friends I've got something pretty cool for you today this is the
Optimus popularis keyboard and it's from
2012 so it's kind of old but this thing
costs like 1100 when it came out it's actually the sequel to the Optimus
Maximus that came out in 2007 and that
thing was like 1500 bucks or something it had an OLED screen or I think it was
a number of OLED screens I don't know why they went to LCD for this guy
instead of OLED but they did and uh I
gotta say it's pretty cool they Market it as a million keyboards in one because
you can just change it to absolutely whatever you want and because of the
screens you can set up multiple different languages no problem without
changing out the keycaps for people who don't know uh where certain characters
are and they have to you know hunt and Peck a little bit let's open the box
it's pretty unique pretty interesting we haven't done a bunch of testing on it or
anything like that um but I'm really excited from Art
labadev Studio by the way uh incredible
piece of History this is getting pretty old this sticker on the back is starting
to peel off on its own um but you know what it's an otherwise
great shape and I'm pretty stoked it's wired
and one very cool thing
yeah that's right uh if you couldn't guess it already from the title
this keyboard plugs into the wall I have
never seen anything like it before in my life uh all that's left in here
otherwise aside from the keyboard and the cables and the adapters are just
some power adapters for different card countries uh this is now out of
production I went searching eBay earlier
today and couldn't find anything so good luck getting your hands on one I
actually don't even know how we got ours I don't know what the switches are
um there's not a ton of information about it anywhere to be to be honest
even their own website it doesn't like remember that this came out in 2012
that's kind of when mechanical keyboards were getting popular but not like
anywhere close to the popularity that they are today it's pretty neat uh wired
and this wire is not able to disconnect so if you're stuck with it but you know
it's white and black it's tasteful it's fine it's not super heavy
982 grams so just under a kilo about two
pounds it's not too bad you can hold it one-handed pretty easily I've checked it
out a little bit ahead of this because I just wanted to get my hands on it I
couldn't help myself and one thing that just drives me up the wall is all these
switches are whatever we'll talk about them in a sec the function key
is different like can you hear that
there's something about the function key that it's like a whole separate switch
or something and it feels chunky feels like a like an old on off power switch
that you'd get on like I don't even know like old PCS really
and I it drives me nuts I don't know why the one key is just completely different
either way um let's get this thing fired up because I want to take a look at all the screens
oh my God it's terrible
I don't know how else to explain this this feels worse than typing on a
membrane chiclet keyboard and I I like membrane Chiclet keyboards I think
they're fine um but this thing just does not
feel good at all but you know it's not
about feeling good especially like what 10 over 10 years ago now it was really
more about functionality and looking cool and standing out from the crowd
especially at eleven hundred dollars what I really want to do is I want to
plug in both our USB and our power and
check out just how this thing looks when it's all lit up but not before a word
from our sponsor thanks to you green for sponsoring this video do you use a
laptop and desktop PC at the same time stop messing around with cables with the
ugreen USB 3.0 switch selector you can use up to four USB devices across two
computers it's super simple to use just plug your devices into the front ports
and attach the rear cables to your two systems your keyboard mouse or other USB
devices can now instantly be used with one system or the other with the Press
of a button check out the ugreen 3.0 switch selector at the link below all it
lit up from just the USB power okay this
is gonna be a little logistically challenging I can tell you
already that if you're planning to use this in like a regular desk setup it
might be a little challenging um just because you're stuck with this
weird cable system and yeah it's pretty
ugly uh it might be a little easier if it's a full desktop setup so you got
you've got all of your powers like down by your i o on your computer and
everything instead of plugged into a laptop and hanging off the table down to
our uh power brick there but you know it's working there's screens and they're
all lit up does it detected just fine let's do a little typing test first
thing oh something's
oh it's the space I don't like this at all
this Base Bar just our spacebar just straight up does not always work I don't
think you know instead of a typing test I'm gonna do something that I don't
usually do here I'm gonna go to Via and
see if everything's actually actuating properly yeah a lot of the switches just
don't go like I'm having to hit enter multiple times so let's just do a quick
little hit all the things to make sure
everything is actuating
some of them take a few presses but they are all detecting
I don't know if that's just bad nkro right now or what
it does work it just is really finicky and this space bar is awful
