Software

NuPhy has endeared itself with the enthusiast keyboard community by adopting QMK/VIA for keyboard customization, although this approach can alienate the more mainstream audience which finds even the GUI-based VIA to be not as convenient or even somewhat limited in features. With the Air60 HE, we arguably get the best of both worlds in the form of NuPhyIO—a web browser-based tool you can access here. It walks you through the process, which is as simple as plugging the keyboard in and providing access similar to VIA, before a more custom experience starts beginning with a pop-up about the latest update to both NuPhyIO but also alerting to about a firmware update to the keyboard, if applicable. I updated the keyboard firmware right away, especially since this is a new keyboard and more likely to have new features/bug fixes added, and the entire process took under a minute.


At this point, NuPhyIO prompts you to choose the operating mode based on the toggle switch we saw earlier. It would have been nice to allow users to still get a preview of the other modes here, but everything happens in real time and I get why you can only choose the active mode. In this case I went with Windows and you are greeted by an extremely clean user interface. Being web-based, there are no software drivers to install on your PC and this is accessible anywhere in the world too. In fact, everything is saved on the keyboard itself, so you don't need to have anything running in the background either. Between this and Wooting having extremely feature-rich browser-based configurators, I want to see more brands go this route for any peripheral customization which legitimately does not need access to your computer. This way you don't have worry about bloated software, a resource hog, something that may not scale properly with your display, poor translations from another language, and so forth.

The video above goes through the various customization options you get for the Air60 HE with NuPhyIO, which is a lot. The settings tab allows you to check for any updates, and I like that the update log is seen here for added transparency. You can also choose between light and dark mode, as well as Chinese or English languages. There are expected features we take for granted with keyboards today, including key mapping, macros, and lighting effects. A big omission though is the lack of profiles, although NuPhy kinda gets around this with the three modes you can change to be profiles instead. Each mode also has layers on offer, including the Fn layer that comes pre-programmed and two spare ones here in the default Windows mode. I also liked that everything has a helpful note and you don't need to guess what the words mean either—NuPhy did more than just use a basic language translator here. The virtual keyboard is super useful for everything, as you can also see the real time changes made. This includes the lighting effects of course, but also the trigger settings which allow you a long actuation range of 0.10 to 3.30 mm in ridiculously tiny 0.02 mm increments by default, although you can also change this to 0.10 mm there. The deadzone visualizer is also very helpful so people can see exactly what is going on, and of course there is rapid trigger available too. If you change a switch type, you can also note it in the program and re-calibrate it by simply pressing down until the key turns green again. There are also more advanced features available, with NuPhy decided it can also do SOCD (Simultaneous Opposing Cardinal Directions), dynamic keystrokes, mod tap, and so on. Whether or not you can use these features in games is a different matter altogether, but NuPhy can at least market the Air60 HE as offering everything the other big HE keyboard brands also do.