Review: NovelKeys NK65 Entry Edition (Blumen)

The NK65 Entry Edition is an entry custom computer kit from NovelKeys that is in a 65% layout. It uses a polycarbonate housing and is offered in several translucent colors as well as some opaque. At the time I purchased mine the only color available was Blumen which is a translucent blue that is UV reactive and will glow green. They also occasionally offer limited run variants featuring a theme, such as the currently offered Mictlan set which features a full set of matching switches.

The board is offered as a base kit where you will have to purchase keycaps and switches separately from the board. It is sold at $95 putting it at a reasonable price point for an entry custom board kit with some niceties not found in some other cheaper kits. Also included with the board are preinstalled and lubricated stabilizers as well as a coiled USB-C to USB-A cable. The cable is a basic black cable with a rubberized coating and a tightly coiled section that stretches and reminds me most of the coiled cables that were so frequently used on corded telephones. It serves its purpose well, but I’d honestly prefer a straight cable with nylon braiding as I have had more issues with rubberized cables aging over time than braided cables. The keyboard carrying case is thin but sturdy with a gray canvas outer and soft black interior. There’s a netted pocket to hold cables or other tools in the top along with Velcro straps for holding the keyboard itself in place. The case holds the board quite snugly and should provide decent protection during travel.

The NK65 is entirely polycarbonate. The housing doubles as the switch plate which makes it a firmer typing experience than many other boards now that feature a design with the plate and housing as being less fixed together. For instance, the TKC Portico features an FR4 plate and is gasket mounted giving it slightly more give and a bouncier typing experience than the NK65. Both are stiffer than some of my other boards simply because they are more tightly packed, but the Portico does offer enough additional flex in the design to be noticeable when typing. If you’re looking for a looser typing feel with more give to bottoming out the board then you’ll likely want to look elsewhere. However, at the $100 price point you will find that more difficult as most boards at this price will mount directly to the case housing due to meeting the price point. I think it’s comfortable to type on, pleasant even, but it is on the stiffer side.

Instead of flexibility what the board does offer is great dampening included with the board. There is a large silicone slab below the PCB which doubles as weight for the board, giving it more heft than it might otherwise look like it should have. This dramatically reduces any sort of reverberation within the chassis and acts as excellent absorption for sound. Between PCB and the plate/top housing is another silicone layer. Combined these do prevent more compression within the case but they also help dampen the sound giving it a very distinct pop to the board that I also find in the sound of my Portico. Between the two boards I find the Portico is slightly higher in pitch and the NK65 is deeper. I think both have a great sound for polycarbonate keyboards. Part of that difference is that the Portico has a silicone slab under the PCB but between the plate and the PCB is a thinner material, felt, that doesn’t dampen the sound as much. It also features that FR4 plate which also lends to a different sound signature to the polycarbonate design in the NK65. I like the sound and feel of both keyboards, but it is fun to hear and feel the differences between them as they are both entry custom boards with entirely different designs.

The stabilizers in the NK65 are NovelKeys branded and are plate-mount. They come factory lubricated, though you will want to tweak the lubrication further as they do produce noticeable ticking without additional lubrication. They are factory installed so that does mean either disassembling the board, for the most thorough lubrication, or using a syringe for an easier lubrication without necessitating complete disassembly. The easiest way for best results is to simply disassemble the board when you receive it and to lubricate it then before building it back with switches and keycaps. It will feel smooth even without additional lubrication, but you will notice the ticking on stabilized keys. In fact, I can just tap the spacebar and it will rattle and tick and may bother you, especially if you have built other boards previously and don’t have ticking.

Getting the most out of this keyboard though will require you to do a bit more tweaking. Even with lubricating the stabilizers they still do occasionally rattle and tick. They are also not very snug when installed and I’d recommend doing a band-aid mod where you put a material, such as a small piece of adhesive bandage, under where the stabilizer mounts to the plate to help them snug up more. I did end up getting some other stabilizers and installed those and they immediately removed all the ticking sounds that were present with the stock stabilizers. Once those were installed the frame and its sound really started to shine through and made the typing experience wonderful.

