Ah, the Azio Fokal… no, excuse me, the Azio FOQO Keyboard… Now, what a journey! Started on Indiegogo, I funded this keyboard back in May of 2020 during the wonderful epicenter of The Pandemic (yes, The One) and received my copy of the board in September of 2021 (like, just the other day).
Now I love Azio products. One of my favorite keyboards of all time, and which I used for years, is their Retro Classic Keyboard. I got it as soon as it was released and still am the proud owner of my worn out not-so-little typewriter. With that love in mind, I thought I’d purchase another one of their boards; I loved how it looked, loved that they offered an accompanying numpad, loved how they were approaching the keyboard aesthetic and experience, and expected it to be one of The Ones. In other words, a staple keyboard. However, with all the things that happened, what I received was… a lot less lovable, and I’m pretty disappointed.
Let’s start with the body of the board. I got the red and gold keyboard and while the gold is nice (clean and soft-colored), the red could use a bit of work. It’s a leather textured plastic and looks more muted than in the original pictures, probably because I was expecting actual, well, leather. But this, this ain’t leather or I can’t tell the difference between the hide of an animal and the hide of a plastic bag.
The rotary encoder. It was supposed to be such a big part of this board. But after iteration after iteration, they went too minimalist with it. I get that they needed to simplify to meet their shipping demands, but this is literally not what I paid for. It was originally supposed to have a lot of functionality and be joystick-like in structure, with all the buttons and grooves and click click rotations. What I got on the board was none of that. There’s something going on with the light that shines through the arrows on the encoder, too. Not sure if it’s on purpose but it looks like something’s out of place… And, final thing on this, the button keeps stealing my dead skin cells. Or it’s just rubbing white, I don’t know. But it’s too sensitive to rub and wear, especially since I only touched it once before it started reflecting my paleness.
From their campaign page:
Okay, before I get to anything else about this board, I have to talk about the switches. They are INCREDIBLY noisy. Like, INCREDIBLY. And this is coming from someone who loves clicky switches. Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh~~~~~!
What’s worse is that I thought I’d go ahead and modify the switches instead. Lo and behold, that’s not an easy task. I figured I’d just cap them with sound dampening caps, but the LEDs are stuck in from the top of the switch, which means I’d have to desolder them anyway if I wanted to make any adjustments. They really went ham in their attempts to hamper any custom sound dampening modifications, looks like (I know, I’m just being bitter about it – it’s not like it’s the end of the world or anything. Yet.). Anyway, the clatter is real. Don’t get blues.
Keycaps. Much oil. My eyes detest.
Yes, I have oily fingers. It’s not fun for me, my eyes, nor the keycaps, I’m sure. Okay so my greasy fingers aren’t really that bad, but I’ll just say, that means it’ll be worse for those who really do have some oily fingers. It’s one of those situations where if you have one oily night in town, it’ll be seduced by it and hold onto it forever. Not the greatest, but not the worst. It’s just unfortunate it’s not better and is closer to standard than it should be at this price.
The internals… empty. It really is. A lot of space to store your things, really.
Soldered on and Gateron, I got them in blues, which seems to have been a terrible mistake on this board. Because the construction of the board isn’t as great anymore, or maybe this is how it’s originally supposed to sound, the audio is just waaaaaayyyyyyy up there on the decibel scale in my ears. I can’t even type on it for very long because of it, and that’s AFTER I put sound dampening foam inside to try and mitigate it. Didn’t work at all.
PCB is a cool color though.
Bluetooth and multi-device connectivity. It’s nice and I like it. Not totally new or ingenious though so I won’t say much else here. I like that it’s another knob though to switch between the devices.
The complimentary compensation wrist rest. Only the little gold trim around the bottom is worth keeping. The rest of it? Looks and feels very cheaply made.
The Numpad. Missing. I miss it and I’ve never had it. Shame cause it was a big part of why I backed this project.
RGB. A lot of rainbow options here. Would have loved some more modes where I could pick the color. Or a pastel lighting option would’ve been nice.
Last but not least, the communication from Azio regarding this project. It was really the worst. Months long in between responses as to what was happening to this project – a lot of people got mad and cancelled their backing (fortunately or unfortunately, I’m a patient poodle). With each new post, there were promises and what seemed like excuses. Sure, lockdowns and shutdowns were rough, but if they had communicated a little better, I’m sure people would have been more patient and understanding. That’s how other projects succeeded and kept their backers, after all. With constant communication, honesty and integrity. It’s a bit funny, really, because they launched another campaign soon after, the IZO, and because the communication was great, it had a pretty successful campaign (I bought a few of those as well).
Anyway, all-in-all, I tried not to be too disappointed, but I am in all honesty. Probably because I had such high expectations. Ah well, better luck next time, I suppose.
Thanks for reading!
Bonus box pics!
EVERY DAY A MYSTERY 
I agree, the keyboard was largely disappointing. Not a big fan of typing on this- when I need to do some serious typing I reach for my Qwerkywriter. Was also disappointed by the disappearance of the number pad. The knob feels cheaply made and is not at all what Azio promised. Speaking of Azio, tried to leave a fair three star review on their site with a very nice picture of the product and they blocked the review, so I wouldn’t trust all the “five star reviews” on their site.
LikeLiked by 2 people