatever, but this is how it showed up. And I'm a little disappointed that
it's not better connected. But enough of that. Let's hook it up to our laptop and
see what this typing experience is actually all about. We've also got their
Erggo version that isn't released yet. That one's still kickstarting. So, I'll
uh take a look at that bad boy in a second here. All right, we've got two
cables plugged into this bad boy. It was a little dead, so we're charging it. I'm
going to turn it back on. Plugged into our laptop as well. Super cool novelty.
Really don't like that they couldn't figure out a single cable solution. So,
our computer detected it. No problem. has got this sick animation and like the
keys are displayed here. Okay. Okay. Okay. Win. Okay. Win. N O T E. What?
They play these little animations as I type too. Okay. This is incredible. I
don't care how much I don't like this thing. I love it now. The Oh, space is a
Okay. Okay. I actually really wish that
um this was just raised more because I
have a major hard time hitting the space bar with my thumb and then probably any
of the other like alt fn menu control
all those with my thumb because this there's a giant uh like quarter inch gap
from here. So it's going to hit there and it makes it hard to hit space. But
uh other than that I think typing with your fingers is actually totally viable.
Uh, quick. I'm not fast and I'm not accurate, but like this is so cool.
Brown talk. This is, you know what? Aside from
quick, that actually that turned out okay. Okay, now we'll try the thing that
I am terrified of. So, what this should do is essentially take your inputs up
top here and translate them through capacitive touch. Oh, come on. Oh, it's
SL. Oh, so there's these little nubbins on the bottom here, and then you slot
those into these holes. Oh, there we go. All right. It's a little finicky to get
the pad on top, but it works. The only other complaint I have is I actually,
you know, it's already hard enough to kind of type on this thing. I wish it had um bumps on the home row indicators
on F and J. It's pretty standard on a lot of keycap sets or just like I don't
know, any other keyboard. Um so I'd like to see it here cuz it's already a weird
experience, but hey, it works. You hit space, the animation plays. Okay, sick.
Let's do Okay, quick brown fox jumps
over the lazy dog. All right, that's it. That's my practice. It's time to go to
monkey type and try to actually do a typing test on this thing. Um, okay.
This is going to be a nightmare and it's probably going to be my absolute worst time ever. Ready? Let's go. Both space
against I have to look type. I can't do this by memory. These Oh, I already made
a mistake. All open.
Oh, that's one other problem. I'm starting to rest my fingers. I'm already
done. 22 words a minute. 83% accuracy.
Uh, I went to rest my fingers as I was like in between words and it actioned.
But with this guy, no, no, no. All right. Now, let's try it with whatever
they're calling this, the keycap frame or whatever.
Part of me likes the sound. Okay. 84 words at 91% actually. Pretty
bad, but I bet you with a bit more practice, I could actually get used to it. It sounds like when you're playing a
video game and some giant bug monster
creature thing starts like chittering or chattering to its, you know, friends. I
don't know. Like,
it's at 1% battery, by the way, already. This thing just eats battery. And it
makes sense because it's like it's a giant ass screen at a pretty reasonable
brightness, too. It's not necessarily a good outdoor keyboard, but it does hit
300 nits, which is very respectable. We swapped cables because the other one was
going through USBA and I don't think it was charging it enough. Now we're at
still at 1%. I love the little monster guy that appears when you touch keys.
This is sick. And if you don't love these little animations that they're
doing, you can actually make your own and upload them as individual files and
then customize each individual key as well. Well, not key. We looked it up and
it's a little tedious. You're going to have to rename basically every single
file and there's 74 or so of them. Uh we
also accidentally set it to Arabic and um we don't know how to change it back.
So far, it's pretty in line with my expectations with custom keyboard
software. Not very good. Just waiting on Ree to bring us our HDMI cable so that
we can plug one cable into the laptop
for data. We're going to plug one into our power so that we can still charge
it. Still at 1%. Really hoping this thing doesn't die on me. And then we're
going to plug another through HDMI to try to output the screen onto here. Um,
I have no idea how that's going to go, but we'll find out. I love how after you
don't type on it for a while, too, it takes away the black background and starts playing this animation. You can
put whatever video you want. And the screen itself is actually pretty decent.
