My Aaru finally came! Egyptian-themed and rocking the hieroglyphics, I was super indecisive about what colors I should get cause I really liked a lot of them. Go figure though, I saved myself from making the decision by spending a bit more money to get the “wildcard” option, the gacha/random/don’t-take-your-pick option.
So the thing about this wildcard option was that I wouldn’t know what I would be getting. And for a keyboard that costs $549 (pricey, I know! Non-wildcard was $479), you’d think I’d like to take my pick of options. Well, of the wildcard options that I did see, though I don’t think they ever revealed all of the possibilities, I was quite taken with one specific color only available through that dangerous lotto path, and that was the beautiful rainbow Aaru, hehehe.
This thing!
Look at it! Admire it! It’s b-e-a-utiful!!! Oh me oh my oh man, don’t ask me why but I really wanted this rainbow keyboard. (Second to this was the sand colored one or the deep green one. If I had more money, I’d have bought all three, hah!)
Now, I’m sure your curious what actually came in the mail. Well, latatata, behold…
The RAINBOW AARU!!!!! Weren’t expecting that, were you?! Well, neither was I!
Oh, be still my heart.
Now it’s not totally the same color, as you can see when you compare the two pictures above, and I’d have loved to have gotten that beautiful symmetrical gradience of color in their market photos… BUT! I’m pretty happy with the keyboard that I got anyway. It’s a pretty unique offering; certainly a showstopper. People are definitely bound to notice something as fun and interesting as this.
Not only is the board unique, even the PCB is beautiful. It’s just a shame I can’t admire it in the board, but that’s why I take pictures!
Gorgeous (cause I’ve been saying beautiful too much)!
And here’s the weight. We need to see this at least once too:
So I thought long and hard about what switches to put into this board. And especially what type, like linears, tactiles, or clickies. On the one hand, HelixLab (the folks who made the Aaru) has their own custom clickies, the Helix Skylar Switch, as their switch of choice on their website; it’s the only one they sell. On the other hand, I hadn’t bought them and most other clickies sound too loud on the board, even with some padding. There aren’t a lot of great clicky choices out there either, from my experience, which is super unfortunate cause those are my favorites. So, it was between linears and tactiles.
By the time I got the Aaru, I already had my last few keyboards made using linear switches (silk emeralds – they’re nice, you guys should go check ’em out), so I figured I should go tactile this time. But, which tactile?
Well, I had a basket of these really nice Durock T1 Dark Amber Switches sitting around for awhile and I decided to give those a whirl. Trying them out on the PCB didn’t feel bad. I liked them even with just the factory lube. So, I just shoved all of them in there. And boy, it looked nice~!
Okay, so I’ll be honest here. The switches weren’t even the hardest part. Let me tell you, the hardest thing about this keyboard, and the thing that kept this keyboard incomplete on my desk for weeks, was trying to figure out what keycap set to put on them. Seriously, what do you pair with a ~~~RAINBOW~~~ board?
I tried everything! Black, stealth black, white, stealth white, gray, pink, blue, green, puddings, artisans, Legos, you name it… Nothing! Nothing worked! So, what did I think of as a last resort? If you guessed this, you’re a genius. I made it rainbow.
You’re laughing right now, aren’t you? It made me laugh when I took a step back and looked at the final product, too. Not bad though, right?
Right…?
It kinda has a childish joy to it, I think, and I kinda like it. For now, anyway. It might hit me someday that I made a +$500 keyboard look like a toy, but today is not that day!
Anyway, I like it! It feels nice, it’s fun and unique, and it works well. Nothing I can complain about, really, except I was dumb enough to put SA profile keycaps on it; can’t see the backlight on the board AT ALL. At least the keycap colors make up for lack of shine shine…
All-in-all though, I really do like it. If the group buy comes back up for a round 2, I think I’ll go ahead and grab those other colors… or maybe I’ll just get another wildcard, ehehehe.
But well, until that time comes, that’s it for the Aaru adventure today. Let me know what you think of the board! Or if you guys have any recommendations for keycaps, I’d love to hear those as well.
Until next time, ciao~
(oh, a lovely Aaru~)
EVERY DAY A MYSTERY 