The Nixeus Moda Pro Review: A Professional Mechanical Keyboard for $55
by E. Fylladitakis on August 3, 2016 9:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Mechanical Keyboards
- Keyboard
- Nixeus
- macOS
- Kailh
The high demand that the trend of upgrading to a mechanical keyboard has created during the past few years stimulated a frisky market that many companies started or diversified into. Today there is a vast selection of mechanical keyboards available for nearly all tastes, budgets, and desires for LED everything. The different styles of mechanical keys also adds another degree of freedom to the offerings on the market, with a single model potentially available in several different mechanical key types.
Introduction
The vast majority of the current mechanical keyboards are marketed towards gamers and/or Microsoft Windows users. A few companies have not forgotten that those who originally made the most out of a mechanical keyboard were professionals, who would be spending many hours every day inputting data and relying on haptic feedback to enhance their throughput. In this review we are having a quick look at the Nixeus Moda Pro mechanical keyboard, a product designed specifically with professionals in mind. It also is partially targeted towards Macintosh users, who today have few options when it comes to mechanical keyboards focused at their hardware.
Packaging & Bundle
Nixeus is supplying the Moda Pro into a sturdy white cardboard box. The artwork is very simple, with essentially just a picture of the keyboard printed at the front side of the box. It seems that the company is rightfully trying to focus their marketing effort on the design and color of the keyboard itself.
Inside the box we found a small cleaning brush, a keycap puller and three extra keycaps. The three extra keycaps are for replacing the Windows-specific and one of the ALT keys with Macintosh “Command” and “Option” versions.
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guyr - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
I'm typing on a 20 year old IBM Model M right now; sticker on the bottom says Easy Options by IBM. These keyboards are for all intents indestructible. And of course, you can still buy them:http://www.pckeyboard.com/
BrokenCrayons - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
I like the concept of a minimalist keyboard that does away with the LEDs, macro keys, and other functions I personally wouldn't find useful. The Nixeus' pricing is good even with the recent increase since the article was published. I think its biggest downside is the lack of an included wrist rest which I find useful when typing. Most of my time at a keyboard is dedicated to writing so the omission would be something I'd notice right away. The other thing I don't care for about it is its design. It looks a bit awkward without the keys being recessed into the surrounding board a bit. I'm sure it types just fine, but I have trouble wrapping my mind around the style.Mr Perfect - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
It looks odd, but it makes it significantly easier to clean without the recess. Silver linings and all that.Vorl - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
not to derail this, but it's amazing. We get more reviews about keyboards than we do about video cards.... which is amazing considering how mundane keyboards are.thesavvymage - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
Different people have different skillsets. I believe the author of this article does their peripheral/case reviews, which requires a totally different skillset and dedicated time requirement than that of videocard testingDanNeely - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
They take a lot less work to produce. Other than the photography and per key testing, all the data acquisition is done by just using the keyboard to do other work. Just by page count the 1070/1080 review was 8x longer than this one. In terms of material written it's an even larger disparity.BrokenCrayons - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I think the sticking point for a lot of readers who make comments about articles they're not seeing published yet are doing so because there were previous comments by the article writer that set expectations for say a week or two after they're made. Not delivering on those estimates can cause a loss of trust and credibility which stirs up peoples' ire. I don't necessarily agree with the idea of bringing up those concerns in an unrelated article, but there it's really a very clear way of expressing displeasure to the writers elsewhere.The other problem is that new GPUs are pushed out by the manufacturers on routine cycles amid months of hype and teasers so it isn't as if their release ought to catch anyone by surprise. It didn't for AT's readers and it certainly shouldn't for AT's writers who are probably more informed about what the industry is up to than we are. One would expect them to plan accordingly so they can publish content in a timely manner, but that doesn't appear to be the case. That also would warrant legitimate complaining.
However, in AT's defense is the fact that the writers go out of their way to conduct extensive tests using sound methods even though they're geographically separated from one another and budget-limited. The articles, when they are finally published, are excellent technical deep dives which differentiates Anandtech's work from other sites that benchmark something and paste in a few obvious observations about what a chart already makes clear to the reader. Reading things like, "Wow, that new Tseng Labs ET6000 with 4MB of MoSys Multibank DRAM is 10 FPS faster in FlightSim 5.0 than the old ET4000!!!" when there's a chart right above it that I just looked at showing that data is silly. Tom's Hardware Guide used to do that back in the early 2000's to my great annoyance. At least AT's articles include a lot of additional information about why the ET6000 cranks out those extra 10FPS.
Also in AT's defense, with new manufacturing processes, there's a lot more technical information to gather, ingest, fact check with vendors, and so forth prior to publication. That's not been the case as much in the 28nm doldrums we saw over the previous few years so these articles are probably more challenging to write this time around.
Clearly those factors don't weigh the same in the minds of each reader, but they are all worth considering while we (im)patiently wait for the next major review to come out.
JBVertexx - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
so the new titan x has dropped, the rx 470 has dropped, and Anandtech has yet to release anything on the 1060, which dropped almost 4 weeks ago.What is going on Anandtech. I don't care how much more elaborate your articles are. They aren't 4 weeks more elaborate. Completely Unsat.
10basetom - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
It looks like the price increased $15 since the publication of this article.gmbytes - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
i own this.. and it zapps my hands and provides exquisite BSOD's when placed on hibernate... (*win7)