**A Personal Review of the Tofu 60 Custom Mechanical Keyboard Build**
I have to say that I'm really surprised with how well this custom mechanical keyboard build has held up even after being used extensively for over a year. The WASD keys, which were hammered during that time, still look pretty much brand new. One big downside of these keycaps, however, is that there is quite a bit of visible injection mould scarring on the back side of the keycaps, but fortunately, it's not visible from normal viewing angles. This doesn't really bother me, but for some of you who want your custom keyboard to be absolutely pristine from every single angle, I would recommend avoiding these keycaps.
The blank keycaps with missing legends did take a month or two to get used to, but after that, it's actually completely fine. You also have the benefit of not having to deal with any of the letters being printed crooked or them fading over time, which personally, I see as a huge plus. This keyboard has been an absolute pleasure to use every single day for the past 12 months, and I would say that it's the best 12 months of keyboard typing of my life. Upgrading from my previous keyboard, like the n-pro and the Corsair K65, this is a huge upgrade.
Many of you have asked me when the next custom mechanical keyboard build will be and when I'm going to replace this or upgrade from it. Seriously, since this has really served me so well, I feel like building anything else even if it was just for content would be a little bit wasteful. The logical upgrade from this keyboard would be something like a Rama Works or a Bower, but those are quite the leap in terms of price and getting your hands on one is pretty difficult.
Getting custom keyboard parts often involves group buys that usually take six months a year sometimes even longer or at the very minimum, you have to join a waiting list for things like PCB switches and cases. I am actually moving to a larger studio towards the end of this year which will have enough space for two separate setups: one for editing and one for streaming and gaming. This is going to be the perfect opportunity to build another custom mechanical keyboard build, but honestly, it'll probably be something very similar to this Tofu 60.
I am really happy with this configuration, and I also like the fact that it's a bit more attainable for you guys to replicate in the scope of custom mechanical keyboard builds. If you are yet to actually build a custom mechanical keyboard, how does something like this compare to a decent off-the-shelf keyboard like a Ducky One Two Mini? The sound and feel of a full metal custom keyboard is a lot tighter, smoother, less rattly, and overall, a lot more enjoyable to type on. You also have the option to install lubed switches with a custom keyboard, whereas the Cherry MX switches on the Ducky are noticeably more scratchy.
A custom build, however, is also considerably more expensive – at least expect to pay about $350 US for a Tofu 60 build that you see here, which by the way, is actually considered cheap in the realm of custom keyboards. Even with these comparisons in mind, demonstrating that yes, custom keyboards are a leap forward in terms of quality, a Ducky One Two Mini is definitely something that I can recommend for those of you who just want a good enough typing experience out of the box without paying a ton.
The stabilizers in particular are significantly better than what you'll find on the bigger brands like Corsair or Razer and relative to those products, this feels a lot more solid. I also think that if you're primarily interested in gear and peripherals for gaming specifically, a custom keyboard is probably the last thing that I'd recommend upgrading for your setup. Your monitor, gaming mouse, even your headphones are going to play a lot more into providing a better gaming experience for you, a custom keyboard is not going to improve your kill-death ratio or help you rank up in Valorant but those other pieces of hardware definitely can.
But having said that, the upgrade in terms of user experience and interaction is significant, and if building a custom keyboard is something that you have repeatedly considered doing, I would 100% encourage you to do so. I'm personally really excited to start planning a second build very similar to this one, although I might experiment with some different switches and keycaps.
