Womier RD75 Pro: A quick review

I have to be honest here. I got a new keyboard, and I like typing on it, so I decided to type a blog post, because it gave me a reason to type and hear some amazing thock¹. I'm not a professional keyboard reviewer, and I'm still really a mechanical keyboard newbie compared to, well, most anyone else who is in the hobby of mechanical keyboards. But I got a new keyboard, I wanted to use it and maybe brag about it a little, so I figured I'd write something. With that out of the way, here goes.

I have always been "kind of" into mechanical keyboards. I remember back when I was a kid, in my dad's office building, there was always a stack of IBM Model M keyboards laying around. The clickiness of them was always appealing to me, even back then.

Throughout my years as a developer, and even before then when I was in high school, I normally used a mechanical keyboard as my main keyboard.

I do have a problem of being indecisive sometimes, and this is a particularly bad problem to have with keyboards. There are so many choices to make when it comes to what the "ideal" keyboard looks like for an individual person. Sure there is "mechanical or membrane?" - but if we dig into the mechanical side of that, there are many thousands of combinations of switches, keycaps, keyboard bodies, keyboard sizes, keyboard layouts, features, and colors to choose from. And these things all actually do make a difference in the experience.

Within the category of switches alone, there are linear switches (smooth), tactile switches (smooth but with a bump as you press them), clicky (similar to the old IBM Model M's I mentioned above), magnetic, and some others. Then within each of these categories you have options like "how far do I need to press the key down to register a keypress?" and "how hard is it to press?" and "how loud is the keypress?" - oh yeah, the sound is a big part of the appeal. That thock!

You can choose keycaps made out of a specific material, or with a specific profile (do they dip in where you place you fingers or are they relatively flat?). You can choose a heavy, aluminum body for the keyboard (which has the benefit of the keyboard doubling as a self-defense device) or plastic. You can choose dull, muted colors that match any aesthetic, or vibrant colors that stand out. Or combine the colors with RGB for a light show while you work.

This is all to say, mechanical keyboards, in particular, come with a lot of choices. This is, of course, amazing, because you have so much freedom to pick and choose what makes you happy. I mean, you're going to be presumably using this device for a lot of hours during the day, so you want something you enjoy using (or just collecting it - also a fine option, but you still want something enjoyable to look at in that case).

While I am aware of all of these options, I only kept a foot in the door in the hobby of mechanical keyboards. In fact, I still have yet to build a custom board. But I've had a number of mechanical keyboards in my life, from Model M's, to a Das Keyboard, to Filco boards, a Ducky One 3, an 8bitdo Retro Keyboard, and some others.

Up until a few days ago, my latest board has been the 8bitdo Retro Keyboard. It's a neat looking keyboard, designed to look like either an old Xbox, Saturn, NES, Commodore 64, Famicom, or a slightly modernized Model M -- depending on which style you pick. It comes with Kailh Box White V2 switches, which are clicky, much like Model M switches are.

But I made a dangerous decision a few days ago: I decided it was time to treat myself to a new keyboard. Why is this decision dangerous? Because it's one step closer to truly getting into mechanical keyboards as a hobby, meaning I start collecting switches and keycap sets, and start customizing or modding or building my own keyboards. And in addition to being very time-consuming, it can be a rather expensive hobby, as you can determine by just looking around a bit. Premium switches can sometimes cost more than $1 USD per switch, so for a full 108 key set, you're over $100 USD just to try out a new kind of switch². Yes, there are switch tester boards that you can get relatively inexpensively, but I think they can't really give you a sense for how the switch will really feel once it's in the PCB in the keyboard case with a particular set of keycaps on it. The sound dynamics alone are completely different depending on all these factors, and there's just no real way to replicate that on a tester board.

So anyway, I had to decide on a new keyboard. I didn't want to break the bank, but I wanted something different. I wanted something that sounded good, felt good, and looked good.

I recently ordered a set of MT3 keycaps and I actually installed them on my 8bitdo board and was happy with how they felt (the profile on them is unlike any other keycap I've used before; it really cups to your fingers). I just needed a new board. And I didn't particularly want to do a from-scratch build, because that still kind of scares me. Basically, I wanted a modifiable board that sounds good, lets me use my MT3 keycaps, and is "different".

