98-key volume king, cost-effective office keyboard of choice——Maicong K980

It’s said that I didn’t play with the keyboard very much some time ago, and recently my hands started to itch again. Personally, I’m not very interested in keyboards with a configuration of 75 or more. I prefer small configurations. I bought a 100-key Xiaoqiao some time ago. It has a small keyboard, which can input numbers more conveniently. However, Xiaoqiao is too compact without any separation, so when you press the direction keys during blind typing , I often press the wrong keys, and I have to look at the keyboard to confirm the position. My daughter-in-law finds it inconvenient to use, but the appearance is indeed online.

In order to facilitate my daughter-in-law's work and use, I started with a very popular 98-arrangement keyboard-Maicong 980. The brand of Maicong is indeed very small. My daughter-in-law bought a laptop stand of this brand before. It was a matter of last year. Cong has also launched several mechanical keyboards, but I didn't expect this Macong 980 to become the king of roll kings with 98 configurations. Let's see how he rolls. This red dad version is made by myself, it is not official.

Let’s unpack the box first. Personally, I feel that the packaging design of the Maicong 980 is ordinary, and the strange little spaceman doesn’t know what it means. The interior includes the keyboard, plastic dust cover, 26 replacement keycaps, 2-in-1 key puller, data cable, manual and two replacement switches.

The keyboard has three color schemes, and mine is Cool Coconut Lemon, with a white shell and a light-colored keycap, which is relatively refreshing. The size of the 98 series is not much different from that of the 80 series, except for the length of one more row of keys than the 80 series, but it adds a full-featured keypad, which is very suitable for daily office work.

Most of the 98 series design, there are only F1-F12 buttons in the F function area, but Maicong K980 has reduced the gap of the F function area and added a Del key at the end. I like this design very much. . Because I often use keyboards with 65 and 75 configurations, the Del key is also in the upper right corner, which is very convenient to use.

The side design has a small depression, which is somewhat more design sense than the horizontal and vertical shells. There is also a logo on the side, which is my personal feeling.

On the back design, there are three-way wire grooves. For a keyboard that can be used wirelessly, the design with wire grooves is really too rare. With the built-in data cable, it is very convenient to use the wired method, but now it is more popular to use the aviation plug-in cable, and the large connector cannot be used.

The 2.4G wireless receiver is located in the special storage compartment at the bottom. Although there is no cover, it uses a magnetic suction method, and the keyboard will not fall off even if you hit the keyboard hard, so you can use it with confidence.

There are 2 lever buttons at the bottom, one is the power switch, and the other is the switch between win and mac mode, but why can't you mark the function, if you don't read the manual, it is very difficult to distinguish the function. I hope that lettering and logos can be added in the future, blind guessing is a bit troublesome.

The key cap is PBT two-color, OEM height, I personally feel quite satisfactory, the characters of the function keys are a bit ugly.

There are ash wood shafts and Kaihua BOX white and BOX red. The earlier batch of shafts are all V2 versions, and now the latest batches have begun to be replaced with V3 versions. My switch is BOX Red V2. The parameters of the shaft body are 100%, and the feel is also quite satisfactory.

The inside of the shaft is also factory-lubricated, which saves a lot of manual lubrication work for novices. The new mold is quite special. If you remove it and lubricate it yourself, remember not to drop the little green part on the base.

The satellite axis is also good, there is no obvious looseness, the consistency of the large keys is also good, and the feel is also good. As a finished keyboard, the large keys are indeed good, no adjustment is required, and they can be used immediately.

The 5-pin holes used on the PCB board are suitable for any kind of shaft body, the LED lights are on the top, and the RGB colors can be changed. You can see the filled silicone pad from the space button. I have to say that the materials used are really expensive.

Next, I started to disassemble the keyboard to see if the silicone is really real. Take off the upper cover, remove a part of the keycap, and expose a few screws to disassemble the keyboard without pulling out all the shafts.

The shaft seat is made by Kaihua, the welding is very good, and there is no problem with the workmanship. Because the shaft body is not removed, but the thick silicone pad in the middle can also be seen from the side.

Dark gray silicone can also be seen on the bottom case. And they are all molded separately, which can perfectly match the shape of the bottom case and ensure a better effect of noise reduction.

Because the inside is filled with silicone, the typing feel is very solid. The AKKO PC75b I used before is also filled with silicone, and the typing sound is a bit dull. The most important thing is that there is no cavity sound. I personally I still like this type of typing sound very much. For friends who want no cavity sound, choose this kind of silicone filled one that is absolutely palatable.

For daily office use, the more keys, the more convenient. Compared with the 104-key keyboard, the 98-key keyboard has commonly used keys and is smaller in size, which can save more desktop space. Stepcon K980 has wired, bluetooth, and wireless three-mode connection at the same time, which is convenient for different environments and multiple devices to use at the same time. It supports hot-swappable shafts, and you can also replace the shafts according to your preferences to experience different typing experiences.

The most important thing is the price. For less than 400 yuan, you can get a 98-key keyboard with no obvious shortcomings. As a daily office keyboard, the price/performance ratio is really very high.