**Conclusion**
If you are planning on doing something similar which I highly recommend if you have the spare cash and enthusiasm to do so, I will leave some links down below to some more popular keyboard reviewers and creators who will be able to help you out and see you in the right direction. Otherwise, a huge thanks for watching, and I'll see you all in the next one.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso about 12 months ago i built this my first custom mechanical keyboard and it was my first real dive into the world of custom mechanical keyboards lubing switches clipping stabilizers and all of that uh but yeah it's been 12 months so today i want to do a bit of a 12-month review of what i kind of have changed along the way of course we'll talk about the blank keycaps and just in general kind of what you need to know if you're going to be doing the same thing and i also want to discuss why i haven't built another custom mechanical keyboard since this one and for you guys who might be kind of tossing up between a pre-built off-the-shelf keyboard and going full custom i want to include a direct comparison between this and what i think is one of the best off-the-shelf keyboards that you can currently buy the ducky one-two mini so this is a 60 keyboard build using the tofu 60 aluminium case from kbd fans with the dz60 pcb the layout i've been told by numerous people since that is pretty whack but i found it to be what is the most convenient for me in the most compact form factor this is just what i gravitated towards coming from small form factor pc builds and the 60 layout for me has really been ideal i don't use the right shift key so that freed up a lot of the room for the arrow keys on the primary layer which i do use quite a lot for video and photo editing and i am still rocking the telios v2 switches from zeo pc which are super smooth 67 gram linear switches and i've lubed those with 205 g0 a year later they feel a little bit more broken in as the lubricant has settled into the switches and the switch stems have kind of just smoothed over a little bit so if anything they feel a little bit smoother than when i first installed them one thing that i did add after the first couple of months though as a recommendation from you guys was sound dampening between the pcb and the metal case this eliminated a lot of the sound resonance that i was getting and the really high frequency pinging sound with every keystroke honestly since this was my first custom keyboard build i didn't even know that that was a thing but it really did improve the feel and sound of this build overall but by far the biggest change that i've made to this keyboard since i first built it are the keycaps i initially built this keyboard with the sa miami knights keycaps which i think looks absolutely sick and the sound of the high profile keycaps as well made them really really fun to type on but about two to three months in i began to develop a bit of pain and really weird clicking in my left wrist so while these taller keycaps were fine for typing up scripts editing and general use they were not ideal for gaming at all they became really uncomfortable for extended gaming sessions and the taller profile meant that the keycaps were also a little bit wobbly so after about two to three months of using the keyboard i swapped to the keycaps that you see here which are the enjoy pbt blank keycaps in black and it sounds weird for those of you who might have not built a custom mechanical keyboard before but this completely changed the feel sound and interaction with this keyboard obviously it's going to change the look i had no idea how much it would change the even feel of the switches so these are cherry profile keycaps quite a bit smaller than the sa profile that i was using initially and i can definitely say that all of my keyboard builds moving forward we'll also use the cherry profile keycaps these are so much more comfortable to type on compared to sa profile in my opinion especially when it comes to gaming in fact all of my wrist pain and discomfort went away as soon as i swapped to these and this was actually a keycap set that i didn't plan on using for more than a week or two i just bought them because they were 40 or so the blank look was super clean and i wanted to test it out for a little bit but now these keycaps have seen about 10 months of use and honestly i'm really surprised with how well they've held up even the wasd keys which have been absolutely hammered during that time they still look pretty much brand new one big downside of these keycaps though is that there is quite a bit of visible injection mould scarring on the back side of the keycaps but it's not visible from normal viewing angles so for that reason it doesn't really bother me but for some of you who want your custom keyboard to be absolutely pristine from every single angle then i'd recommend avoiding these keycaps and of course on the note of them being blank with missing legends it did take a month or two to get used to but after that it's actually completely fine you also have the benefit here of not having to deal with any of the letters being printed crooked or them fading over time which personally i see as a huge plus so 12 months in this has been an absolute pleasure to use every single day uh the best 12 months of keyboard typing of my life if i can even say that especially a big upgrade from what i was using previously which was like the n pro and the corsair k65 this is a huge upgrade but a lot of you have asked me when the next customer mechanical keyboard build will be and when i'm going to replace this or upgrade from it but seriously since this has really served me so well i feel like building anything else even if it was just for content i would be a little bit wasteful secondly the logical upgrade from this a kb defense tofu 60 would be something like a rama works or a bower but those are quite the leap in terms of price and getting your hands on one is pretty difficult and that really is a third point in itself getting custom