Disassembly

Given the hot-swappable nature of the switches and this being my first time with these switches, it only made sense to take one of these Akko V3 Piano Pro switches apart. This is a linear switch with a relatively short stem which comes lubed well from the factory itself to where I don't expect to gain much from taking these apart for cleaning and re-lubing. The latest iteration has more lube added on the rails where the stem slides in the housing too, and the spring also appears to have a touch of lube on the bottom. The LED condenser lens is also new in this iteration, although of course the opaque keycaps make it less of a factor on this keyboard. The monochrome aesthetic is neat, but does make it hard to photograph. The switch design is otherwise similar to other such Cherry MX-style switches in that the stem pushes the copper contacts in the bottom housing together to initiate switch actuation that is read by the microcontroller on the keyboard.


I absolutely don't recommend anyone disassemble the keyboard unless they absolutely have to, because Akko has used a lot of tape and foam sheets which are almost impossible to put back together in one piece. The plus side is that the stock keyboard is already well damped, and almost overly damped at that. It becomes harder to swap out, say, the stabilizers if you want to reuse the stock dampening materials. Disassembly begins by peeling off the long silicone rubber strip on the back which now exposes four screws you need to remove. The accent plate now comes off and showcases the use of a semi-gasket mount too. The plate/PCB piece is tied to a daughterboard on the case for the Type-C port, as well as another internal cable leading from the battery itself. These have very little play with the foam and tape sheets used, so it is not easy to put them back together either. For the sake of this review, I did peel off the tape enough to verify Akko is using a 4000 mAh battery here—plenty large for this form factor.


There is a clear plastic sheet and a thicker adhesive foam sheet on the back of the PCB too, so you see what I mean by Akko going fairly nuts here to the point of approaching a high-end enthusiast keyboard. I was not going to peel everything back for the sake of it, so it's a good thing Akko made my job easier by having cutouts in the effective foam tape mod here so I could easily photograph the primary components through the clear sheet. We see the use of black, high-quality Kailh hot-swap switch sockets, a Yichip YC3121 series 32-bit RISC architecture USB and 2.4 GHz microcontroller, and what should be Bluetooth and/or hardware LED drivers. All the components, including the switch sockets, SMD LEDs, and capacitors, are soldered to a multi-layered PCB.

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.