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Spec sheet
- Layout
- 65
- Case material
- aluminum
- Mount style
- gasket
- Hotswap
- yes
- Wireless
- no
- Released
- Sep 1, 2024
65 percent gasket-mounted aluminum board from Mode Designs with hotswap PCBs and a soft, balanced typing feel. Mid-priced for the segment; ships with a brass weight option.
Mentioned in 15 articles
Trends
Gaming Boards Are Winning the Spec War, and Enthusiasts Are Paying Attention
Hall-effect sensors and Rapid Trigger have done what RGB lighting and polling-rate marketing never could: closed the spec gap between gaming keyboards and enthusiast builds at the hardware layer. The divide persists in culture and community, but at the switch and firmware level, the lines are dissolving.
thock8 min read
News
DCS Dolch opens at Divinikey — a computing-history colorway returns
The Dolch colorway — dark grey alphas, lighter grey mods, named after the 1990s portable workstations — is now in a four-week DCS-profile group buy at Divinikey and eight regional storefronts through 2026-07-01.
thock9 min read
Guides
Keyboard case materials, compared: aluminium, polycarbonate, and ABS
The case is the largest resonant body in a keyboard. Aluminium, polycarbonate, and ABS each change the sound, feel, and weight profile in fundamentally different ways — here is what each material actually does.
thock11 min read
Deep Dives
How HMX took over the mid-tier linear slot
Two years ago HMX was a name on a vendor page nobody pronounced confidently. In W19, the Cloud sat second on our tracker and landed in half the $120 prebuilts the scene argues about. The rise wasn't an accident.
thock12 min read
Deep Dives
Plate materials, explained: what brass, FR4, POM, and aluminium actually change
The plate is the cheapest variable in the build and the one builders argue about hardest. Most of the heat is misdirected — but a usable fraction of it is real, and the difference is worth pinning down.
thock13 min read
Ideas
Pairing Oil Kings with the Mode Sonnet
This pairing has been on the bench for months, and a free Sunday finally made it happen. The Sonnet is a soft 65 with a top-mount-leaf gasket, and Oil Kings are a heavy factory-lubed linear — together they hit a register worth coming back to.
thock5 min read
News
Mode Sonnet R2 opens at CannonKeys
Mode's second round of its 65% Sonnet board is now open at CannonKeys, running from 2026-06-01 through 2026-07-15 after a vendor-side timeline shift. See the in-article update for the dates and accent-weight color options.
thock5 min read
Trends
When customs became vendor-first
From 2018 through 2022 the typical custom shipped through one host vendor and a fan of regional proxies; by 2026 the baseline custom is a configurator on a vendor's own storefront. Boards moved. Keycap group buys mostly didn't.
thock6 min read
Guides
A beginner's guide to picking your first switch
Switches are the single biggest factor in how a keyboard feels and sounds, and the catalog has grown overwhelming. This guide narrows the entire market into three families, explains who each one is for, and gives a three-step path from curiosity to a confident first purchase. By the end, the reader can pick a category without second-guessing.
thock7 min read
Guides
Sound dampening, compared: case foam, plate foam, PE foam, and the tape mod
Four layers, four very different jobs. Here is what each sound mod actually changes, where it sits in the build stack, and the order to stack them in if you only have time for one or two.
thock8 min read
Trends
How 'thock' became an acoustic spec, not an accident
A decade ago a thocky board was the win condition of a $300 custom — the payoff for the right switches, the right lube job, the right patience. In 2026 the same sound is table-stakes for a $150 prebuilt: factory-lubed switches, silicone dampening, gasket-mounted plates, PBT doubleshot. The stack that used to be enthusiast-only is now what mid-tier vendors design toward from day one.
thock8 min read
Guides
Mounting styles, compared: gasket, top-mount, tray, and integrated plate
A builder who has lubed switches and tuned stabilizers and chosen a keycap profile and still cannot place why their next board feels different from their last one is usually meeting the mount style. The plate's relationship to the case is the half of the typing feel that nobody discusses on a sound test.
thock12 min read
Trends
How 75 percent became the default custom layout
Two years ago a custom-board recommendation defaulted to 65% with a polite note about 75% as the next step up. The Sonnet 2026 refresh, the QK75, and a crowded mid-tier have flipped that order. 75% is now the layout customs reach for first.
thock5 min read
Trends
How Hall-effect quietly became the new mid-premium default
The polling-rate hype is loud and easy to wave off — 8K, 32K, numbers chasing each other up the spec sheet. The quieter story is that the magnetic-switch tier has stopped being a Wooting-shaped niche and has settled into the $100–$230 prebuilt slot the scene actually buys from. The volume has moved, not just the marketing.
thock8 min read
Ideas
What gasket mount actually delivers (and what it doesn't)
The label appears on keyboards at every price point, from $90 prebuilts to $400 group-buy customs, but two boards with identical spec-sheet language can sound nothing alike. Here is what the term actually tells you, and what it doesn't.
thock9 min read
Mode Sonnet appears in editor-curated build sheets.