Glitter65 R2v5 Review

Board: Moee Tech Glitter65 R2v5 “Ultra” Flex Cut Hotswap + Solder PCB
Color: Black Samurai
Keycaps: MT3 WoB W/ MT3 dev/tty spacebars
Switches: Gateron Oil Kings (Soldered)
Stabilizers: Staebies V.2.2

The Glitter65 is a 65% keyboard from Moee Tech, sporting “CNC Magic”, their term for what I can only assume refers to the case consisting of one single piece of aluminum (not including the top portion that covers a hole you slide the PCB into). There are no options for the case here other than color, however there are a few pieces of glitter here and there on all of the colors, and when I say a few, I mean a few.  It’s an interesting keyboard to say the least, I find that it’s single piece design is both a positive and a negative.  A positive in that it looks beautiful and the fact that you can’t see any seams/creases (because there aren’t any) is very cool. It allows for a very cool application of RGB, arguably the only one I’ve ever liked.  But a negative due to the reality of it's build process, the Glitter65 has a very unique PCB that’s both Hotswap, and Solderable, and somehow packs in a fair bit of layout support (note the split spacebars). The issue with this… there’s no plate whatsoever. Now, those of you familiar with soldering boards will know that a plate isn’t technically necessary, but it can change the noise, add a feeling of rigidity and work as a bit of a dust protector for the PCB. The issue arises when you consider the fact that many will want to use this board as a hotswap board… and hotswap + no plate = a bad time.

Exaggerated for effect, but the image above showcases exactly why hotswap + plateless = a bad time. The keys will feel loose, and softer than anyone would want due to their lack of connection to the PCB, and you’ll notice them slightly falling out of their location as you type, as well as certain caps becoming misaligned and potentially even hitting the case, which brings me to my next point. The case has extremely tight tolerances, in fact, so tight that they are too tight. I’ve had to sand down a couple keycaps to ensure they don’t hit the case and cause ping that I originally sent me on a wild goose chase trying to fix what I thought was stabilizer noise. So far, I’ve had to do this with both longer spacebars, my right function key, my left arrow key, and a few modifiers on the bottom row (And I soldered everything in, so I know It's not just misaligned keys.) This is multiplied by my PCB choice, which in hindsight, was the wrong choice.  I went with the flex-cut PCB, which in this board is a per key flex cut. No plate, per key flex and ultra tight tolerances means this board is an EXTREMELY soft typing experience that can be nice on the alphas, but nothing short of problematic on the modifiers and keys close to the case's edge.

Soldering is certainly the way to go when building this board. But that leads me to my next issue. The building process. Since the case is a single piece of aluminum, you have to slide the PCB into the case from a CNC’d out portion on the top. This would be fine, except for the fact that if you solder the switches in… it doesn’t fit. Moee Tech expected this fortunately, and included a “ruler” which acts as a tool to depress all of the keycaps/stabilizers while you carefully slide the PCB and it’s plastic tray into the case. You have to do this with each and every row, and it’s not very fun. So definitely not the best way to build a board, and I feel that they could’ve iterated on this a little more before release.

The Glitter65 R2 also has high case walls and an interesting typing angle of only 5°, which results in you almost having to use a higher profile keycap. In this case, I used MT3 WoB, which I think looks nice, but can be a bit of a struggle to type on when you have to lift your fingers fairly high from the top row to the bottom, due to the lower typing angle. You could certainly get away with using a Cherry or OEM Profile here, but the top two rows would be really close to the top of the case, which might look and feel uncomfortable, however would probably be fine during use, especially given some time.

Summary

It’s… fine. It’s a beautiful design and I love the RGB application, however I can’t help but think it needed to cook a little longer before they released it. Minor practices in juxtaposing the antithesis to the neighboring design; such as the lack of plate with a hotswap option, the high case walls requiring tall keycaps with the the low angle of typing, and the grating build procedure if you solder, which is, of course, the best way to build this keyboard due to it’s lack of plate make it difficult to suggest this keyboard outright.  However if you’re up for a bit of a challenge, or want something weird, it’s worth checking out! Just know that the tolerances (at least on mine) are a bit too tight, and you will find yourself having to sand down some keycaps if you want them to return to their place after pressing them.