Key Words Key Words Chapter 52: Only feelings left? In 2022, is the former mechanical keyboard ceiling Filco master still worth buying?

Recently, I discovered a phenomenon that in the eyes of mechanical keyboard players, the Filco mechanical keyboard, which is completely meaningless to buy, still often appears in the recommendation list of some beginners. Even cherry, filco, and leopold are still the first choice for many novices to buy keyboards.

It is undeniable that these three brands were the best in the market a few years ago, representing the ceiling of the mechanical keyboard field. However, since 2020, domestic mechanical keyboards have started a crazy involution mode. After two and a half years of baptism, our domestic mechanical keyboards have reached a very high level in terms of function, feel, workmanship, appearance and even sound. s level. So this article will take Filco's most classic and best-selling master cable version as an example, and list the reasons one by one, why Filco is not worth buying.

The first reason why filco is not worth buying is that the price/performance ratio is too low.

The most classic of filco is undoubtedly the holy hand and the ninja. The keycaps of these two keyboards are mainly different. The ninja is the side engraving, and the holy hand is the front engraving. Now the daily price of 104 matching masters has exceeded 1,000 yuan.

As a keyboard that has been produced for more than 10 years and basically has not been modified, filco has no mold costs to speak of. Let's give an example directly.

ikbc's C104, this keyboard was launched in 2013, the appearance can be said to be an imitation filco, and the cherry switch is also used, but there is a certain gap between the workmanship and the actual feel. The price of this keyboard was 499 yuan when it went on the market. And this year in 2022, although the foundry of this keyboard has been replaced twice, the overall level has basically remained the same. Its current price is 309 yuan after the coupon. In fact, the daily low price of C104 can be close to 250 yuan. That is to say, the price of this keyboard is 40% off compared with 9 years ago. And note that it is not a hot-selling keyboard now, and almost no one recommends it.

The same one uses the standard 104 keyboard with cherry switches, Kezhi’s K104, the current market price is 219 yuan, and the backlight version is 229 yuan.

Therefore, even if your filco has better workmanship and better keycaps, your cost will not be much higher than the above two keyboards. The price is 3 times or even 4 times more than theirs.

The cherry shaft is really dead. It should be said that the cherry shaft about seven or eight years ago was still good, regardless of the stability of the shaft. Smoothness is okay. However, some changes were made to the axis of the cherry axis. Anyway, the current cherry axis is obviously astringent and has a spring sound. The domestic switches have already reached home. Although the profit has not been rolled to close to single digits like the keyboard (on the contrary, the profit of the domestic switches is still good), but it is indeed very strong in terms of craftsmanship and materials.

Nylon top cover, POM axis and even full POM axis body, and even the self-contained axis body of more than 100 keyboards are all lubricated at the factory. In terms of smoothness, Cherry is really even on more than 100 keyboards now. The shaft can't be spelled. Rebound, bottoming texture, and spring sound are all behind.

As for the stability of the shaft center, there are indeed some low-end domestically produced shafts with ridiculously wobbly shafts, but most of the shafts can take into account both smoothness and shaft center stability.

The last thing is the lifespan. The lifespan of the cherry switch is indeed higher than the overall level of domestic switches, but first of all, there are also mature switches such as the Kaihua box switch made in China. The lifespan is not inferior to the cherry switch at all. Secondly, buying a mechanical keyboard itself is to improve the feel. If the hand feeling cannot be guaranteed, no matter how long the life span is, it is meaningless. Now most of the domestic mechanical keyboards support hot swapping, and it is very convenient to replace a few axes if there is a problem.

Filco's keyboard only has a cherry switch. As the core component of a mechanical keyboard, the span on the switch body lacks the most basic guarantee for the feel. The picture above is my own sacred tea switch, which I bought on Double 11 in 2020 and replaced it with Pikachu keycaps.

By the way, some friends will mention that Cherry's tea shaft is invincible so far, I want to say, no. Relatively speaking, the tea switch is really not easy to grasp the degree of paragraph feeling, and the domestically produced switches have relatively few targeted developments for tea, but there are still many slight paragraph switches on the market that are better than cherry tea switches, and I will follow up. There will be a video for comparison.

It was once said that filco is strong, a big reason is that Libao was the first generation factory in the world at that time, and filco was also the best in precision among all Libao products.

But no matter how good the workmanship is, it was a product ten years ago. The times are advancing, and domestic keyboards are improving, but filco has not. Let's not talk about the three-mode, as for domestic wired keyboards, the separation of keys and wires and three-way outlets have become very popular, and filco does not have them. There is also no 2-stage foot support.

We ignore the switch at this time and find another domestic cherry switch keyboard, Dujia K310. After all, the few keyboards mentioned above when talking about cost performance are indeed not as good as filco in terms of workmanship and texture. And this K310 is the matte version of the relatively good cherry axis keyboard in China, and for now, not many people recommend this keyboard, because the price/performance ratio is really average. The price is about 400 yuan.