um that being said you've got to remember that this is at least 10 years
old at this point so some of these might just need a little love you might have
to open it up and maybe get some crud out of there but stuff like our space
bar sticking right there it's stuck are not ideal but you know okay it is
what it is I'm gonna I'm gonna give it a shot on monkey type for realsies this
time no no restarting I'm gonna go
slower on purpose just to make sure that I really
um not Mash but I like really definitively hit each of these Keys here
I'm hoping for high accuracy and low word speed oh
oh this word's gone okay sure
it's this sticking space bar is really
killing me here oh this is bad
54 words per minute 91 accuracy you know
we did a bit of digging and it turns out that we did get ours off eBay but we
paid basically retail at about a thousand fifty dollars so
uh if you've got one you can at least sell it for basically what it cost you
um it's super cool one thing I gotta show you and I haven't used this really
at all yet but it has software looks like an apple program Honestly though
right like the zy looks like something Apple would do so you can you can do
whatever you want in here like it's even got a little paint so you can change
these keys to absolutely anything
can I just like open paint wow it makes a little I don't know how
to use this like at all I'm honestly not entirely sure how to use the software I
really wish I could do a better job of showing it to you
um but basically you can configure this
thing Key by key it's kind of like the people that made the stream deck saw
this guy and they're like yeah that seems really cool but also I don't want
to pay eleven hundred dollars for it and also I don't think it needs to be the
full keyboard and they took that idea and they ran with it and you've got the
stream deck now which is basically what this is but in a much smaller and
compact form factor that has a completely different purpose no one's
expecting to type on a stream deck I mean you could you probably shouldn't
but you could uh whereas this is definitely like keyboard first you can
do a bunch of cool stuff too like you can put a bunch of information on the
screen they've got a bunch of marketing material that will show you if we can't
get it working right here because yeah it's a little complex and also this
thing is super old so the software isn't great so each screen goes runs at a
minimum of 10 FPS and it can support up to 264 000 colors which is pretty wild
um and okay I just noticed this as well you hit shift boom it capitalizes all
the letters that's pretty wild eh all of a sudden
your numbers change to the symbols instead so you can set up like a num any
number of macros that you might want to do one neat thing is that's also
happening uh in the software itself so right now if I hit shift the letters
change in the software so it's all real time which is honestly
impressive for over 10 years ago when you think about where keyboards are now
this is probably literally the worst typing experience I've ever had
um I'm gonna like some other people are gonna check this out after we're done
talking about it and I'm guaranteeing that they're also going to think it feels absolutely terrible especially
this stuck space bar I don't know when it was fresh and new maybe it felt a bit
better but right now it really doesn't feel all
that good in terms of size and layout
it's kind of a tkl you've got basically
your alphanumerics and then your afro and that's about it you've got some uh
arrow keys your navigation cluster and a function key so if you want like a Nifty
layout or if you want a very unique keyboard then maybe this is the keyboard
for you but like I said I mean you're gonna have to Shell out even today like
over a thousand dollars for this thing so the real question becomes do you want
to put it in your collection just because it's super cool
or maybe you're just an absolute madman
who wants a crazy macro pad
that has to stay not only plugged into your computer because it's not going to
have wireless features but also just plugged into the wall I uh I never
thought I would own a keyboard that plugs into the wall and I don't think I'm about to start for anyone who's a
bit more technically oriented I kind of Wonder Sven actually pointed this out I
wonder if you could uh change this cable entirely like open the whole thing Strip
This cable out and then do it entirely through USBC because that has power
delivery does it say on the brick how much it uses 100 to 240 which is pretty
standard 5 Volt 2 Amp so yeah you could
probably power this thing through USBC which would be pretty sweet
um honestly it's actually getting enough power through USB alone yeah like it's
still lit up and working so I'm not entirely sure oh no there it goes it
lost power the shift is no longer changing it okay you definitely need to
keep it plugged in uh which is a little unfortunate but you know if you want one
of the most unique keyboards on the market uh either get this one for the
LCD screen or if you can find it it was more expensive but the Optimus Maximus
was an OLED screen keyboard and it's the
precursor to this guy well that came out in 2007. it just it's a modern Marvel uh
what they were able to accomplish to accomplish back then so thanks for
watching this is ShortCircuit this is the Optimus popularis keyboard from art
labadev and you know what it's pretty neat thanks for watching