Akko 3068 Keyboard Review – Getting to know the 65% layout

Where to buy? Banggood

Today I’m talking about a very interesting chinese keyboard, the Akko 3068. It’s a mechanical piece, which means it has that nice tactile and audible feedback, and also that precise typing that mechanical keyboards offer. But what caught my attention was the size: this thing is really small, even smaller than my Corsair K63, a mechanical keyboard I picked up for being compact. See the image below.

Amazing, right? Currently, there’s a trend of these super compact units. A very popular model are the so-called “60% keyboards”, which bring 60% the size of a standard one. They reposition some keys and mainly, they remove the dedicated arrow keys. But I use those a lot while editing video, so I wanted a model which included them. That’s where 65% keyboards like the Akko 3068 come in. They’re almost as compact as the 60’s, but they include the arrow keys.

I wondered if this compact layout would affect my typing, but in practice, no, I’m being even more accurate than I was with my bigger Corsair K63. This unit uses the famous Cherry MX Red switches – for those who don’t know what is that, they’re the gear that make each key work. These MX Red switches have a medium sound feedback and low type resistance, so they’re very suitable for gamers, but I got used to them very well for general typing.

At this point, one thing is worth noting: the box of this product identifies it as “silent”, and that doesn’t make much sense. It is noisy like any mechanical keyboard, and perhaps this denomination refers to the Red switch, which makes less noise than other models, such as the Blue one.

It’s also important to know that 60 or 65% keyboards change the position of some keys. For me, there were no major issues with the Akko 3068, but as a Brazilian user, the “~`” key to the right of the backspace was a little cumbersome, and it took me over a week to get used to. But that should be no problem for English typers.

In theory, the 3068 is programmable. You could change the key-layout repositioning them physically, and them configuring that in a dedicated software. But so far, the bunch of chinese texts on the official site didn’t help me with that, so no programming for me.

By default, it has only one light or the other under the keys, meaning it’s not a full backlit keyboard. But it comes with all the contacts onboard, which means you can let solder the leds yourself, and the result should be pretty good.

Another thing that can be switched is the battery. And by the way, I found the one that comes from factory to be pretty decent. It lasted me 1+ week before I needed to recharge. Fun fact: at first, I thought the battery was very bad, since it was holding for only 2-3 days. Don’t know what happened, but it came to work properly after some time.

Finally, one thing I noticed is that the Caps Lock works similar to those on Macs, that is, it has a certain resistance to being activated and deactivated very quickly. This shouldn’t draw anyone’s attention, but I have a bad habit of using Caps instead of Shift sometimes, so I noticed it.

Overall, I really liked the Akko 3068. It’s precise, it takes up very little desk space, and because of it’s clear color scheme, I didn’t feel the need to install backlight. Battery could be better for me, and the key layout should be considered by everyone individually. I recommend it if you, like me, can’t help but have dedicated arrow keys. They need to be important, and if they’re not, than I would recommend something like the Anne Pro 2 (60%), which costs only a little more, but is full backlit from factory, and it’s easier to find spare keys for it. Price is around 80 dollars for both, which I rate as reasonable for this kind of set.

PROS:
– Beautiful piece
– Precise keys
– Bluetooth and USB-C

CONS:
– Not full backlit from factory (you can install LEDs)
– I wish I could activate and disactivate the Caps Lock quickly