I often hear, “You should never cheap out on a good office chair, shoes, underpants, backpack etc…” but what are some items that you would feel OK to cheap out on?
This can by anything from items such as: expensive clothing brands to general groceries.
computer keyboards i will never understand paying more than 20 bucks for one
Then you should avoid going down the rabbit hole of mechanical keyboards.
I made this mistake, some friend talked me on to them. I wouldn’t say worst mistake, caz I have a nice keyboard now, but dang it was expensive and not even close as good as how much it was hyped.
I thought the same with a cheap mechanical I bought, then I tried to go back to my old, still usable keyboard after some days and for some reason it doesn’t feel so usable anymore.
I agree that going from a barely usable to a cheap mechanical is a huge jump, but the differences between mechanical and other mechanical isn’t as big as ppl in the hobby make it seem. I couldn’t have gotten a very similar experience for 70% less.
A basic mechanical keyboard will last 20+ years and will be a nice typing experience for all those years. I’m old enough to have seen mechanical keyboards go for 20 or more years under heavy use and plenty of non-mechanical keyboards going bad after 5 years or so with similar use. It’s a great purchase.
I bought a couple different super cheap mechs (browns for when my partner is sleeping, blues for KLIK KLACC) and they’re SO MUCH BETTER than I expected. They were under 40USD each and have full RGB.
My refurbished IBM Model M from 1984 agrees.
The best rabbit hole!
My nice mechanical keyboard is 13 years old. They last, and if you’re going to have something for decades, why not have a nice one?
I’m not sure if it’s still the case but even in cheap keyboards if you pay a bit more you they will have better controller that will let you press more keys at once which is important for gaming. I got my mechanical keyboard couple years ago and overnight I stopped making so many typos and I can type much faster. My plan was to check the keyboard out for a week, write a ton of documentation for work and send it back but now I don’t regret paying extra for it, in fact I think it’s the second most important component of you computer after the fastest hard drive you can get.
I’m assuming that by “hard drive”, you mean “don’t actually use a hard drive unless you need extra storage”. You’d want an SSD for speed.
If you can’t tell the difference between a super cheap keyboard and a well built one, fair enough.
If you like one of the things you use for a considerable portion of the day to feel nice to use and last more than two years, spend more. I spent an absurd amount on a keyboard about a year ago (like a week’s pay kind of absurd) and I haven’t regretted it for a second.
I have tried 3 different mechanical keyboards, two of them in the three digits. I went back to rubber dome because I couldn’t care less about cherry switches.
I agree in principle, but knowing what people pay for a kb that doesn’t even have a numpad I would raise the usefulness cutoff to around 100.
More helpful advice is don’t spend money on gaming anything. It’s 10x more expensive and it’s fucking shit. The industry sees gamers are marks and will absolutely fleece you on overpriced and horrible quality ‘gaming’ products which are cheaply made and planned obsolesce to shit.
You can get a way more comfortable experience at a way lower cost by buying office equipment instead. I have a logitech wireless headset that has been in use for 2 years, and in storage for another 2. I plugged it in and it still fucking works. The literal foam on the ears has dusted away but everything else about it is just as good as when I bought it. The same can’t be said for my crappy gaming headset which was uncomfortable out of the box, hardly lasted a full year before deteriorating, and is now all but inoperable. Not user serviceable, either.
My Logitech g35 gaming headset worked for near 15 years before crapping the bed. With near daily use for several hours at a time.