Closer Examination

The Varmilo Muse65 comes in five themes, three of which are Nordic by inspiration—Asgard, Summit, and Aurora—as well as "Sakura" based on the pink Cherry blossoms and "Ariel," referencing the mermaid and a more aquatic theme. Seen above is the Muse65 Aurora inspired by the northern lights, and this design appealed to me a lot. The color scheme employing different shades of blue is also not that common in the first place, even before the Aurora theme digs deeper with the custom designs on the modifier keys—the starry sky and the Enter keycap in particular with the aurora lights. But your mileage may vary, and perhaps you will prefer one of the other options. Helping keep things consistent is the CNC-machined aluminium chassis that is also blue, albeit yet another shade compared to the keycaps. Bezels are smaller than average, especially on the sides, but I'd still not classify this as a minimalist keyboard despite the efficient 65% form factor. There are 67 keys in total here, meaning you do lose out on a lot of keys compared even to a TKL keyboard, let alone a full-size one. Layers are going to be handy here, as we will see later in this review. The keycaps are opaque, so I do wish Varmilo had gone for larger legends that are also centrally placed. As it stands, the alphanumeric keycaps have the legends in the top left, with secondary legends taking precedence when applicable, whereas the modifiers are more as I would have preferred. Varmilo has also gone for a standard bottom row spacing, meaning there was only room for two keys to the right of the space bar before the arrow keys came into the picture, and there is also a small gap between them as seen above.


Turning the keyboard around, we see more of that heavy and solid-feeling metal case. Each of the five themes gets a decorative acrylic panel on the back, although obviously you won't see this in use. There is a metal badge with certification info beneath, and four long rubber pads on the corners to help add friction against the resting surface in addition to preventing the case from being scratched. Note how there are no keyboard feet here though, so you better hope the fixed keyboard elevation from the case design works for you.


There is only wired connectivity here, so we see fairly simple I/O with a single inset Type-C port on the top left side facing away from the user. There is enough space here to accommodate most aftermarket cables in case you wanted something that better matches the colorway employed by the keyboard. The stock cable is black with a durable sleeve, the usual 6' in length, and goes to an available USB Type-A port on your PC where USB 2.0 (USB 3.2 Gen 1) will suffice for power and data alike.


A look from the side shows the built-in elevation of the keyboard, which I would classify as medium profile and can maybe benefit from a wrist rest if you are not used to touch typing with hands hovering over the keys at all times. The provided keycap puller helps remove some of the keycaps for a closer examination, without scratching their sides as with the plastic ring-style cheaper keycap pullers that are thankfully going out of style. Varmilo is using the Cherry keycap profile here with these lower height keycaps also being non-floating owing to the use of the thicker, taller metal case. They are made of thick PBT plastic (average wall thickness 1.35 mm) with dye-sublimed legends and designs on the top for durability and longevity alike. These are practically opaque and thus the LEDs present on the keyboard will be for accent lighting only.


The Muse65 HE is a Hall effect keyboard using magnetic switches, so naturally there are far fewer switch options here than usual for Varmilo which has a lot of first- and third-party mechanical and electrostatic capacitive switches for its other models. This time, Varmilo is going with Gateron for its latest generation magnetic switches. There are two options available in the form of the Gateron Magnetic White and Magnetic Jade, and I have the former here. Both are linear switches, with tactile/clicky magnetic switches only just coming out, and this could be a dealbreaker for some. The switches are installed in a north-facing configuration and larger keycaps use plate mounted stabilizers which seem lubed almost excessively out of the box. There is no dampening/support between the switches and the aluminium plate, although we do see poron foam sheets sandwiched between the plate and the PCB.


The switch remover tool is handy to remove the hot-swappable switches off the PCB where we see the use of, well, nothing but an SMD RGB LED firing upwards. This is because the Hall effect sensor used is on the other side of the PCB. The switches can be easily removed thus, but of course you can't use standard mechanical switches here. Removing a switch also gives a closer look at the Gateron Magnetic White magnetic switch by itself, which is from the newer dual-rail design and also has two pins for support. The top housing is a translucent off-white, the bottom housing is solid white, and it uses a milky white cross-point stem.