keyboard parts a lot of the time involves group buys that usually take six months a year sometimes even longer or at the very minimum you have to join a waiting list even for stuff like pcb switches and cases now i am actually moving to a larger studio towards the end of this year which will have enough studio space for two separate setups one for editing and one for streaming and gaming and i think that'll be the perfect opportunity to build another custom mechanical keyboard build but honestly it'll probably be something very similar to this a tofu 60 i might change the switches or the keycaps i'll do another completely blank build like this but honestly i am really really happy with this configuration i also do like the fact that it is a bit more attainable for you guys to replicate in the scope of custom mechanical keyboard builds but if you are yet to actually build a custom mechanical keyboard how does something like this compare to a decent off the shelf keyboard like a ducky one two mini so the sound and feel of a full metal custom keyboard is a lot tighter smoother less rattly and overall a lot more enjoyable to type on you also have the option to install lubed switches with a custom keyboard whereas the cherry mx switches on the ducky are noticeably more scratchy but a custom build is also considerably more expensive actually over twice the cost at least expect to pay about 150 us for a ducky one-two mini and around 350 us for a custom tofu 60 build that you see here which by the way is actually considered cheap in the realm of custom keyboards now even with these comparisons in mind demonstrating that yes custom keyboards are a leap forward in terms of quality a ducky one two mini is definitely something that i can recommend for those of you who just want a good enough typing experience out of the box without paying a ton the stabilizers in particular are significantly better than what you'll find on the bigger brands like corsair or razer and relative to those products this feels a lot more solid i also think that if you're primarily interested in gear and peripherals for gaming specifically a custom keyboard is probably the last thing that i'd recommend upgrading for your setup if i'm being honest your monitor gaming mouse even your headphones are going to play a lot more into you know providing a better gaming experience for you a custom keyboard is not going to improve your kill death ratio or help you rank up in valorem but those other pieces of hardware definitely can but having said that the upgrade in terms of user experience and interaction is significant and if building a custom keyboard is something that you have repeatedly considered doing i would 100 encourage you to do so i'm personally really excited to start planning a second build very similar to this one although i might experiment with some different switches and keycaps so if you are planning on doing something similar which i can highly recommend if you have the spare cash and enthusiasm to do so i will leave some links down below to some more popular keyboard reviewers and creators who will be able to help you out and see you in the right direction otherwise a huge thanks for watching and i will see you all in the next oneso about 12 months ago i built this my first custom mechanical keyboard and it was my first real dive into the world of custom mechanical keyboards lubing switches clipping stabilizers and all of that uh but yeah it's been 12 months so today i want to do a bit of a 12-month review of what i kind of have changed along the way of course we'll talk about the blank keycaps and just in general kind of what you need to know if you're going to be doing the same thing and i also want to discuss why i haven't built another custom mechanical keyboard since this one and for you guys who might be kind of tossing up between a pre-built off-the-shelf keyboard and going full custom i want to include a direct comparison between this and what i think is one of the best off-the-shelf keyboards that you can currently buy the ducky one-two mini so this is a 60 keyboard build using the tofu 60 aluminium case from kbd fans with the dz60 pcb the layout i've been told by numerous people since that is pretty whack but i found it to be what is the most convenient for me in the most compact form factor this is just what i gravitated towards coming from small form factor pc builds and the 60 layout for me has really been ideal i don't use the right shift key so that freed up a lot of the room for the arrow keys on the primary layer which i do use quite a lot for video and photo editing and i am still rocking the telios v2 switches from zeo pc which are super smooth 67 gram linear switches and i've lubed those with 205 g0 a year later they feel a little bit more broken in as the lubricant has settled into the switches and the switch stems have kind of just smoothed over a little bit so if anything they feel a little bit smoother than when i first installed them one thing that i did add after the first couple of months though as a recommendation from you guys was sound dampening between the pcb and the metal case this eliminated a lot of the sound resonance that i was getting and the really high frequency pinging sound with every keystroke honestly since this was my first custom keyboard build i didn't even know that that was a thing but it really did improve the feel and sound of this build overall but by far the biggest change that i've made to this keyboard since i first built it are the keycaps i initially built this keyboard with the sa miami knights keycaps which i think looks absolutely sick and the sound of the high profile keycaps as well made them really really fun to type on but about two to three months in i began to develop a bit of pain and really weird clicking in my left wrist so while these taller keycaps were fine for typing up scripts editing and general use they were not ideal for gaming at all they became really uncomfortable for extended gaming sessions and the taller profile meant that the keycaps were