Closer Examination

The Akko ACR Pro Alice Plus comes in two color options as mentioned before and I have the white version here that uses an acrylic case with a white coat of paint. It ends up looking and feeling somewhat like a smooth slab of marble, except of course not cold to the touch. This alone helps make the keyboard fairly unique as the painted acrylic now also becomes a diffuser for the integrated lighting on offer. The Alice layout used here results in four banks of keys with the alphanumeric keys split into two sections that are placed deliberately with ergonomics in mind. This does make for a weird looking keyboard though and that is even before you notice the gaps between consecutive keys such as Q and W or 2 raised above the other keys on the left. There are also two shorter space bar keys as well as two B keys and having Win between the two space bar keys can also be challenging for muscle memory. What I am trying to tell you here is that typing on the Akko Alice Plus will likely be frustrating for the first week or more and I took ~two-three weeks of sporadic use before I was comfortable enough to make it a daily driver for another week prior to writing this review. The keyboard goes with a 5-sided case as typical for such Alice layouts and has relatively large bezels. The keycaps themselves are extremely clean with dark blue-on-white legends on this model with all legends placed in the middle.


Turning the keyboard around provides a closer look at the acrylic case with the same paint application here too. There's a decorative sticker applied in the middle and we see five round rubber pads on the top and bottom to help lift the keyboard off your desk to prevent any scratches to the case and adding friction against the resting surface. The top two pads are larger to add in some elevation for typing although you can use the provided add-on keyboard feet in the box too.


The Akko Alice Plus only wired connectivity is in the form of a slightly inset Type-C port on the back and placed towards the right side when viewed from the front. I would have rather seen it on the left or the middle to avoid any cable tangling with a mouse, for example, although the stock coiled cable does have a vertical offset before the coiled section itself to help alleviate these concerns. There is plenty of room here for aftermarket cables though I would say try the stock cable first anyway. It is the usual 6' in length but this includes the coiled section to where in practice this is best used with a PC or laptop closer to the keyboard. The cable itself goes to an available USB Type-A port where USB 2.0 will suffice for power and data alike.


A look from the side shows the built-in elevation of the keyboard, which I would classify as medium-high profile by itself and can benefit from a palm rest. The provided keycap puller helps remove some of the keycaps for a closer examination, without scratching their sides that the cheaper plastic ring-style keycap pullers are prone to do. Akko is using its ASA profile here which can be conceptualized as an OEM profile height with spherical sides similar to SA. This makes your fingers more naturally directed towards the center of the keycaps which in turn minimizes key wobbling. The two-piece case implementation makes them feel even shorter than usual from the side. The keycaps are made of thick PBT plastic (average wall thickness 1.35 mm) with doubleshot injected legends on the top for durability and longevity alike. These are opaque, however, meaning any LEDs on the keyboard are going to be for aesthetics and not functionality.


The pre-assembled version of this keyboard comes with two switch options and I have the Akko CS Crystal switches—the original ones without any tint applied to the housing. The other switch option is also a linear switch meaning no extra feedback choice outside of the linear typing experience you get here, at least out of the box. Note also the polycarbonate plate used here which works well with the polycarbonate switches themselves. The larger keycaps go with plate-mounted stabilizers that are lightly lubed.


The switch remover tool is handy to remove the hot-swappable switches off the PCB where we see the use of 5-pin hot-swap sockets allowing you to customize the switches on a per-key basis as needed, should you decide to get a whole keyboard's worth of replacements, while also providing increased compatibility with all such Cherry MX-style mechanical switches. Akko also has silicone switch pads used to add further support and switch dampening. Removing a switch also gives a closer look at the CS Crystal switch by itself, which is a linear 3-pin switch that has a clear polycarbonate housing to aid with RGB lighting and a clear stem to further justify the Crystal naming scheme.