Das Keyboard

Das Keyboard is the worst In terms of quality/price ratio.

Das Keyboard, the Beginning

The Das Keyboard. Famous for being a keyboard with no key labels.

Good as a novelty, nothing else.

[see Why Not Blank Keycaps]

How much to pay to impress friends? $129!

How did this keyboard came about? According to the official site daskeyboard.com, the programer and company founder Daniel Guermeur, wanted to learn touch typing. The first thing is to get rid of the key labels, and the rest is history. Quote:

In 2005, in a personal quest to improve his own typing speed and accuracy, Metadot Corporation founder and self-proclaimed “Uber Geek” Daniel Guermeur asked to have a totally blank keyboard created. To his surprise, his typing speed doubled after just a few weeks of use.

As many friends and colleagues who tested the keyboard were mesmerized and wanted one, the business potential became obvious, and Das Keyboard was born.

For the first few years, the company doesn't do key labels. But since about 2008, they started to sell models that have key labels. The reason seems obvious. Without labels, you might sell 1 for every ten thousand programers. But with labels, your sales potential immediately increases by 1000.

Also, they introduced mechanical switch for the keys so that you get a good tactile feedback. The “Model S Professional” uses Cherry MX Blue switch, which is very clicky. [see Keyboard Key Switch Mechanisms]

However, i've seen one youtube video that shows a problem of the click-clack mechanism. For some keys, it makes a extraneous click when you put pressure on it. Not sure if that's just a single case of defective device, or defective design. Watch this, this is funny:

Das keyboard going after gamers

Das was primary marketed to programers.

but gamer's market is some thousand times bigger, and keyboard in gamer's market is far more competitive. (meaning, higher quality, cheaper)

many programers are gamers, but programer and gamer communities are distinct. So, programers usually are not aware of the keyboards marketed to gamers.

thus, it annoys me greatly when programers blurt out how great das keyboard is, but in fact the same quality keyboard can be found in gamer community much cheaper. (this also happened with CODE Keyboard a couple years ago.)

i wrote a rant about it.

[see CODE Keyboard]

though, that was 6 years ago. Today, mechanical keyboard became super popular, and as well ergonomic ones such as Ergodox etc.

[see Ergodox Keyboard]

so, how good is Das? I can't really say. To me, the IBM PC shaped mechanical keyboards are all the same. Happy Hacking, Filco, Das, Cooler Master, Ducky, Corsair, etc, all the same. There are lots today. You can buy Das, or other brands, but i see no difference.

What i really care is the number of function keys, extra modifier keys, their position, thumb keys, whether keys are programable. These, are of real import. Functional efficiency, is what i care about.

Das Keyboard Dissing Ergonomic Keyboards

Das Keyboard is running this

and tweeting it https://twitter.com/daskeyboard/status/766300101841039360

see the comments.

it's funny and sad.

dunno if das is getting desperate, or doing well and have the luxury to have some fun.

what they are doing there, is borderline lying. I don't know who wrote it, if it's intentional or ignorant.

see also keyboard.io's response https://twitter.com/keyboardio/status/766301482962472963

but actually, i know for a fact that there are people who believe it.