deskthority

Hello, I am currently looking for a mechanical Keyboard around $50 to get my amigo for his birthday. I've never bought a Mechanical Keyboard for anything less than $100 dollars and I'm curious if there is even a budget board worth it south of $50. Any suggestions welcomed.

A Magicforce 68 would be a very solid choice and is popular among those new to the hobby, from what I've heard.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ABUJ0FY/

I don't know about good quality new boards, but you can get most non-rare older keyboards in good condition for that price.
Standard Model M, different Apple boards and so on. You can go cheaper with Dell bigfoots, which are said to be excellent if you make them linear. "good condition" in this case means "needs cleaning, but that should be easy to do".
If you want USB out of the box though, I guess you can look in cheapish chinese keyboards, but I can't help you with that.

Ray wrote: I don't know about good quality new boards, but you can get most non-rare older keyboards in good condition for that price.
Standard Model M, different Apple boards and so on. You can go cheaper with Dell bigfoots, which are said to be excellent if you make them linear. "good condition" in this case means "needs cleaning, but that should be easy to do".
If you want USB out of the box though, I guess you can look in cheapish chinese keyboards, but I can't help you with that.

Thanks for the recommendations! I went ahead and picked up a black Dell At101W with black alps off of craigslist for $20, Haven't made it linear yet, but that's a adventure for tomorrow

emdude wrote: A Magicforce 68 would be a very solid choice and is popular among those new to the hobby, from what I've heard.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ABUJ0FY/

The MF68 is a surprisingly solid board for it's price. Although I would highly suggest trying to get one with Gateron switches vs the models with Outemu switches. I grabbed one from MD during one of the drops with Gats mostly just to give Gat greens a try. I really wasn't expecting to like the board all that much compared to the higher quality ones I have, but TBH the MF68 holds it ground pretty damn good against them! It didn't become my daily driver or anything (that's goes in between my FC660M with Cherry blacks & Pok3r with Cherry clears), but I do find myself using it at home on occasion when I am in the mood for clicky switches. It has also become my defacto traveling board. VS higher quality boards the complaints are few & far between IME. The worst thing about the MF68 IMO is the very thin ABS stock key caps which can be easily changed.

I recently wrote an in depth review of the MF68 LED model.

http://gomechanicalkeyboard.com/magicfo ... companion/