The keycaps I was initially using while testing this board out are NovelKeys Milkshake Weirdo dye sublimated PBT keycaps. They’re a good set with an aesthetic that matches the board I think and bring a good sound to the board as well. However, they are also quite tight on NovelKeys Silk switches and the stock stabilizers. Changing the stabilizers also helped in that regard to not be as tight and noticeably easier to remove. I feel like that in conjunction with how tight the sockets are leads me to think the board itself is ever so slightly off specification from other boards and stabilizers. That it shows up worst with NovelKeys own switches and keycaps is downright baffling as I’d imagine many people who would like to use this board would assume to just get the three together at the same time from one store. Perhaps there will be a new revision with better stabilizers and better socket design, but my guess is that they’ll produce an entirely new keyboard instead and implement some other improvements but again that’s just a guess with no insight into their decisions or plans.

I wanted to test some other switches and keycaps to see how they feel and sound on this keyboard. I changed switches again, to a non-silent switch, with the TKC Tangerine switches. I paired with them GMK Serenity as well as the aforementioned stabilizer upgrade. Using this combination of parts gives me a solid typing experience along with a great sound. It’s a deeper sound than the Portico with NovelKeys PBOW keycaps and Kailh Box Cream Pro switches. In fact, I’d classify it as deeply thocky with higher pitch notes from the keycaps themselves when I bottom out during typing. It’s an interesting sound profile to me. The GMK keycaps clearly add more to the high end but the deep resonance of the board itself gives a deeper sound as well making a simultaneously thocky and clacky experience. Choosing other keycaps and switches would change it up, as all the combinations I’ve tried have done. I’m pleased at the diversity of sound profiles I can create with it and am glad that it doesn’t become too muted or same-sounding from the silicone. It means that as a keyboard platform it is easily tuned to your tastes.

For the rest of the board, it’s a better story. The housing has a gentle feel to give it enough texture to be pleasant to touch. Edges are gently rounded as well, no sharpness or roughness from the molding process which does give it a more premium feel than other cheaper polycarbonate keyboard kits. The three LED indicators are below small holes in the housing, so the housing doesn’t occlude them or distort the color and even those holes are smoothed so to have a pleasant texture. I find the choice of hex screws somewhat interesting for the housing but that’s become a rather common choice among custom keyboards as a whole and I think that’s ultimately a good choice as they don’t tend to strip or slip nearly as much as Phillips head screws. For reference, the hex screws are T6, and the Phillips are PH1 sized and using a properly sized bit will prevent damage to the screw heads.

The housing is a simple wedge shape with no particularly eye-catching aspects aside from color and translucency. It looks exactly as what the image of keyboard brings to mind with straight edges and a completely flat base. Something that is a bit unusual compared to many other boards I’ve used is that the USB-C port is on the top-right rather than center or top-left as I’ve seen more often. If you don’t want the cable coming to the right side of the board, for whatever reason, that is something you should be aware of with this model. To the bottom of the board, it has two silicone strips that go almost entirely along the bottom of the board, with approximately a 3cm gap from the edge of the board from the left and right sides and approximately half that from the top and bottom. The sheer amount of footing means the board stays extremely well-planted on your desk or desk mat even with more intense typing or gaming sessions. Combined with the weight it is securely placed despite it being a smaller keyboard.

Like most of the other boards I’ve written about, NovelKeys boards all support Via for software management. Again, I prefer Via to QMK as it is less fiddly to use in my experience and is also multi-platform with it being offered on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It also does work via browser now as well if you don’t even want to install any software. From Via you can remap keys, create macros, change lighting effects, and test the keys as well. You can also save and load your settings for your keyboard to a file on your computer as a backup which is useful to have. These are saved as json files and can be loaded on any computer with Via installed and the keyboard plugged into it. Ostensibly, if you had multiple boards (say for different color housings) you could use that capability to ensure that all the boards are identically configured. That programmability is part of the power of custom keyboards in that they are far more customizable compared to more standard faire that often is limited in how you can change them and will typically require software to be installed and always running. In fact, if you don’t want to change up the key bindings you don’t even need to run Via. Lighting, for instance, can be completely reconfigured via hotkeys that are in the default layout using the Fn key. Personalization is one of the strong points of this board because of the power of Via.