It's IPS and reasonably high PPI. We've got a 3840 by 1100 across a 14inch
display. HDMI going in.
Wa. Okay. The aspect ratio is way off on
the laptop, but uh yeah, as you can see,
if you really wanted to use this as an external 16x9 display,
you could. I
I don't know why you'd want to. Full screen. If I pull Does it Oh, it
stretches it. That's awesome. This is wild. Can I still type on it now? I
don't think so. It feels like the whole keyboard aspect of it is gone now. No
dice. So, unfortunately, if you really want to use it as both a keyboard and a
display, you can't do that at the same time, which seems obvious in hindsight.
Of course, you can't do that. Now, I got so excited about the rest of this thing
that I completely forgot to talk about like the case and the chassis. Um, it's
heavy. It's a full aluminum build. Um,
pretty good diffuse RGB on the sides and then on this neat little pattern they've
got on the front. Um, cool little DS badge on the top right. Be cool if this
was interchangeable just like the uh Christmy plates back here. And then if
you want to go out, I used at least three fingers. One was not doing it, but
then you swipe down and it goes away. So, pretty cool. You can leave your
HDMI. Can I uh
amazing?
I don't care what it costs. I love it. I It's so dumb. One final
note though. Uh this one is the 8 kHz version. You can buy it in 1 kHz or 8
kHz. And um we measured around 30
milliseconds of latency uh which is really bad. This thing is expensive. It
is $659 on sale. It used to be more like
$1,000 and um it's a keyboard. All
right. I don't All right. Well, that was super cool.
But I got to take a look at the Erggo version that's coming out soon, but not
before a word from our sponsor. Thanks to Sharge for sponsoring this video.
Under a centimeter thin and made from aviation grade aluminum, Chargers's
Aerome power banks are compact, lightweight, and powerful. Both 5,000
and 10,000 milliamp hour variants are CH2 certified for a maximum wireless
output of 15 watts, and a graphine cooling system keeps things from getting
too toasty. Just hot enough. Pick one up today using our link in the description
and keep your phone topped up in style,
baby. Now we've got the DS Pixel Pro. Their
naming scheme isn't ideal. Um cuz the other one can also be the DS Pixel Pro,
but this is the Erggo version. So, I'm already a lot happier with this. When
you're spending this much money, you should get a little carry case with your
keyboard. The cable looks also bad still, but whatever. I'm a lot more
lenient on the terrible cable when um
it's got a really nice soft Actually, it's a really nice case. Felt comes with
a little cloth. That's always handy. And then it's in a little plastic bag with a
buckle. I like that buckle a lot. Um Oh,
I like the blue, too. This is nice.
Wow. Magnificent. They've upgraded their
system here. So, this one isn't capacitive anymore. It's actually Hall
effect and it's using magnets. So, these are all programmable switches that you
can change the actuation force on and whatnot. And this one's also 8 kHz. And
unlike the other one, we tested a pretty reasonable 1 millisecond of latency with
that. It's a pretty typical split Alice kind of layout. We've again got our
switch and two ports. So, I'm actually going to plug it in to charge pretty
soon here. Um, and then on the back, we've just got a couple like raised
feet. I absolutely love the black and blue colorway design, but I've noticed
that there are some big gaps. So, I don't know how good the tolerances are,
but if you look here, I don't know how much you can see that on camera, but
there's a gap in between there and then up at the top as well. It's a really
minor complaint. Like, you're never going to see that when you're kind of just staring at it like this. This one
also probably will cost a lot. There's currently not pricing up for it, but if
the other one's anything to go by, then yeah. And yet again, I'm going to
complain a little bit about the construction because it looks like all
these screws, I can't tell if they're loose or if the tolerances are bad or
whatever. So, we're just going to They're in. I'm really not making them
go much deeper. Um, in that case, I'm going to once again complain about the
tolerances cuz the screws don't look flush with the rest of the board. like I
can feel them as I move my finger over a bunch of them, which again, you're going
to have this down and it's not a big deal, but it's these small attentions to
detail when you're spending over $500 on
a keyboard that you kind of expect it to be a little bit uh more put together. DS
Pixel Key. That's one screen. Where's the second?
