As for the mechanical keyboards, there are many options in terms of the brands, functions, appearances, switches, and the like. So how can you choose the most suitable one to meet your needs and acquire the most unforgettable typing experience? Today, let me introduce the Varmilo VA108M keyboard to you as a whole.
The Brand: Varmilo
Varmilo is a brand of Shenzhen Zhihaihe Tech Co. Ltd. Founded in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, it has its own factories and perfect mechanical keyboard design, development, production, and sales channels. With the brand concept of “creating a high-quality domestic keyboard brand”, Varmilo adheres to the high-end route and defines itself as a keyboard artist.
Varmilo puts design first and relies on its experience and manufacturing skills accumulated for years. It has agents in more than 40 countries and regions worldwide. The keyboards of Varmilo basically include two manufacturing modes: mass production and customization. here I will briefly introduce the two modes.
The former mode means that manufacturers produce a large number of finished products on the market. Users have a few choices and they only can choose from the existed models, colors, and switches; while the customized keyboard is designed according to the user’s personal preferences, including the keyboard suites, switch, keycap, USB, etc. Of course, the prices of the customized keyboards are different.
Varmilo keyboard contains its own ideas about the color and keycaps. It doesn’t produce in large numbers. Every model depends on the feedback from the market. It will produce a topic keyboard and limited models every year.
Themed mechanical keyboard
As mechanical keyboards are growing in popularity, every brand is making its efforts to attract consumers. In the beginning, the manufacturers focused on the functions, hand feel, and other hard wares while, in addition to the keyboard’s practical use, now they put their attention to the outer designs of the keyboards. The available keyboard is more and more.
A number of jointly-brand and themed keyboards make their contributions to the industry. The Varmilo-themed keyboard was introduced earlier and was popular among boys and girls. It has multitudes of representative theme keyboards, such as Sakura, panda, Koi, Huadan, and other styles, whose color collocation is dazzling and successful.
The Varmilo VA108M mechanical keyboard includes several themes such as pink Sakura, enthusiastic Koi, clever panda, Chinese Beijing Opera and so on. These different themed keyboards are similar in their functions but different in their color, attached things and price.
Varmilo VA108M Keyboard
Varmilo VA 108M(110% layout) keyboard is an excellent keyboard, suitable for players and workers. Its cover is solid and high-quality. It adopts a natural layout and PBT dye-sub keycaps. Using a Cherry Mx switch improves its quality and the detachable cable makes it more durable. has 108 keys, different from the common 104-keyboard. It includes another four keys: music player, email client, calculator, and explorer.
It is good at the design of a wooden line, creating a unique granular texture. No matter which themes, the feature can be seen. However, the design is skillfully integrated with the theme.
Varmilo VA 108M keyboard uses an electrostatic capacitive switch. The switch has no physical contact made between metal components when you press a key. The keyboard provides several options: blue, brown, red, and silent red switch. On its big keys, it uses a satellite switch and balanced switch, which ensures its stability and nice hand feel. Its keycaps are PBT material, 1.3mm thick. Different from the ABS material, PBT is more durable and couldn’t be worn for a long time. It is translucent.
The keyboard is 442mm long, 137 wide, and 53mm high, weighing 2.5 kg (with packaging). According to the test, it can be pressed 50 million times under normal conditions. The actuation force is 45 g.
The Varmilo Va 108 M is compatible with Wins and Mac OS, which is good news for MAC OS users. It has a white backlight. There are extra keys such as the Caps Lock, Scroll Num Lock, and space key, which make the backlighting perceivable.
You can judge whether these functions are activated or not from these keys. In addition, if you want other backlight modes, you can set them on your own. The keyboard includes a solid and breathing mode. By pressing the Fn and the right arrow key at the same time, you can switch these two modes.
Under the solid mode, you can adjust the brightness by pressing the Fn and the upper or down key. And if it is under breathing mode, you can adjust the speed and effect by Fn and upper and down keys. Switching off the backlight, you can press Fn and X keys at the same time.
On the back of the keyboard, there are five non-slip pads all around, and two brackets in order t met different users’ needs for height. The cover of the keyboard is made of plastic material, but there is a metal plate in it, so it is not light and easy to slip to the ground.
The USB cable is equipped with a tie to fix the cable and make it orderly. The cable is removable and its connector is close to the edge of the frame. It uses Mini USB. Although it is not popular as Type-C, it may want to give people a familiar and nostalgic feeling. Varmilo VA108M uses the fastest rate available under the USB interface and updates the keyboard’s status to the computer every 1 millisecond. This minimizes the delay between when the keys are pressed and the signal received by your computer
Varmilo VA108M Panda Wired Keyboard
The keyboard I bought is Varmilo VA108M Panda wired keyboard. As our national treasured animal, the panda is combined with a mechanical keyboard.
I have to comfort myself that the panda deserved the price. Luckily, only its Chinese-style packing box attracts me and there are more accessories beyond my imagination in the box. The box is white and black printed with three pandas and bamboos, living and cute, which is like a Chinese ink painting.
It is filled with many things. There is an oversized table mat, a panda doll, replaceable keycaps, a dust cover, a keycap puller, and a USB cable. The other things panda table, panda doll, and panda keycaps are more like a suit except for the Varmilo keyboard.
Compared with the common mouse mat, the table mat is extremely huge, which is 900mm long, 400mm wide, and 3mm thick. The table mat is designed for the Varmilo panda keyboard. It is said that they invited Mr. Ma Yun, a famous calligrapher, and painter, professor in Shaanxi to write the brand. And the pattern is elaborate and has a strong scholar’s style.
