TECH XP REVIEW: ONE UP MECHANICAL KEYBOARD

I have been looking for my first mechanical keyboard for a while, and I had a pretty specific idea of what I wanted, I just couldn’t find it in my price range. I’m on a pretty tight budget since I have two kids and most of my money needs to go towards diapers.

I was about to purchase the Noppoo Lolita Spyder, when I found One-Up Mechanical keyboardon ebay, which looked like a re-branding, for $10-15 cheaper. From what I can tell from reviews I’ve read/watched, this is definitely trying to remake the Lolita, only at a much lower quality.

The board has Blue switches (labeled as Cherry MX Blues online, but in reality they are Greetech switches). From what I know of these switches, they are supposed to be kind of stiff to actuate, requiring you to release the key slightly to double press. You don’t have to with these keys. I can double-tap these keys by hardly lifting off the key at all. They feel loose, especially on certain keys–Enter doesn’t *click* at all.

As my first experience with mechanical keyboards it is definitely more satisfying to type on than my previous keyboards. However, for a blue switch keyboard, which from what I understand is supposed to be pretty stiff and easy to avoid typos on, this keyboard utterly fails. I am constantly hitting other keys by mistake because they are so easy to actuate. I would describe these as reds that *click*. Not at all what I was expecting from blue switches.

The back-lighting is really bright, but has no way to adjust the level or turn them off and the function key’s only use seems to be activating Win-lock. The LEDs are mostly blue, however the Q W E R A S D F and arrow keys have a different colour. Online it looked like they would be red, which goes with the rest of my PC setup, however in person they are very clearly orange, which in my opinion is just ugly.

They keyboard isn’t all bad, however. The floating key style looks really nice and the board is really stiff and feels well built. You cannot bend this keyboard at all, no matter how hard you might try.  It has a metal back-plate that makes it very rigid and solid and comes in silver or gold. The gold part in the image below is one solid piece of metal, which is nice. The keycaps however are really thin plastic and kind of ruin the typing experience because of how cheap they feel.

$60 for a back-lit, mechanical keyboard is pretty tempting, but the quality of the switches and keycaps isn’t really worth it in my opinion when CM Storm TK can get you genuine Cherry MX switches and a more reliable brand. If this keyboard was around $40 then I would consider it a good deal (with custom keycaps it would probably feel better to type on), but the quality just doesn’t seem to be worth anything more than that. Considering I’ve never used a mechanical keyboard before and I can tell that this is a cheap board should give some indication of its value.

If you need a cheap board and can find this for under $60 then it may be worth it if you don’t already have a mechanical keyboard, but for $10 more you can just get the Lolita, which seems to be a pretty widely recommended beginner mechanical board with quite a few reviews to back it up.

tl;dr

Metal backplate is sturdy, bright blue LEDs with ugly orange ones on certain keys. Switches are Greetech and feel very loose even though they are Blues. Keycaps are cheapo. No functionality other than a Win-lock.

I’ve already submitted a return request and am going to be buying the CM Storm TK from Cooler Master instead. reviews