Winner:
The official nominees in the Best modern keyboard or company category were:
Kailh
GMK
Cooler Master
Cherry
KBDfans
The Wingnut, as voted for by the keyboard community, goes to...
Spoiler:
KBDfans
This was surely the year of KBDfans in our community, becoming popular for providing quality products and services for a cheap price. Even when they make a rare error, the customer service is great and they just fix it. The KBD75, the KBDfans 60% aluminum case, and various other products have found their way to many satisfied keyboard enthousiasts.
KBDfans and their affordable prices for good products are a welcome change.
Runners-up:
Spoiler:
2nd place: Kailh
Kaihua Electronics, branded as Kailh, is a Chinese electronics component manufacturer, founded in 1990. Kaihua's new copper, bronze, gold, silver, and BOX switches have very interesting designs. They genuinely tried to innovate and improve upon the legendary Cherry design with the click bar and BOX switches.
Kailh made a lot of progress this year.
3rd place: GMK GMK electronic design is a German manufacturer specialising in keyboards and custom peripherals. They acquired Cherry's double-shot molding tooling and are therefore able to produce Cherry double-shot keycaps, from where Cherry left off in 2011. The keycaps are exclusively produced in Germany. GMK's holistic approach, from product design to in-house manufacturing, reflects their strive for excellent results regarding quality and flexibility.
GMK steadily branched out towards the keyboard community and improved on their offering of keyboards and keyboard related products in a high quality market segment.
Honorable mentions:
Spoiler:
Cooler Master Cooler Master really acknowledged the community, the fact that they changed the bottom row for us is great, and whatever your preference - LED lighting, or functionality over flash, ISO or ANSI - they deliver, with a variety of possible MX switches. If you're looking for a quality brand that's widely available, Cooler Master provides.
The Cooler Master Masterkeys S competes with the Filco Majestouch TKL, the quintessential vanilla mechanical keyboard.
Cherry Cherry, the German manufacturer of the very popular Cherry MX switch range, stepped up their game this year. They innovated with the Cherry MX silent range of switches, re-tooled their switch production, engaged with the community with their developer kits, and attended Mechanicon.
Has it always been a wish of yours to own an individually customised keyboard, but you don’t know where to start? Try the Cherry MX switch developer kit.
Posted: 06 Dec 2017, 20:39
by Buggot
Congratulations KBDfans! You guys are awesome for making great products at great prices.
Posted: 06 Dec 2017, 21:16
by jkaos92
Hail KBDFans!
Happy that i didn't forgot to nominate you, definetely a deserved win!
Posted: 07 Dec 2017, 10:29
by 7bit
Congratulations to all top 3!
Posted: 07 Dec 2017, 11:31
by kokokoy
Congrats KBDFans! Hope you guys can bring down the price for that TEX Yoda 2.
Posted: 10 Dec 2017, 17:49
by ideus
Kudos to kbdfans the combination of great products and low prices are extremely rare in the mechanical keyboard realm. Actually, high prices are something the community has been expected to accept as the norm, which you guys have proved to be wrong.
Posted: 10 Dec 2017, 19:49
by Menuhin
For those individual sellers who decided go for the strategy of “squeezing the last drop of juice out of the community”, from poor keyboard addicts like me - they are usually 1 to 2 man teams, they cannot cope with big volumes, or they don’t want to.
KBDFans can deal with big order quantities for their cool designs.
