It’s a great time to be a PC gamer. New, excellent affordable custom mechanical keyboards are releasing all the time and those in the know can tell you: it’s one of the fastest, easiest ways to upgrade your computing experience. The Hippo 65 from Hippokey is a compact, fully aluminum, fully built, and fully customized mechanical keyboard coming to Kickstarter starting at $89. It’s programmable, sounds great, and offers fast 2.4GHz wireless in addition to Bluetooth and wired connectivity. It’s a steal at this price and well worth backing.
Specifications
Current Price:
- $89 - Super Early Bird (Kickstarter)
- $99 - Early Bird (Kickstarter)
- $139 - MSRP (Kickstarter)
Hippokey Hippo 65 - Design and Highlights
Another week, another custom mechanical keyboard makes its debut. Today we're talking about the Hippo 65 from Hippokey. It's the debut product from a new brand, but clearly one has been paying attention to the evolution of the customer mechanical keyboard market and one with the manufacturing capability to produce its keyboard at such a low price. What it's offering isn't exactly new but at this price it's still a pretty great deal.
The Hippo 65 utilizes a 65% layout. That means it doesn't have a number row, a numpad, or a navigation and editing cluster but it does have dedicated arrow keys and a column of navigation and editing buttons. This layout is popular among gamers because it leaves extra space for your mouse hand. It's also more ergonomic because your hands can be placed closer together. If you are worried about the missing keys, fret not. All of the missing functions are either already mapped or can be added to secondary layers accessible when holding the Fn key.
The keyboard includes just about every feature you would hope for from a pre-built custom. It utilizes a gasket based mounting structure, so keystrokes are soft and cushioned with a nice rounded sound profile. There are multiple layers of dampening foams for acoustic tuning. The switches it comes with are pre-lubed and hot-swappable. The stabilizers are pre-lubed well enough that you won't have to mod them (at least if they are similar to my sample). It also comes with double-shot PBT keycaps that are thick walled for a deeper sound.
The case is made of CNC milled aluminum top and bottom. It's available in four different colors: black, blue, pink, and white. All but the white colorway are anodized while white is e-coated. On my sample, there were no visible imperfections from the coloring process on the external case. There’s no front badge, exactly, but there’s a cut engraved hippo in the upper right.
It uses a screwless design, which isn't my favorite for taking it apart but does make the final product look a little more seamless. Of course, it isn't actually screwless in the literal sense. Instead it uses screws that are hidden around the edges of the keyboard beneath the keycaps. With these removed, it's easy to disassemble the keyboard and modify it.
Internally, it has the following structure. The plate is made of FR4, the same material as a circuit board, which is a middle-ground between firmness and sound. Beneath that is a layer of PORON plate foam to isolate the sound of the switches. Beneath the switches, which I will discuss in a moment, is a layer of IXPE switch foam and a second sheet of PET plastic. These work together to create the poppy, marbly sound that is still very popular. The PCB is 1.2mm and highly flex cut. There are cuts around every switch across the entire PCB. While this is good for flex, you may want to tape these off if you prefer the boulder sound of a non-flex cut board. Beneath that is a layer of PORON PCB foam and another PORON pad to fill out the case.
Needless to say, this keyboard has a very foamed out sound. It is not exceptionally deep, however. Instead, because of the IXPE and PET pads, as well as the switches, it has a medium-clacky sound signature. Changing out the foams and switches can produce a pretty different sound signature, so you are open to play with it.
Another thing this keyboard offers that's popular in pre-builts today is a gradient weight on the bottom. Each weight is matched to the color of the keyboard. White gets white, pink gets pink, navy gets silver, and black gets a rainbow gradient. Calling it await is a bit inaccurate, though. That term is used colloquially here because it is actually tempered glass. I was sent the black version with a rainbow weight and the mirror effect is just about perfect. It looks quite nice, and the case itself is hefty enough that the lack of additional weight isn't very noticeable.
The switches are custom creation between Hippokey and Huano. It is a long-poled linear switch with an actuation force of 42g. That makes it feel a bit like a Cherry MX Red in weight but is actually much nicer in feel and in sound. There is no scratchiness at all and when the pole hits the bottom it creates a pleasant pop. There is also no spring noise. The prelubrication done at the factory was well done on my sample and mostly consistent across the board. I didn't feel any need to open these switches and lube them myself (and thank god for that because I leave my lubing days as far behind me as possible).
If you're a fan of RGB, you’re in luck. The keyboard supports programmable per-key RGB backlighting. The switches are south facing, so the led is on the bottom, but since the keycaps are not backlit that really doesn't matter. Instead they create a nice bed of light beneath the keys. Since there is no custom software for the keyboard (it uses VIA), you can't create intricate static layouts. There are lots of preset animations to choose from, however and you can customize most of them for hue, saturation, brightness, and speed.
I was also pleased to find that the keyboard can work completely wirelessly and has a giant battery to match. It can connect to up to three devices over Bluetooth and a single 2.4GHz host. As of this writing, I am unclear about the polling rate of the keyboard. I am attaching the image above to show the reported latency from the campaign. I am not sure if these figures are in reference to the polling rate or the real world latency of the different connections. For example, while two milliseconds would indicate a 500Hz wired polling rate, 3ms of latency over 2.4 GHz would be a polling rate of 333Hz, which is very unusual. Bluetooth is also off, as the standard polling rate there is 125Hz, which would be 8ms and not 7ms. I will update this article if I hear back on how Hippokey came to these figures.
Regardless, even in the worst case scenario, well these wouldn't be the fastest connection speeds, they are sufficient for everyone but pro level players in terms of noticeable delay.
The battery in the keyboard is very large at 6,000mAh. Hippokey rates this at 800 hours of use with RGB off and 70 hours with RGB on. I have been testing the keyboard for about a week and haven't had to recharge it yet. Though I can't say for sure if these figures are completely accurate, it would line up with what we've seen from typical battery life in similar keyboards with smaller batteries.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a custom keyboard without a typing demo so you can hear it for yourself. Check it out here:
Video Credit: Hippo Key
Final Thoughts
The Hippokey Hippo 65 isn't revolutionary. There are a number of other keyboards that accomplish very similar things. Where it stands out is pricing. If you can pick it up for the super early bird price of $89, it is a good deal and is cheaper than you could build it for yourself. It’s a good value, so if it seems up your alley, I recommend heading to the Kickstarter and finding out more of what it has to offer (with the usual Kickstarter caveats and cautions included).
The product described in this article was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes.
