part · board

QK75

Spec sheet

Layout: 75%
Case material: Aluminum
Mount style: PCB mount
Hotswap: yes
Wireless: yes
Released: Mar 1, 2023

Qwertykeys' PCB-mount 75% with a CNC aluminum case, swappable knob/badge, and PVD weight options. Wireless and wired hotswap PCBs; bouncy plate-or-plateless feel that ties to the wider 75% mainstreaming trend.

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Mentioned in 7 articles

Side-section line drawing of a keyboard case with the plate resting on cantilevered metal tabs reaching in from the case walls, drawn in a 2px warm-grey stroke on warm paper; the right-hand tab is deflected downward under a keypress, with a single muted-terracotta splash at the flex point where the tab bends and a small warm-bronze dot in the upper margin.

Deep Dives

Leaf-spring mounts, explained: what a bending metal tab does that a foam strip cannot

The Nyawice's spec line and Mode's plate-tab mounting blocks both lean on one old idea — let a thin tab bend instead of a foam strip squash. The physics is textbook; the keyboard implementations are not, and the name covers more than one mechanism.

thockAug 4, 202610 min read

Line-drawing comparison of five keyboard case silhouettes shrinking left to right — full-size with numpad, tenkeyless, 75%, 65%, and 60% — arranged like a family tree with a bronze accent dot marking the 60% case as the root the other compact sizes branch from.

Deep Dives

How the 60% became the default custom-keyboard layout

Every custom-keyboard buyer's guide since the mid-2010s opens with the same four-term vocabulary — 60%, 65%, 75%, TKL — as though it always existed. It didn't. One open-source PCB out of a geekhack thread is most of the reason that taxonomy exists at all.

thockJul 29, 202611 min read

Guides

Choosing your first custom keyboard kit: a buyer's guide

Most first custom keyboards aren't built from loose parts and aren't bought finished — they're a barebones kit, a case-plate-PCB bundle that leaves the rest of the decision to the buyer. Here's how to make that decision without guessing.

thockJun 27, 20268 min read

Centered vendor hub — a plum-filled keyboard-shaped node with an inner diamond mark — in the upper-mid canvas, with five arrows fanning out beneath it to a low arc of five product-variant board silhouettes (each a small rounded-rect keyboard outline with faint key-dot rows and tiny config-tag lines beneath); a single plum sparkline rises left-to-right along the bottom of the canvas, peaking at the right edge with a focal dot.

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.

thockMay 4, 20266 min read

Trends

The split/ergo cohort grew up

Split and ergonomic boards spent a decade as a hobbyist sub-cohort orbiting a stagger-majority. By 2026 the Voyager line, the Glove80, and a steady trickle of r/mk transition posts have pushed split/ergo across a visibility threshold — still a minority, but now a reference category instead of a footnote.

thockMay 2, 20265 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.

thockApr 25, 202613 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 KBD75 v3's staying power as a default recommendation, the QK75, and a crowded mid-tier have flipped that order. 75% is now the layout customs reach for first.

thockApr 24, 20265 min read

QK75 appears in editor-curated build sheets.

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