Product rating for Tai-Hao Miami Lights

Nikudomi

3 years ago • purchased this product

+9

9

0

purchased this product

Moulding faults, poor finishing, inconsistent printing: not brilliant

After assembling a few keyboards using the Keychron Q1/K2 keycap sets -- also PBT (though not double-shot) and which cost around half the price of these -- I was happy to see some ISO-CH sets from Tai-Hao appear at Digitec. After buying and installing these Miami Lights, I'm disappointed.
As shown in the photo, many keycaps have prominent asperities on the sides from the moulding process. I was able to remove them with a scalpel, but I shouldn't have to at this price.
The spacebar keycap also has a 1 cm-long diagonal dark line on the face (also in photo), which looks like it is due to impurities in the plastic and/or poor cleaning of the mould between batches. This will be visible every time I look at the keyboard. The space bar is also a slightly different tint to the other light-blue keycaps, and doesn't have the same surface texture. It is very flimsy and sounds particularly clacky, despite being mounted on a heavy Keychron Q1 v2 with re-lubed stabilizers.
Finally, the size and spacing of the characters on the keycaps isn't consistent: the text on the 'Win' keycaps, for example, is larger than on the neighbouring 'Ctrl' and 'Alt' keys. Not pretty.
On a set costing CHF 25, I would be disappointed but not surprised. On a set costing over CHF 80, this gives a poor first impression.
EDIT: I have adjusted my review from 2 to 3 stars after installing and using these. They did require quite some effort to remove rough edges at the base of all the keycaps, as well as removing the large moulding nibs, but they feel and sound reasonably good (apart from the space bar). more