Buy it for Life

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A place to share practical, durable and quality made products that are made to last, with an emphasis on upcycled and sustainable products!

Guidelines:

Things that are well-made and durable (even if they won't last a lifetime) are A-Okay!

Unlike that other BIFL place, Home-made and DIY items are encouraged here, as long as some form of instruction is included in the body of the post.

Videos links are not allowed as post titles, but you may use them in a text post.

A limited amount of self-promotion is accepted, IF the item you are selling aligns with this criteria:

The item must be made with sustainable or recycled materials.
If electronic in some way, the item must be open-source.
The item must be user-serviceable (if applicable).
You cannot be a large corporation.
The post must be clearly marked with a [Self Promotion] tag in your title.

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ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net

SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net

EU or Canadian alternative to Unicomp PC keyboards (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by MystValkyrie@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/buyitforlife@slrpnk.net

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I'm less interested in Unicomp/IBM's novel buckling spring technology (as cool as it is) and more that they're built well, are corded and not wireless, offer replacement parts on their website, and have a mail-in repair service.

Unicomp's Model M keyboard was my first choice for a long-lasting keyboard, but now I want to lessen my dependence on American-made companies (especially since Unicomp is based in Kentucky) and wanted to see if any alternatives existed. I've heard good things about Cherry, but I don't fully understand their business model or how to order their products.

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[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

EDIT: Somehow I missed the EU or Canadian requirement in the title, and thus wrote all this out despite the company I suggest being from China. Sorry about that!

Personally, I'd suggest going with a cherry-mx compatible keyboard that offers a hot-swappable keyswitch mainboard. There are many, many manufacturers of various styles of MX style keyswitches, making replacing any switches that become faulty or die in the future quite easy to perform at home (no soldering).

For brands, I've been impressed with Keychron keyboards. Most of their models are hot-swappable, and their build quality is quite good while remaining affordable. Another nice feature is that all of the customizable aspects like lighting settings and such are (or at least they were with my board from a few years ago) able to be changed just with key-combos on the keyboard without any additional software required, making it OS agnostic. They also offer 76 models that are wired.

As for repairs, according to their FAQ, they will replace defective parts within the warranty period, and also offer a paid repair service outside of the warranty window.

For in warranty:

We will only replace the defective parts of the keyboard and not the whole keyboard, as its highly customisable and easy to be rebuilt.

For out of warranty:

We can offer paid service to replace the defective parts at your own cost (which includes the cost of parts, shipping fee and tax if applicable).

The only downside is that they do not, as far as I can tell, offer replacement parts for sale outside of keycaps or switches. So if something like a main processing chip on the board were to fail (unlikely), you would have to send it in for repairs. They also are made in China, which may be a downside.

[–] MystValkyrie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Actually, after reading this and doing some research, I think Keychron would be a good choice. Thank you for taking the time to write this!

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 days ago

Awesome! Glad you found it helpful ^^