This is the pattern of the table mat. It is a Chinese ink painting-a mother panda and two baby pandas eating bamboo and playing. And on the upper corner is the signature and seal of Mr. Ma Yun(not Ma Yun, the CEO of Alibaba). It is originally innovative.
The five keycaps with panda use PBT dye sublimation.
The additional keycaps have differences and their default settings are green.
The Varmilo VA108M is a 108-key mechanical keyboard with no extra space for the indicator lights of the keys”Caps Lock and Num Lock”, so the light is under the switch. The caps Lock and Num Lock are designed with a hole to transmit the light. The design is used for the traditional keyboard, which is nostalgic to some degree.
The theme of the keyboard is clear and it is a 108-key layout. The keyboard is green, white, and shallow jet. If it is black, the fonts will be difficult to distinguish. And the 108-key keyboard is longer and more comfortable in terms of the visual effect.
The height of the Varmilo keycap is a little higher than the Cherry keycap, which is more like a combination of the OEM keycap and Cherry keycap.
The details of the keyboard are on its fonts. In addition to its color, its fonts are like bamboo, which is harmonious and smart. The whole scene is consistent and natural.
A Vivid scene of that panda chasing the dragonfly.
Although the panda keyboard also utilizes the multi-faceted heat sublimation, compared with the Sakura keyboard, I think the panda space bar is more creative and more appealing to the scene. In the scene, a lovely panda in the bamboo forest near the river is chasing a dragonfly, which is the essence of the whole keyboard. The color of fonts and keycaps are all here to spread. At the same time, the reflection of the scene in the river skillfully avoids the deformation of the two images, which shows the designer’s wisdom in such a narrow key.
Multi-surface dye sublimation means that the key cap of 5 faces (4 sides, 1 front) is chosen to print fonts so that the keycap pattern is more three-dimensional and vivid. However, due to the complicated process and high failure rate, its cost is higher. At present, Varmilo makes the most efforts and gains the most achievements in the industry.
The cable of the Varmilo VA108M Panda is detachable, and the USB interface is on the right front side, close to the mouse. The USB cable can be removed, and it is very convenient to change the keyboard.
The back of the VA108M panda is a wood-grain design. There are five evenly distributed non-slip pads and two brackets, which are soft. And the brackets are crisp when folded. It is easy to find that Varmilo pays attention to details from the workmanship to the material.
From this perspective, I believe you can have a better understanding of the dye sublimation process. It means that the ink is input into the PBT materials in the dye sublimation process. And then you can know why the PBT dye sublimation keycaps are durable and couldn’t be worn out.
The wooden-line effect
Bamboo and wood are not separated. Although the upper and lower cover of the panda keyboard is made of plastic, it shows not a plastic feeling but a black wood texture through the surface tanning process. In addition, the surface of the keyboard has no screw design, which is more likely to deepen this “misunderstanding”. The metal information card here is not only not to show off, but to make the finishing point. Metal and wood make the feeling of “HOME” more widespread.
Someone once asked me why the keycap texture of Varmilo is different from other manufacturers with the same PBT material. It’s like making a cake or ice cream. The ingredients are essentially the same, but the source ingredients and ratio are different, and the molds are different, so each of them has its style.
Although many tables exceed the size of 900*400mm of this cushion, I am still not used to it. I always feel that the table needs to be longer.
The whole Varmilo VA108M keyboard is on the table. At first glance, I feel that the painting style is pretty harmonious. Moreover, the picture composition of the mat is very elegant, and the main pattern is distributed in two corners, which is not easy to cover by the keyboard.
The style of the keyboard is very intuitive throughout the picture. I mainly talk about the hand feel.
I want to talk about its tactile feel. It is perhaps because of high-purity PBT that the keycap of the Varmilo keyboard is not too solid. From the feedback of consumers, it doesn’t need to adjust and PBT keycaps are common. The panda keyboard is high-quality in its craft and texture.
The using experience of a keyboard is up to the big keys(Space bar, Enter, Shift, etc.), and the big keys are decided by the satellite switch/balanced bar. The satellite switch of the Varmilo VA108M Panda brown switch keyboard is still at the same standard as that of Varmillo. The hand feel of the whole big key can be summarized into three words: smooth, soft, and quiet. There is almost no noise, the bottom sound is decisive, and there is no extra noise caused by the shaking steel wire and loose keycaps. The whole experience feels more stable and restrained.
In addition, the keyboard also provides other functions such as a white backlight, and N-key rollover to meet the user’s needs.
In general, Varmilo puts more time and designs into the Panda keyboard with more comfortable, more Chinese characteristics, and better quality.
I removed a few keys with the key puller and see the switch is the brown switch. Through the use for several days. I feel the keyboard is not noisier than the blue switch, and easier than the black switch when pressing the keys. Varmilo VA108M panda keyboard is a little noisy and has a slight paragraph feeling. The feedback of the key is quick. I am very content with it.
Then there are the shortcut keys, which are not so frequently used. But I like the function which is a one-click opening of the browser.
Conclusion
To conclude, this kind of Varmilo VA108M panda appearance is with a strong Chinese style. From its color, theme elements, natural layout, and craft, I feel Varmilo VA 108 M is in earnest. And some detailed designs like brackets, USB covers, and others are durable and comfortable. Having used it for one week or so, I was satisfied with both the appearance and the hand feel, and its functions.
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