Why Are Topre Keyboards So Expensive?

Exactly the same sentiment. My yearlong experiment to try to love mechanical keyboards left me with a thousand euro hole in my wallet and physical problems spanning from fingers to upper body musculature. I loved the tactile feel, but hated what they did to my body.

I think mechanical keyboards are just too high, with excessive travel. You sort of have to keep your hands floating in the air, which transfers stress to your neck, shoulders and upper body. No palm support I tried offered any substantial relief, probably due to the long travel and finger contortions required.

Second issue, perhaps I'm a poor typist, but my fingertips frequently got stuck between the keys, causing mistakes by triggering adjacent keys.

One day I got tired and bought a 10 euro keyboard from the grocery shop. Noname, slimline, rubber domes. What a relief that was.

These days I swear by Logitech MX Keys. Best keyboard I have ever touched.

Ever try a Type-S? Mine is really quiet.

Hasu controller is literally a game changer!!

I bought four Topre keyboards during the pandemic lockdown. Very nice to type on, especially the silent versions, but latency is an issue: it seems the boards use a 30Hz internal scan rate. There are two scan rates for modern USB keyboards that affect final latency: #1. the internal scan rate which is how frequently the onboard keyboard controller scans all the keys for whether they are in a key-up or key-down state, which can be anywhere from 30-8000Hz (new gaming boards advertise 8000Hz); #2. the USB poll rate, usually 125Hz, though typically 1000Hz for gaming keyboards and as low as 60-90Hz for Bluetooth keyboards.

So if internal scan rate is 30Hz or 33ms and poll rate is 125Hz or 8ms then worse case latency is 33+8=41ms and average latency is about half that or ~20ms.

Note that a Topre keyboard is no worse latency-wise than an Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and most people who use Apple's wireless keyboards don't notice the latency is so high, nor do I ever hear people complain that Apple's wireless Bluetooth mouse is only 90Hz polling instead of the standard 125Hz for PC mice and the standard 1000Hz for gaming mice. An online mouse rate checker gives fairly accurate results:

https://clickspeeder.com/mouse-rate-checker/

I ended up preferring Cherry MX Silent keyboards over Topre. They are linear whereas Topre has a bit of snap-down due to its rubber domes. It's really personal preference which you will prefer. I like linear better. Cherry MX is a bit scratchier but after a month of use the keys get a bit smoother and many people lube Cherries with Krytox teflon grease to make them smoother. I suspect most would prefer Cherry MX Silent Red which has a 60 gram bottom out force but there is also Cherry MX Silent Black which has an 80 gram bottom out force. The MX Silent Black is most similar to how piano keys feel (with much shorter ~3.6mm key travel though).

The two best MX Silent boards I tried were the Durgod Taurus K320 available from Amazon ($100-$150) and the Ducky One 2 available from mechanicalkeyboards.com ($100-$110). Both have PBT keycaps (like the legendary IBM Model M which I also love but which is too loud and clacky for my quiet audio workstation) and have quiet stabilizers straight out of the box that don't rattle and don't need to be lubed or messed with. (And the worst Cherry Silent board I tried was Cherry's own MX Silent Board which was incredibly loud.)

rtings.com does keyboard latency tests and found that the Ducky One 2 has a total latency of about 7-8ms whereas the Durgod is ~16ms. The Ducky also house built-in macro reprogramming with no janky Chinese Windows tool download needed.

But the Ducky's PBT keycaps were quite rough for my fingertips so I replaced them with smoother PBT sets from Amazon. The Mistel and Tecware keycaps are both smoother PBT and very nice. The Tecware keycaps are only $20, amazing value.

Long time Topre user here. I have four of those now, had a few more over the years. The best for me is the 45gr uniformly weighted realforce pfu ltd - which allows, with a keypress, to change the actuation point. More shallow for gaming, deeper for typing.

One thing I cant agree with is the claim of superior QC. I had to RMA one due to faulty pcb - pressing Num Lock would cause all the leds to light up, and had another that came with a fairly sticky key (m). Not going back to any other switches though, but i dont think there is any particular care given to them during manufacturing.