Finally I got on the bandwagon and purchased a Ducky Channel mechanical keyboard on a sales event at ncixus.com. The keyboard took a while to get here since this came from NCIX's US warehouse in Seattle. Anyhow, I finally got one to compare how it is against Das Keyboard 4 Pro. I got the Cherry MX blue switch one, since that was the one on sale. So, I plan on doing a comparison study soon.
Anyhow, Ducky Channel makes quite a few lines of keyboards with different options, switches and grades. No wonder they are a favorite among mechanical keyboard aficionados. Their flagship product appears to be the sequentially named Shine series, currently at 4. I believe at this year's Computex in Taiwan, Ducky unveiled Shine 5. This may explain why Shine 3 and 4 are currently on sale..... They also produce a miniature version called ummm... Mini, that is smaller than a standard TKL. I don't think Ducky produced a TKL since Shine 3. They also like to put out special editions that correspond to the Chinese Zodiac. So, it's a pretty interesting company to follow. Unlike many keyboard manufacturers, Ducky depends on an on-board ARM micro-controller to do all the heavy lifting and programs rather than on the host machine. So, they don't even provide any drivers or software except maybe firmware updates. It's good and bad, I suppose. Since with the host computer, one can build some pretty fancy features at the cost of depending on host drivers and customization software. For someone like me, I like the Ducky approach.
For a typist like me who don't need fancy LED lighting keyboards, they produced the Premier and Legend. I think Premier is out of production and thus difficult to find. With PBT caps and unusual color schemes, what's not to like? Premier seems to be based off from Shine 3 while Legend is closer to Shine 4. I am basing this on the product code convention Ducky is using, however. Anyhow, I am trying to spend some quality with this keyboard and report in sometimes later.
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