This is not really a loud keyboard at all, not sure where you got that impression. If anything, between the tactile switches and the foam pad, it is one of the quieter mechanical keyboards on the market. You can even replace the switches with a silent switch if you prefer going further down that road.
My apologies, I somehow managed to miss the part about switches being swappable. In the review you mention that a user can potentially mod in backlighting, and, as a custom keyboard novice, I'd like to ask what would such action require? When I buy it (it's out of stock now) what would the steps be to convert it to a single color backlit, maybe brown switch equipped keyboard? There seem to be LED pads on the board and the Akko shop mentions soldering LEDs, so am I correct to assume it's enough to just solder in some 3mm LEDs and get keycaps with translucent legends? Which begs another question: Are the keycaps standard size or does the 96% layout require another size? I didn't find a mention of non-standard keycap size, so I could just solder some LEDs, use a bag of silent switches if I find the included ones offensive and transplant the keycaps from my beloved G710+? You mentioned the MCU supports basic backlighting and I only want single color with brightness control, nothing fancy - is there a keyboard shortcut for controlling brightness or would I have to find alternative firmware of sorts?.
Please excuse all the basic questions, but you are far more intimate with this particular product and the general category than anyone I know of, and this information might be useful for someone else looking for a compact keyboard.
//EDIT: I did some research today and answered some of my questions:
-I asked the Akko store support about the LED mod - no answer yet, but it's Sunday today so I did not expect any, At this point I know that the best choice for this keyboard would be 1.8mm LEDs but I still don't know about the firmware compatibility with the mod.
-If you want to dive into mechanical keyboards, check out the Kono store "articles" page. They have some articles about about hardware compatibility. And there are compatibility nuances, like I wanted to use cheap Kalith box brown switches but they're only compatible with SMD LEDs which this board can't use unless I drill a 3mm hole where the LED pads are and solder SMD LEDs over the holes, a pain in the backside.
-At this point it seems that my old keycaps from the G710+ will mostly work fine, which is great since I'm so used to them.
Sorry for the "sort of" off-topic derail, but the longer I think about this keyboard the more I see it as a near perfect gateway drug into mechanical keyboard madness.
