When I first heard about mechanical keyboards in 2012, I was a skeptic. Why would someone pay $100+ for a keyboard when I can get one that works perfectly fine for a tenth of that? And to be honest, there is nothing wrong with rubber dome (standard) keyboards.
As a developer, I spend most of my day coding. I have multiple colleges and friends who swear by mechanical keyboards, so I decided to take the plunge. My first keyboard was the CM Storm Quickfire Rapid. I had it for about a year before it broke. I then bought a few other mechanical keyboards (like the Razer Black Widow Ultimate), and I was never completely satisfied.
Then I discovered Jeff Atwood created a keyboard. As a fan of his blog, and his projects. I decided to spend the $155 to get this keyboard. Personally, I bought it off amazon because of the free Prime shipping and i’d get it faster than if I bought it through CODE directly.
I really liked the code keyboard because you could configure the keys for either mac or windows with it’s easy to use DIP switches (after consulting the user manual) and I really liked how firm the keyboard is. All the mechanical keyboards I owned, while all of them were decent, still felt kind of flimsy. The CODE keyboard has a solid steel backplate and is quite durable (however, I doubt it could survive being ran over a tank like this logitech keyboard).
Unfortunately, after only about a year of usage, one of the switches broke and my down arrow is unresponsive. While the keyboard is still usable, it’s obviously a nuisance every time I need to use it (typically when scrolling through Google search results). I decided to contact WASD keyboards (the manufacturers of the keyboard) to see what could be done. To my delight, they responded the same day (late on a Friday afternoon). It turns out they have a 2 year warranty on their keyboards. They would either send me a replacement switch that I could attach myself (which I couldn’t do) or I could send it to them and they would repair it - and I would just have to pay 1-way shipping. This really impressed me, and shows that WASD Keyboards really stands behind their products. I’ve never seen a warranty this good on a gadget.
I highly recommend this keyboard to anyone who is looking for a quality keyboard that is backed by a company that won’t leave you hanging if something goes wrong.