Disassembly

Given the hot-swappable switches here, I wanted to begin this section with a look inside the Kailh BOX Strawberry Ice Cream Pro switches that came on this sample. Please take a look at this article to get a primer on how Kailh BOX switches differ from the usual Cherry MX-style cross-point stem mechanical switches in decoupling the actuation mechanism from the stem directly by introducing the so-called Active Block in the middle. I will say that when I first saw the switches I thought these were Kailh BOX Silent switches owing not only to the pink stem but the rounded walls around it which we saw previously on another BOX Silent switch. Between this and the ridiculously long name, as well as the switch being a collab iteration of another collab switch, I can't imagine most people are even aware of this switch. Ultimately it's a linear switch with a pre-lubed stem and spring—a long one at that. Functionally it is identical to other linear BOX switches in that the notch on the stem pushes the active block into the BOX enclosure present on the bottom housing that provides additional dust and spill resistance. The active block in turn pushes the metal contacts together to initiate switch actuation that is read by the microcontroller on the keyboard.


Disassembly of the keyboard is not hard and yet the two-piece ABS plastic construction means you need to use a thin, flat object to pry apart interlocking plastic tabs keeping the top and bottom panel together. As such, I do not recommend taking apart the keyboard unless you have a very good reason since it is likely you will leave marks on the plastic or even potentially break off the tabs. There are no screws used to secure the plate/PCB piece on the bottom case panel so you can lift it upwards enough to access the two internal cables to be dislodged—one going to the battery for power in wireless mode and the other heading to a daughter PCB on the bottom case panel that hosts the OLED display itself. Keydous has a relatively thick foam sheet between the PCB and the case here to minimize any reverberations from the otherwise empty case, and I am glad to see a massive 5000 mAh Li-ion pouch battery used on this triple mode version. It's not the easiest to replace and the dual-mode version (wired and Bluetooth only) gets a 4000 mAh battery admittedly, but this still bodes well for battery life compared to the competition.


At this point you can choose to remove all keycaps and switches to further separate the brass plate from the white PCB itself, and this would allow you to also potentially replace and re-lube the stabilizers too. The PCB itself is clearly custom-made for Keydous and the NJ81 given the marking on the bottom as well as a time stamp that indicates this particular version was made in late September 2022, or had the design finalized then. Note the cutout to accommodate the OLED daughter PCB as well as the use of good quality Kailh 5-pin hot-swap switch sockets. There are two separate YiChip YC3x-series chips which are dual 32-bit RISC architecture USB microcontrollers as well as Bluetooth 5.0 transceivers. There are a few other harder-to-identify drivers here that might well be for LED control in addition to hosting a 2.4 GHz SoC. The side view confirms the use of another foam sheet present between the plate and the PCB for sound dampening as mentioned on the previous page. 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.