also a little bit wobbly so after about two to three months of using the keyboard i swapped to the keycaps that you see here which are the enjoy pbt blank keycaps in black and it sounds weird for those of you who might have not built a custom mechanical keyboard before but this completely changed the feel sound and interaction with this keyboard obviously it's going to change the look i had no idea how much it would change the even feel of the switches so these are cherry profile keycaps quite a bit smaller than the sa profile that i was using initially and i can definitely say that all of my keyboard builds moving forward we'll also use the cherry profile keycaps these are so much more comfortable to type on compared to sa profile in my opinion especially when it comes to gaming in fact all of my wrist pain and discomfort went away as soon as i swapped to these and this was actually a keycap set that i didn't plan on using for more than a week or two i just bought them because they were 40 or so the blank look was super clean and i wanted to test it out for a little bit but now these keycaps have seen about 10 months of use and honestly i'm really surprised with how well they've held up even the wasd keys which have been absolutely hammered during that time they still look pretty much brand new one big downside of these keycaps though is that there is quite a bit of visible injection mould scarring on the back side of the keycaps but it's not visible from normal viewing angles so for that reason it doesn't really bother me but for some of you who want your custom keyboard to be absolutely pristine from every single angle then i'd recommend avoiding these keycaps and of course on the note of them being blank with missing legends it did take a month or two to get used to but after that it's actually completely fine you also have the benefit here of not having to deal with any of the letters being printed crooked or them fading over time which personally i see as a huge plus so 12 months in this has been an absolute pleasure to use every single day uh the best 12 months of keyboard typing of my life if i can even say that especially a big upgrade from what i was using previously which was like the n pro and the corsair k65 this is a huge upgrade but a lot of you have asked me when the next customer mechanical keyboard build will be and when i'm going to replace this or upgrade from it but seriously since this has really served me so well i feel like building anything else even if it was just for content i would be a little bit wasteful secondly the logical upgrade from this a kb defense tofu 60 would be something like a rama works or a bower but those are quite the leap in terms of price and getting your hands on one is pretty difficult and that really is a third point in itself getting custom keyboard parts a lot of the time involves group buys that usually take six months a year sometimes even longer or at the very minimum you have to join a waiting list even for stuff like pcb switches and cases now i am actually moving to a larger studio towards the end of this year which will have enough studio space for two separate setups one for editing and one for streaming and gaming and i think that'll be the perfect opportunity to build another custom mechanical keyboard build but honestly it'll probably be something very similar to this a tofu 60 i might change the switches or the keycaps i'll do another completely blank build like this but honestly i am really really happy with this configuration i also do like the fact that it is a bit more attainable for you guys to replicate in the scope of custom mechanical keyboard builds but if you are yet to actually build a custom mechanical keyboard how does something like this compare to a decent off the shelf keyboard like a ducky one two mini so the sound and feel of a full metal custom keyboard is a lot tighter smoother less rattly and overall a lot more enjoyable to type on you also have the option to install lubed switches with a custom keyboard whereas the cherry mx switches on the ducky are noticeably more scratchy but a custom build is also considerably more expensive actually over twice the cost at least expect to pay about 150 us for a ducky one-two mini and around 350 us for a custom tofu 60 build that you see here which by the way is actually considered cheap in the realm of custom keyboards now even with these comparisons in mind demonstrating that yes custom keyboards are a leap forward in terms of quality a ducky one two mini is definitely something that i can recommend for those of you who just want a good enough typing experience out of the box without paying a ton the stabilizers in particular are significantly better than what you'll find on the bigger brands like corsair or razer and relative to those products this feels a lot more solid i also think that if you're primarily interested in gear and peripherals for gaming specifically a custom keyboard is probably the last thing that i'd recommend upgrading for your setup if i'm being honest your monitor gaming mouse even your headphones are going to play a lot more into you know providing a better gaming experience for you a custom keyboard is not going to improve your kill death ratio or help you rank up in valorem but those other pieces of hardware definitely can but having said that the upgrade in terms of user experience and interaction is significant and if building a custom keyboard is something that you have repeatedly considered doing i would 100 encourage you to do so i'm personally really excited to start planning a second build very similar to this one although i might experiment with some different switches and keycaps so if you are planning on doing something similar which i can highly recommend if you have the spare cash and enthusiasm to do so i will leave some links down below to some more popular keyboard reviewers and creators who will be able to help you out and see you in the right direction otherwise a huge thanks for watching and i will see you all in the next one\n"
