Let's talk about the baby elephant in the room first. The Matcha keycaps have been made before by others, and it may be that Akko drew some inspiration there for the version here. What makes this different is that it is a different mold and color scheme. The addition of the "Red Bean" color replacement keycaps further takes it towards being its own thing. There are other keycaps that are more.. inspired, shall we say? These to my knowledge are different enough, on an entire keyboard built around the keycaps to where I am happy to treat it as novel enough a design for Akko.

That is a good thing since the design is basically the unique selling point. This is otherwise a full-size 108-keys board that shares common DNA with a lot of keyboards, down to the use of the extra 4 keys on this US ANSI layout for the calculator and volume control we have seen before. I suspect the color scheme and design will be love-it or hate-it, but that is usually the case with such custom keycap designs. The Akko 3108DS Matcha Red Bean just goes further with the keyboard case and cable in a matching color, and by providing twenty replacement keycaps to add the third color to the green and white stock colors. The keycaps are of excellent build quality, with uniform, well-made legends on a mold that has helped Akko churn out some fantastic keycap sets already, especially for the money.

To me, the design and keycaps are secondary to the used switches, however. Similar to Kailh, Gateron has made tremendous strides in the recent past, improving their build quality and manufacturing capacity. As such, the company has offered custom switches, which several companies have taken them up on, including Wooting with their new Lekker Hall Effect analog switches we will get to. This has also helped smaller brands and even individuals do group buys based on custom-designed switches. The Gateron Pink was originally developed for such an initiative, but was taken further and made its own alongside the Gateron Orange and Yellow switches. This is a linear switch that is a hybrid of the Cherry MX Red and MX Black in that actuation is rated the same as for the light/medium force MX Red, but with the spring pushing back more, which has bottoming out take more force. It can help touch typists in particular—some practice will prevent bottoming out, making this a quieter keyboard. The Gateron Pink is also very smooth and self-lubricating. Along with the slightly lubricated stabilizers here, typing on this keyboard is quite pleasant. I have used all sorts of linear switches before, and I have to say I really like these a lot compared to everything else so far.

The full-sized nature of the keyboard means it is on the larger side of average, but also that there is basically no learning curve. It may be too large for some, and the numpad may not be very relevant to others, with ergonomics also not the highest here despite the provision of three elevation steps. A few pre-programmed functions are built in to aid the user experience, including media and volume controls, shortcuts to some commonly used programs, and an onboard macro-recording option, even if it is not the easiest to use. It would not be a stretch to say that the keyboard itself is fairly basic, but these switches are more expensive than you would think. With that considered, the $109 pricing is actually not bad provided you are looking for this very specific feature set. The switches were the tipping point for my recommendation, and I will take a look at the Gateron Orange in another keyboard shortly to see if it impresses as much. Look out for that sooner than later in the form of the Akko 3084 Silent.