Closer Examination

Okay then, I have mixed feelings about the timing of this review, knowing it will likely be published after another that poorly replicated something this keyboard does well. On the plus side, at least the Akko 3108DS review has already gone up, so I can say there have been green keyboards before. Dismissing the Varmilo MA108 Forest Fairy as "another one of those" is terribly wrong for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that there simply are not enough customized keyboards like this out of the box. This goes well beyond simply throwing on a custom keycap set and is indeed one of the rare occasions where you need to hold and touch the keyboard to know more.

I hope the photos above will help illustrate my point, however. Yes, this is a full-size keyboard with four extra keys that we have seen before. Yes, this is a green-colored keyboard with a green and white keycap set, which the Akko 3108DS did to an extent, too. Yes, there is no aircraft-grade aluminium alloy frame here. But what Varmilo has done with the plastic case construction is what a certain other Asian company tried and barely came close to, as you will see soon separately. The textured finish applied to the case, both on the top and bottom panels, feels like you are touching bark. The colors are that of a young sapling in the spring, ready to grow and take on the world. The white keycaps are a template to host the forest leaves that help make up the keycap legends. Then there are the thermally sublimed animals and birds, sharing this forest with you. Varmilo used to sell Forest Fairy mouse pads and desk mats, but no longer seem to do so, though they are still available in some retail channels to add to the experience if it appeals to you.

As with the Beijing Opera theme covered before on the MA87M, such themes are divisive. Companies opt for the classic black or occasional white, colors for peripherals not only because they are easy to make and get consistent as those colors will also go well with just about everything else in your PC build. Keyboards today are quickly becoming an extension of your personal tastes, at least in the wild, wild world of mechanical keyboards. Varmilo and a few others aim to appeal to this audience by offering different themes and creating mini ecosystems around them with accompanying accessories, including keycap sets, wrist rests, desk mats, etc. I mentioned before how this theme appeals to me, and there is nothing wrong if it does not to you. That space bar keycap, though...


Flipping the keyboard around, we see the design continued to a subtler degree. There is a metal badge with keyboard and certification information etched in, and the keyboard is made to feel like it is part of the forest when held on the bottom if moved or lifted as well. Seven white rubber pads along the edges add friction against the resting surface and prevent scratches to the bottom of the case. Two of these are part of the keyboard feet, which can be raised to add another level of elevation. The feet have the rubber pads all around the bottom as well, so they won't get scratched either.


We saw the detachable cable on the previous page and now see where it plugs into. A recessed mini USB port in the top-right corner greets us on the side facing away from the user, which is a weird placement considering it may have the cable get in the way of a mouse cable for right-handed users. The cable is green to match the keyboard case, and the rubber insulation matches the color very well even if the actual connector is slightly brighter. It is the usual 6' long and goes to a full-size USB Type A port on your computer/USB hub, where USB 2.0 suffices for power and data alike.


We have an OEM profile for the keycaps, with the usual six rows that are sculpted and angled as with the average pre-built mechanical keyboard. The provided keycap puller works very well and is one of the neat touches that completes the theme. Seen above are four example stock keycaps of the two different color schemes. All of these share a thick PBT plastic DNA (average wall thickness of 1.32 mm) with thermally sublimed legends. The stock keycaps are not backlighting compatible, which explains the replacement keycaps we saw before that do support it somewhat for the indicator functions.


There are four available switch options when buying the Varmilo MA108 Forest Fairy, and a few Cherry MX switches with the VA108M Forest Fairy, which has been available for a while now. The four options here are all new Varmilo electrostatic capacitive version 2 (EC V2) switches, and I have the EC Ivy V2 switch on this sample. We have already taken a closer look at the switch earlier and will continue to talk more about the switch over the course of the review, but you can see the Varmilo logo on the top as well as a cutout for LEDs to shine their light through directly at the bottom, with some more light diffused through the switch body. The larger keycaps use Cherry stabilizers, and these are actually lubricated, which helps mitigate the rattly noise associated with the cheaper implementations of the same.


Here is a look at the four replacement keycaps on the keyboard, of which the star of the show is no doubt the replacement Esc key. I would indeed go as far as to say that this should have been the stock Esc keycap out of the box, but I am happy to have the option, and it takes less than a minute to swap to. The other three are more functional, allowing the associated white indicator LED to shine through the plastic lens inset in the keycap.