Another strong point is that with some work and tweaking you can get the board to be nearly silent. As part of my testing, I wanted to see how quiet I could make the board by installing the Kailh HUSH switches. The result is extremely quiet even if I do decide to bottom out the keys. Mashing them and bottoming out with each press obviously is louder but the combination of switches and the stock dampening leaves even that being a quiet typing experience. Because plastic has less resonance than aluminum if you’re wanting the quietest build one with lots of dampening and a polycarbonate housing may just give you one of the quietest typing experiences. That said, you can also absolutely make the board emphasize switch sound as well by using non-silent switches and it will also give you a great experience. In fact, the way it is designed it can help reduce the sound of spring ping from switches that have that issue, but it won’t be a magic bullet either. It simply reduces the resonance of that sound but can’t eliminate it. For that you’d have to address the source itself in the switches in question.

For typing experience, it is a stiffer feel than other boards I tend to use. It’s not the stiffest I’ve used but it’s closer to that end than to the more flexible end. Typing angle, I think is close to ideal for me at 8° giving it a slight tilt. The layout is mostly standard ANSI with the right shift shrunk by 1U to allow for the dedicated arrow key cluster. I think it gives a pleasant typing experience with nothing standing out as being problematic or lackluster. If you’re used to a very flexible keyboard, you may find it overly stiff but less so than say a wholly metal build with a case mount PCB. Overall, I feel it is a nice board for typing on and using daily. The sound is easy to modify to be quieter or louder and with a relatively standard layout it is easy to find sets of keycaps that work with it. It also means that it covers most common typing keys with a handful of additional keys such as the arrow cluster and page navigation keys. It doesn’t cover the F-key row but those are easily accessed by holding the Fn key and corresponding number key.

Compatibility with keycap sets will be broad with this keyboard as well. It’s mostly standard ANSI, and the shorter right space and 1U modifiers on the right side of the keyboard are frequently used to the point of being included in most modern keycap sets. The PCB also has south-facing sockets which means there won’t be incompatibility with Cherry profile keycaps. As it also has 68 sockets it means it is cheaper to buy enough switches for it as well. It’s a good starter board for these aspects as well as it still retains the arrow key cluster and the full alpha layout with number row. I think for first time custom keyboard users 65% to 75% boards are the ideal range for familiarity as well as most broad compatibility. I also like 60% but that does give up the arrow cluster which might be a tough ask for a first custom keyboard. Going to a full size or less-than-60% board can be too difficult to use as well, or simply too expensive to test out different switches and keycaps in the case of a standard size keyboard. In that regard, the NK65 is right in the sweet spot for keyboard layouts to start going into the custom keyboard world and I think it matches well with that.

Disassembling the keyboard is a simple process. There are six T6 hex-screws on the keyboard under the keycaps that separate the bottom housing and silicone dampener. The silicone is color matched to the housing as well. Underneath the PCB are additional screws that you can use to separate the PCB from the top plate section that would also allow you to separate the second silicone dampener from between the PCB and the top housing. To fully disassemble the keyboard will require unscrewing an additional 12 T6 screws and two PH1 Phillips screws. Generally you wouldn’t need to fully disassemble the board as even to apply something like a tape mod would only require you to undo the first six T6 screws to reveal the bottom of the PCB. NovelKeys has a full disassembly guide on their store page and the process is simplified by requiring only two screwdriver bits making it a very easily modifiable board. They also have a general overview of using Via with the NK65. Also on the guide is the list of all the stabilizer sizes used on the board along with their locations. Overall, they have great documentation for anyone who wants more information on the NK65, and it is particularly useful for modification purposes. Because of the ease of assembly and more documentation than most other keyboards it makes the NK65 a great platform to build upon.

Despite the flaws and annoyances, I think the NK65 is a great entry keyboard kit. It’s not meant to compete with the high end custom boards because it is built to a price point. That happens to be an affordable price to get a decent set of features with a solid design. I do think some other newer boards offer more features for a similar price but I also don’t think they make the NK65 look like a bad choice either. It’s a solid design for an entry-level custom keyboard and the combination of size, features, design, and build make it a strong contender for the $75-$100 price category. During times where it is on sale for even less than its $95 retail price it’s an even better buy. It’s not my favorite keyboard but I also didn’t expect it to be. I don’t expect it to be in the same class as keyboards that are literally multiple times more expensive and I don’t want people buying it thinking that it could be. What it is, however, is a great entry board which with a little work and some modifications will be a solid choice and could easily be used for years to come. For that, the NK65 is a great buy and I look forward to seeing what NovelKeys does with future keyboard designs.