Disassembly

I knew going in that some damage was going to be done to the plastic case, so only take this keyboard apart if you have no other recourse. The two-piece plastic case construction requires one to carefully pry apart the interlocking tabs, and to my pleasant surprise, it actually happened easily and without any visible damage here. Start at the bottom and work your way around the sides, after which it will get easier on the fourth side. We see that the top panel piece is quite thin and houses diffusers for the indicator LEDs at the front of the PCB.


To remove the bottom panel, you need to remove two screws towards the top as seen above. No keycap removal necessary for these, and I was surprised by the lack of screws at the bottom, too. Once done, the plate/PCB piece lifts upwards and away from the bottom panel.


An internal USB cable extends from a daughter PCB on the case, which houses the Type-C connector. The daughter PCB is screwed in securely, and there's little else to see on the case. Both case panels are made out of ABS plastic, and the middle piece has the switches which are soldered to the matte black PCB go through a steel plate. The steel plate is white in color, and I don't know why I thought it would be green!


Solder quality is very good for all the components, including the switches and the Type-C connector, in addition to some larger capacitors inside cut outs on the PCB itself. Although we do see some excess flux, which is a bit ugly, it is not a big deal at all. Powering the keyboard is a Vision VS11K15A 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 USB microcontroller, which has been used in some other keyboards we have covered before. The MCU actually supports basic backlighting, including RGB LEDs to an extent, so Akko could have added single color LEDs to all 108 keys if it wanted to. All the components, including the switches, LEDs, and capacitors, are soldered to a multi-layered PCB, and a side view showcases more of the Gateron Pink switches, which unfortunately can't be removed without desoldering.

Before we move on, be advised that disassembly may void the warranty and that TechPowerUp is not liable for any damages incurred if you decide to go ahead and do so anyway.