By "different", I decided on linear switches, mostly because despite all the mechanical keyboards I've had in my life, I've actually never had a keyboard with linear switches; they've all been tactile or clicky -- mostly clicky.

In searching around, I found a few budget options that looked decent. I searched out some YouTube and Reddit reviews, listened to a few sound tests, and ultimately decided on a Womier RD75 Pro. (Note: This post is not sponsored in any way.)

Two days after ordering, it had arrived at my local PackStation, and I picked it up. My first impression was, "wow this box is heavy". I unboxed it -- literally in my car, because I was so excited to see it -- and was completely blown away. It was my first ever aluminum-bodied mechanical keyboard, and it felt so premium compared to all of my previous mechnical keyboards. And the sound. The THOCK. OH MY GOD.

This was three days ago. The amusing thing is, though, that I like how it looks and feels so much, that I have yet to install my MT3 keycaps on it. I'm running it with the stock keycaps (I have the blue variant), because the keycaps actually feel really good to me, and color-wise, to me, they look beautiful. I'm planning on another keyboard for the MT3s now, because I am redoing my working space/office, and will have another workstation set up and will ultimately need a new keyboard for that area, too. I will likely do another post on that too. It will likely be a bit more custom, but not a fully from-scratch build.

The RD75 board (in the blue variant) comes with Womier's full POM grey linear switches, which feel absolutely amazing to me (granted, they are my first linear switch, so I am not much of a judge here). They feel snappy and springy, they sound amazing in the aluminum body of the keyboard, and in general I am extremely happy with them.

This board is also my first 75% keyboard. Up until now, I had largely standardized on TKL (tenkeyless, i.e. a full size keyboard minus the number pad, which I rarely used). Going from TKL to 75% isn't that different. Effectively, the arrow keys are moved closer to the rest of the keys, and you lose "print screen", "scroll lock", and "pause break". Depending on model, as in the RD75, you might also lose the insert key. But that's it. If you go down to 65% or 60%, you lose the f-keys (which I don't care about too much) and also having a separate "escape" and "tilde/backtick" key. They merge into a single "escape" key that sits next to the "1" key. And that I do care about. If keyboard sizes like this are new to you, "Keyboard University" has a good guide available.

I really want to go down to 60%, mostly because I think they look nice, and I don't lose much by not having "delete", "home", "end". You see, I use emacs-style keybindings on MacOS, which it supports out of the box. I never use the "home" key to go to the start of the line, I just press control-a. Similar for "end" (control-e), and "delete" (control-d). In fact, same for the arrow keys, for "down" I use control-n, "up" control-p, "left" control-b, "right" control-f. These are standard on MacOS and within emacs -- the two operating systems I care most about ;) so losing these keys wouldn't be a huge deal. "Page up" and "page down" could be a bit annoying, simply because by default MacOS doesn't provide the emacs equivalents for those, though you can work around that and I don't use them enough to care too much. I would be fine with those living on a separate function layer or something³. Anyway, enough on that.

I did have one small issue, where one key (;) would sometimes double-register, particularly when I struck it in a certain way. Luckily, Womier includes some spare switches in the box, so I ripped off the keycap with a keycap remover (you tend to collect those if you buy a few mechnical keyboards), pulled out the switch, and replaced it with one of the spares. I marked the old one and kept it with the spares, just for future emergency use (it does work, it's just slightly annoying with the occasional double registering). After that, the problem went away, and I have been happy since. I'm typing this very post on the RD75.

There's a lot I haven't touched on here. There are a fair number of RGB options built in, changeable with the fn key. Of course, the keyboard is programmable, too, with QMK/VIA, though I haven't delved into that at all, yet. I presume the RGB is also configurable through that.

So to end things: I now love linear switches. I still want to try other kinds of switches, because there are tons and tons out there and I've really only experienced a few. I particularly want to try more tactile switches. The Ducky board I had came with MX Clears, which are tactile, but are definitely not my favorite. I think that other kinds of tactiles have a different feel and I want to give some of them a fair shot. But I think going forward, my heart will always go back to linears, because these just feel amazing to type on.

I am a little too happy with the RD75: I fully had planned to replace the keycaps, as mentioned above, but I just can't bring myself to do it. The stock ones are just fun to type on. So, there it is.