That one was on my shortlist, Tom. By all accounts, it's a good one.
I did a
lot of research, initially in the hope of not spending as much as I did. Then I thought: I spend more time on a computer keyboard than almost every other activity short of sleeping. So why go cheap?
The final straw was when I registered my newly-acquired $10 Synthmaster, and due to a typo wound up with an unusable license key. I am done with rubber keyboards!
Here's the scoop on mechanical keyboards. The best ones use switches made by the German company Cherry. Lesser keyboards use Chinese clones of Cherry switches called Kailh, which are similar but as with Chinese clones of most things, not quite as good. The Corsairs use real Cherry. The almost-Corsair Azio keyboards are well-reviewed and cheaper but they use the Kailh switches.
Cherry color-codes their switches to indicate their mechanical characteristics. Kailh mimics the same scheme. You can't actually see the color without removing a keycap, as the only colored part is the plastic plunger.
The variables are how far you have to press a key to register a keypress, how much force it takes to do so, whether they generate a tactile "click" and whether they make an audible click. Being able to feel when the key registers a keypress is crucial to fast and accurate typing. Lack of this feature is why the cheap keyboards suck for touch typists.
The red switches are "linear", meaning there is no tactile click. They are closest to generic keyboards. Some people like them because of that. They feel similar to a cheap keyboard but have a little farther travel plus you get the reliability of mechanical switches.
The most popular among gamers is the blue switch. It has a short throw and a tactile click, as well as an audible click. But because I often type while talking on the phone, I decided the blues weren't for me due to the clackety-clack.
Take away the audible click but leave the other characteristics of the blues and you've got the brown switches. That's what I opted for.
Also popular among some gamers are the green switches, which require more pressure to activate and are therefore harder to make adjacent-key typos with. There's also black and clear switches, but they're not common.
I ended up going for a fairly plain keyboard. No backlighting, no programmable keys. The only nonstandard things it has are a volume control and mute button (handy for killing audio when the phone rings) and a 2-port USB 3.0 hub. The latter will be useful for thumb drives, since my computer's under the desk.
The one I got is called
Das Keyboard 4 Professional. $250 at my local Best Buy but $162 on Amazon, $187.79 after tax and shipping. It has no wrist rest, so I may need to add that for another 15-20 bucks. The same company offers
another popular model that's a few bucks less and has white backlighting if you like to work in a darkened room.
Here's
another one from my shortlist that was also a contender. A lot cheaper ($95).