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friends I've got something pretty cool for you today this is the

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Optimus popularis keyboard and it's from

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2012 so it's kind of old but this thing

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costs like 1100 when it came out it's actually the sequel to the Optimus

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Maximus that came out in 2007 and that

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thing was like 1500 bucks or something it had an OLED screen or I think it was

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a number of OLED screens I don't know why they went to LCD for this guy

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instead of OLED but they did and uh I

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gotta say it's pretty cool they Market it as a million keyboards in one because

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you can just change it to absolutely whatever you want and because of the

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screens you can set up multiple different languages no problem without

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changing out the keycaps for people who don't know uh where certain characters

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are and they have to you know hunt and Peck a little bit let's open the box

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it's pretty unique pretty interesting we haven't done a bunch of testing on it or

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anything like that um but I'm really excited from Art

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labadev Studio by the way uh incredible

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piece of History this is getting pretty old this sticker on the back is starting

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to peel off on its own um but you know what it's an otherwise

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great shape and I'm pretty stoked it's wired

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and one very cool thing

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yeah that's right uh if you couldn't guess it already from the title

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this keyboard plugs into the wall I have

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never seen anything like it before in my life uh all that's left in here

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otherwise aside from the keyboard and the cables and the adapters are just

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some power adapters for different card countries uh this is now out of

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production I went searching eBay earlier

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today and couldn't find anything so good luck getting your hands on one I

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actually don't even know how we got ours I don't know what the switches are

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um there's not a ton of information about it anywhere to be to be honest

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even their own website it doesn't like remember that this came out in 2012

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that's kind of when mechanical keyboards were getting popular but not like

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anywhere close to the popularity that they are today it's pretty neat uh wired

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and this wire is not able to disconnect so if you're stuck with it but you know

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it's white and black it's tasteful it's fine it's not super heavy

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982 grams so just under a kilo about two

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pounds it's not too bad you can hold it one-handed pretty easily I've checked it

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out a little bit ahead of this because I just wanted to get my hands on it I

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couldn't help myself and one thing that just drives me up the wall is all these

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switches are whatever we'll talk about them in a sec the function key

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is different like can you hear that

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there's something about the function key that it's like a whole separate switch

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or something and it feels chunky feels like a like an old on off power switch

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that you'd get on like I don't even know like old PCS really

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and I it drives me nuts I don't know why the one key is just completely different

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either way um let's get this thing fired up because I want to take a look at all the screens

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oh my God it's terrible

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I don't know how else to explain this this feels worse than typing on a

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membrane chiclet keyboard and I I like membrane Chiclet keyboards I think

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they're fine um but this thing just does not

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feel good at all but you know it's not

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about feeling good especially like what 10 over 10 years ago now it was really

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more about functionality and looking cool and standing out from the crowd

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especially at eleven hundred dollars what I really want to do is I want to

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plug in both our USB and our power and

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check out just how this thing looks when it's all lit up but not before a word

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from our sponsor thanks to you green for sponsoring this video do you use a

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laptop and desktop PC at the same time stop messing around with cables with the

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ugreen USB 3.0 switch selector you can use up to four USB devices across two

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computers it's super simple to use just plug your devices into the front ports

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and attach the rear cables to your two systems your keyboard mouse or other USB

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devices can now instantly be used with one system or the other with the Press

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of a button check out the ugreen 3.0 switch selector at the link below all it

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lit up from just the USB power okay this

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is gonna be a little logistically challenging I can tell you

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already that if you're planning to use this in like a regular desk setup it

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might be a little challenging um just because you're stuck with this

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weird cable system and yeah it's pretty

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ugly uh it might be a little easier if it's a full desktop setup so you got

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you've got all of your powers like down by your i o on your computer and

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everything instead of plugged into a laptop and hanging off the table down to

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our uh power brick there but you know it's working there's screens and they're

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all lit up does it detected just fine let's do a little typing test first

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thing oh something's

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oh it's the space I don't like this at all

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this Base Bar just our spacebar just straight up does not always work I don't

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think you know instead of a typing test I'm gonna do something that I don't

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usually do here I'm gonna go to Via and

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see if everything's actually actuating properly yeah a lot of the switches just

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don't go like I'm having to hit enter multiple times so let's just do a quick

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little hit all the things to make sure

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everything is actuating

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some of them take a few presses but they are all detecting

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I don't know if that's just bad nkro right now or what

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it does work it just is really finicky and this space bar is awful