Oh, there. DS Pixel Key. I like how it's like, okay, turn the first one on. Hold
up. Okay, turn the second one on. Okay, now what's the next stage in the rocket
launch procedure? Hey, the keyboard turns on. This is wild. So, now we've
got two screens in a split Alice kind of layout. Um, and it's got it's already
got an animation playing. No speakers on this one, which is a bit of a bummer,
but uh whatever. I think you can I think you can live without it. Oh,
why are these animations coming up as I touch it? I don't know what's happening.
Okay, it's not capacitive, so I don't even know how that's working. Maybe it's capacitive anhole effect. I'm not sure.
Um, it shouldn't be. Let's pop these bad boys on here. Wow. Look, look at this.
It basically ruins the screen. I will say I hope you can touch type because it
is almost impossible to read what the keys are uh with the crystal clear
plastic switches that they've got here. The nice thing about these is that they
actually do have little home row indicators. So,
brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Let's
see if we can beat 84 words per minute at 91% accuracy.
Okay, 106 97% accuracy. This is
definitely a more pleasing typing experience. And I really actually wish
that they basically had the original version in a normal layout with this
system instead of the previous system
because it just didn't feel good. This one actually like feels fine. Like this,
you know, I'm not going to say it feels amazing and it doesn't it doesn't sound
amazing because all these switches are like they're outside of everything. Like they're just sitting here. See? It
doesn't feel right to cover it up. Like it feels like this should be how it is
and then you don't use these. You don't use these visual aids. So, you know
what? Enough with the visual aids. Um they say it's capacitive and it
obviously is like it's detecting me. Um but I can't seem to type like this
unfortunately. So, we're not going to do that second capacitive type uh typing
test. It's customizable. They're using a branch of VIA and it's QMK compatible.
So, you can kind of do whatever you want. I'm going to take this Oh, to take the peel off, I got to take all the
switches out. It's also hot swappable. Actually, that's something I could
probably show you guys. You just pop that guy out. Um, and then
obviously, you know, if you don't like the clear caps, like those are just key
caps. You just pop them off and pop them
back on. We took the peel off and it looks slightly better. It's more clear,
but the switches are still getting in the way, and it completely kind of ruins the whole picture effect here. And as
for the other keyboard, there is no layer to take off. It's just this rubber
or something in between the two plastic layers that makes it look all foggy. I
want them both combined. I want this system on this keyboard, but at the same
time, like I don't want this either cuz I want to see the screen. It just it
feels like it's trying to do all these things, but it doesn't do any of them
super well. But at the same time, it's
probably the coolest keyboard I've ever used in my entire life. And I kind of
want it just because, you know, it's historic almost. No matter which version
of the DS Pixel you get, I think it's sick. I don't necessarily think it's a
good keyboard, but I think it's a super cool one. I don't know if you are
willing to pay the price for it. Even on sale, it's still very expensive, and the
Alice doesn't even have a price yet. It's just up on Kickstarter. I don't
know how I feel about it and I can't recommend it because I can't even give
you a price for it. So, it's such a tough call. I think it's an incredible
experience. And if you ever get the opportunity to try either of these, 100%
you should do it. I can't tell you to buy it. I think they're so cool and I
want to like I want to get one for myself, but I can't even justify
spending this much money on it. Well, there you have it, folks. Love it or
hate it. This is the DS Pixel, multiple versions. Um, this one is expensive but
on sale on sale. This one is on
Kickstarter, but there's no price yet. So, I can't exactly recommend either of
them. I think they're super cool, though. And if you want to check out
another super cool keyboard, check out the AM Neon 80. That one had like 3,000
holes milled into it, and then it used RGB to make a pseudo screen kind of. Uh,
very cool. Not quite as cool as this guy, though.