Let you see, filco is replaced with the original all-black keycaps, which of these two keyboards has a better texture?

Filco has a black back of a flat panel, and although Duga's shell is also plastic, it has a metallic luster, and even the detail workmanship is not lost to Filco at all.

If you don’t like the metal texture of the Duga above, then the same series also has white (actually a little blue), let’s just say that this keyboard is not as good as filco? Needless to say who wins, the price of filco is more than twice that of Durga, if you don't crush you, you will already lose.

Filco's keycaps used to be his highlight. Although it was accused of being oiled after a week of high-intensity use (some say 2 days), the feel of the factory is really good. The reason is that a thin layer of skin-like material is added to the outside of the ABS. quality coating. This coating feels more delicate than the skin-like coating of his contemporary keyboard.

Now filco also has PBT keycaps and ball caps, but the keycaps that have been used for ten years are still used in holy hands.

Let's not talk about lifespan, but let's say that the lettering process on this keycap is still laser engraving, which is rarely used in domestic keyboards worth 100 yuan. Why no one uses it, because first of all, it feels protruding, which affects the hand feel, and secondly, when engraving white characters on black keycaps, if you don’t pay attention to hand cleaning, it is easy to use a section of white characters and the part will be black, or almost The kind of black that can't be washed off. This is why in many previous recommendations, ninjas have a higher priority than masters, because the characters are not on the front, which avoids these problems.

It is not wrong to use ABS. Nowadays, many high-end keycaps are also made of ABS, but their wear resistance is far better than the original keycaps of Filco. The above picture is the GMK co-branded ABS keycap that Amilo has been sprayed miserably in the circle, but there is one thing to say, the touch is really good.

The large key used to be another core competitiveness of filco. After all, the contemporary satellite shafts are all fleshy, and the large key of the contemporary balance bar is full of noise. But in the era of involution, more than 100 large keys of domestic keyboards will be tuned, greased, and satellite switches with better materials.

Filco uses a balance bar satellite shaft, which has the advantage of being crisp and neat, but the disadvantage is that it is not easy to disassemble and assemble. And filco's balance bar is actually not perfect, and his space bar has obvious noise.

However, the domestically produced satellite shafts are completely devoid of sensuality, and the noise is better controlled.

Let's put it this way, the large key of the rk r87 at 119 yuan is now the existence of hanging filco (of course, I recommend buying this keyboard from the hot-swappable version at 169 yuan). Filco's big key level is now barely acceptable for less than 400 yuan, and the kind that will be sprayed crazily if it is more than 400 yuan.

Domestic keyboards have begun to roll Gasket since Double 11 last year. The keyboard positioning board and the shell are connected by pron cotton or silicone softly, the sound is purer, and the hand feels relatively soft. Less vibration transfer between housings. In the past few months, the TOP structure has also become popular, and players have more choices.

Filco is still the traditional cover of ten thousand years. The most important thing is that it does not have any filling structure. In the same sentence, the Langtu GK102 of 139 yuan now has sandwich cotton and bottom cotton. The picture above shows the filling structure of Durga K330Wplus.

And the latest keyboard, even the under-shaft pad is almost becoming the standard configuration of mass-produced keyboards. Pay attention to the black flannel on the carriage return shaft of the Hello Ganss 75T above. It is used to eliminate the gap between the shaft and the PCB due to knocking. The pads under the axle produced a rattling sound.

The result of not having any sound-absorbing structure is that the cavity sound of the filco keyboard is very serious. It is okay on the acoustic paragraph switch such as the green switch, but on the brown switch and red switch keyboard, the cavity sound is very cheap.

Have you never noticed the cavity sound of the keyboard before? It can only be said that after using better products, we can't go back. Obviously, the filco master belongs to the past.

I don’t want to make a separate list of functional matters. As a thousand-yuan keyboard, the Holy Hand has no hot-swap, no backlight, and no wireless connection mode. And if you want to buy a big F wireless, you need to pay more, if you want to use more beautiful and wear-resistant keycaps, you need to pay more, if you want to use a more handsome custom shell, you need to pay more. I want to buy a fully equipped filco, and the price goes straight to 2000, but even so, it is still not as good as the domestic keyboards of 600 to 700.

If you have that money, you can buy an aluminum one directly, and match it with your favorite keycap and shaft body. The texture is not bad at all, and the feel is even better.

In a fast-growing and very introverted industry, no progress for more than ten years is itself a step backward. What's more, the cherry switch is really regressing now. I don't want to say anything too radical. I just hope that users of mechanical keyboards can buy products that are really worth the money and suitable for them.

Finally, I can proudly announce that the best mechanical keyboards in the world are all made in China.