Best Keyboard 2017

Winner: Wooting One

The Wooting One brought novelty to a crowded market mostly filled with the same old stuff. Indeed, I dare say that this finally is a keyboard that actually merits the gaming keyboard moniker due to the implementation of analog controls on all 87 keys of this well-built TKL keyboard. The Wooting One is a story about three previously unheard of people saying they wanted in, and a successful Kickstarter campaign, followed by full transparency and excellent customer support, has now led to an active user community sharing analog profiles for plenty of games today. It is expensive at $160, but is also the only one of its kind today that does everything it set out to and more. I am enjoying my time on the Wooting One, and it remains among the few keyboards I have continued to use well past the review itself.

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Runner-up: Aukey KM-G4 RGB

My runner-up here would be the Aukey KM-G4 RGB. The brand may not enjoy a market share or presence as a mainstream darling yet, but Aukey is aware of it and competes accordingly. The KM-G4 is a full-size keyboard ticking off a lot of features found in keyboards that cost twice as much generally, be it the 16.8 M RGB backlighting, floating keycaps with a metal plate, or software driver for customizing functions and aesthetics, and they even offer better stock keycaps than most. Add in Amazon as a retailer and a price point of $65, and this is a keyboard strongly worth considering.

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Honorable Mentions

2017 was a great year for keyboards across the market. The mainstream end saw Corsair introduce their flagship K95 Platinum as the year began, which brought RGB backlighting front and center with the new CUE 2.0 driver and a light bar at the top. Cooler Master, with their MasterKeys PBT lineup also allowed more customers to experience a well built product at a great price point. HAVIT came out of nowhere with a branded keyboard using the new Kailh low profile CHOC switches that allowed TKL (HV-KB390L) and even full size keyboards in a minimal form factor, and the ErgoDox EZ is another successful tale of how crowdfunding can bring about easier access to unique keyboards, with its split ErgoDoz design and open source firmware.

Looking forward to 2018

Cherry has had a grand time with the mechanical keyboard market making a comeback this decade, but this also meant other companies were quick to take advantage of the expired patent on the switch design. The MX switch clones were initially poor, and some remain so even today. However, I am now confident enough to say that some of these companies offer switches that are just as good, if not better, than Cherry's, and at lower prices too. I want to see more mainstream brands use switches such as the Gateron Optical switch, Kailh Box switch, Outemu Ice switch, and Flaretech Optical switch. With RGB lighting no longer novel, I want keyboard manufacturers to focus on enhancing the build quality and user experience of keyboards where it is most important - the actual typing.