There's this meme that people can't take pictures of their keyboards without shoving a bunch of irrelevant things into frame. I admit I fell victim to this but I will not be apologizing for the smiskis.
<aside> 🌊 After assembling and getting acclimated to my Hot Dox, I realized that 1) the ortho layout made so much more sense in my brain and 2) I subsequently was incapable of typing on normal row staggered keyboards. I was eyeing either the Planck or the Preonic to pick up for my home rig as the dox was my dedicated work keeb. Ultimately I decided I needed the dedicated number row (even though I'm more used to 40% layouts now, I'd still choose the Preonic as I mainly use it for gaming).
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I call this my "2020 Election Stress Keeb". Although I had been eyeing ortho keyboards, I had decided that I didn't need to be spending anymore money on keeb things at the time (lol). But then the fire nation attacked the 2020 election week happened. There I was, laying in bed, doomscrolling the news/twitter, playing Hades, when I thought to myself, "You know what. Maybe I would enjoy some retail therapy right now." And then I, as I often make my purchases, impulse bought the Preonic.
While looking the colors available, I was drawn to the gunmetal or black for a monochrome build. But then I noticed the PCB had underglow LEDs and I opted for the frosted acrylic since I thought it looked good unlit, and I'd be able to change it to whatever color fits my build. I'm so glad I made this choice as I can't express how good the case looks lit up!
Since the Preonic comes with a hotswap MX pcb, the assembly was very easy and took around 10 minutes. I didn't make any modifications beyond what ships, although it comes with support to add a rotary encoder in the left column, which I'll likely add in the future.
I bought some Halo Clears alongside the Preonic to pop into the build immediately. I've since swapped them out (explanation here), but I initally put them in unmodded.
My mostly completed Preonic — it hasn't changed much since taking this picture in December 2020 besides swapping the icons to be more color coded.