Best keyboard company or brand 2015

[webwit]

Please suggest nominees for the Best keyboard company or brand in 2015. You have to give a short motivation for each suggestion. Can also be a shop selling keyboards, or a vintage brand which was hot in 2015. This is the commercial-only category. You cannot nominate your own company or brand.

By voting in the third round of this category, you can win a Hyper PCB collection with around 100 switches, a Teensy controller, plus more from 7bit!

The first round ends on Thursday 3 December, 00:00hrs UTC.

Current suggestions (this list is frequently updated):

• Matias
• Gateron
• IBM
• Topre
• Filco
• [CTRL]ALT

[pcaro]

Matias is a good candidate. Innovation in switches and keyboards.

[Muirium]

Gateron switches were big this year. Does Gateron count?

IBM, naturally. Makers of the finest boards of all time.

And since I'm playing captain obvious here: Topre, makers of the finest boards today.

Come beat the big boys if you think you're hard enough!

[Findecanor]

Gateron switches were big this year. Does Gateron count?

Don't forget the keycaps. Thick PBT, Cherry profile, various space-bar sizes, ISO Enter (although I still haven't got hold of any...), blank and dye-sub.

[Muirium]

True. I try to nominate only things I know from direct experience, though. I can attest to the fact the switches are already better than modern, genuine MX.

[ramnes]

I would like to nominate Gateron too: smooth switches, dye-sublimated PBT keycaps... everything they made that year seemed really good.

[7bit]

Matias, again.

[trenzafeeds]

Can't really go wrong with gateron, quality products in so many areas.

[andrewjoy]

I am going to vote for Filco. They never get enough love, they make reasonably priced standard layout 75% and 100% cherry keyboards ( less said about there other offering the better). They are very well built and will last for years. Standard modern layouts for bottom row and caps lock allow you to put almost any set of caps on them, they use standard costar stabilisers no none of them stupid pcb mount on plate things that cherry use, oh and the controller is easy to replace .


P.S ( i do like the cherry style stabilisers but only on PCB, they don't work on plate mount imo.

[DanielT]

It's not really a company more of a community effort, but definitely a brand: [CTRL]ALT . They made a huge contribution to the keyboard community, they are the first to give a professional look and feel to the GB concept, worked together with JTK and brought after a long time the first affordable and high quality ABS keycaps, made MX-Topre sliders available (no more the need to butcher a Novatouch only for the sliders), "saved" on the EU side the dreaded GH60 GB. On DT they are known for providing a platform for SA retro GB, and the list would go on forever...

[derzemel]

It's not really a company more of a community effort, but definitely a brand: [CTRL]ALT . They made a huge contribution to the keyboard community, they are the first to give a professional look and feel to the GB concept, worked together with JTK and brought after a long time the first affordable and high quality ABS keycaps, made MX-Topre sliders available (no more the need to butcher a Novatouch only for the sliders), "saved" on the EU side the dreaded GH60 GB. On DT they are known for providing a platform for SA retro GB, and the list would go on forever...

I agree with DanielT