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um that being said you've got to remember that this is at least 10 years

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old at this point so some of these might just need a little love you might have

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to open it up and maybe get some crud out of there but stuff like our space

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bar sticking right there it's stuck are not ideal but you know okay it is

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what it is I'm gonna I'm gonna give it a shot on monkey type for realsies this

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time no no restarting I'm gonna go

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slower on purpose just to make sure that I really

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um not Mash but I like really definitively hit each of these Keys here

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I'm hoping for high accuracy and low word speed oh

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oh this word's gone okay sure

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it's this sticking space bar is really

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killing me here oh this is bad

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54 words per minute 91 accuracy you know

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we did a bit of digging and it turns out that we did get ours off eBay but we

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paid basically retail at about a thousand fifty dollars so

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uh if you've got one you can at least sell it for basically what it cost you

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um it's super cool one thing I gotta show you and I haven't used this really

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at all yet but it has software looks like an apple program Honestly though

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right like the zy looks like something Apple would do so you can you can do

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whatever you want in here like it's even got a little paint so you can change

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these keys to absolutely anything

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can I just like open paint wow it makes a little I don't know how

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to use this like at all I'm honestly not entirely sure how to use the software I

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really wish I could do a better job of showing it to you

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um but basically you can configure this

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thing Key by key it's kind of like the people that made the stream deck saw

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this guy and they're like yeah that seems really cool but also I don't want

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to pay eleven hundred dollars for it and also I don't think it needs to be the

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full keyboard and they took that idea and they ran with it and you've got the

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stream deck now which is basically what this is but in a much smaller and

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compact form factor that has a completely different purpose no one's

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expecting to type on a stream deck I mean you could you probably shouldn't

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but you could uh whereas this is definitely like keyboard first you can

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do a bunch of cool stuff too like you can put a bunch of information on the

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screen they've got a bunch of marketing material that will show you if we can't

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get it working right here because yeah it's a little complex and also this

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thing is super old so the software isn't great so each screen goes runs at a

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minimum of 10 FPS and it can support up to 264 000 colors which is pretty wild

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um and okay I just noticed this as well you hit shift boom it capitalizes all

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the letters that's pretty wild eh all of a sudden

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your numbers change to the symbols instead so you can set up like a num any

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number of macros that you might want to do one neat thing is that's also

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happening uh in the software itself so right now if I hit shift the letters

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change in the software so it's all real time which is honestly

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impressive for over 10 years ago when you think about where keyboards are now

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this is probably literally the worst typing experience I've ever had

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um I'm gonna like some other people are gonna check this out after we're done

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talking about it and I'm guaranteeing that they're also going to think it feels absolutely terrible especially

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this stuck space bar I don't know when it was fresh and new maybe it felt a bit

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better but right now it really doesn't feel all

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that good in terms of size and layout

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it's kind of a tkl you've got basically

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your alphanumerics and then your afro and that's about it you've got some uh

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arrow keys your navigation cluster and a function key so if you want like a Nifty

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layout or if you want a very unique keyboard then maybe this is the keyboard

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for you but like I said I mean you're gonna have to Shell out even today like

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over a thousand dollars for this thing so the real question becomes do you want

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to put it in your collection just because it's super cool

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or maybe you're just an absolute madman

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who wants a crazy macro pad

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that has to stay not only plugged into your computer because it's not going to

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have wireless features but also just plugged into the wall I uh I never

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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

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bit more technically oriented I kind of Wonder Sven actually pointed this out I

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wonder if you could uh change this cable entirely like open the whole thing Strip

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This cable out and then do it entirely through USBC because that has power

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delivery does it say on the brick how much it uses 100 to 240 which is pretty

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standard 5 Volt 2 Amp so yeah you could

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probably power this thing through USBC which would be pretty sweet

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um honestly it's actually getting enough power through USB alone yeah like it's

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still lit up and working so I'm not entirely sure oh no there it goes it

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lost power the shift is no longer changing it okay you definitely need to

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keep it plugged in uh which is a little unfortunate but you know if you want one

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of the most unique keyboards on the market uh either get this one for the

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LCD screen or if you can find it it was more expensive but the Optimus Maximus

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was an OLED screen keyboard and it's the

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precursor to this guy well that came out in 2007. it just it's a modern Marvel uh

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what they were able to accomplish to accomplish back then so thanks for

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watching this is ShortCircuit this is the Optimus popularis keyboard from art

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labadev and you know what it's pretty neat thanks for watching