The keyboard made by Angry Miao is made by sickos, for sickos, and it made me want to bust out my Master Grade Gundam model kits from the early aughts. The keyboard was better to look at than to use.
The Angry Miao Flex Alice is the company's first Alice layout keyboard with a gap in the middle and a split space bar The VF-19 Advance fighter jet of Macross is the inspiration for the design. It is very on-brand in its over-engineering and obscene price, being made from a 4.4-pound block of solid aluminum down to a 3.1-pound Chassis and selling for $795 with keycaps and switches or $680 as a bare-bones kit that goes on sale November 1
The AM AFA is a hot swappable split-ergonomic board with an internal gasket mount. Instead of ripping a high-speed corner in a stage three WRX STI, you can dial in just how stiff or soft each half of its keys are. The bottoming out of the keys has a softer feel thanks to the foam layer that separates the PCB assembly from the mounting plate. It uses leaf springs in a coilover-like design and swaps out the stock springs for one of three included sets to allow for up to eighteen levels of firmness.
It has a keyboard that can be used for both wired and wireless operations. It has two 5,000mAh batteries in it, one in each side, and in my testing of a preproduction model, I have not killed it after a week of continuous use. It has a wireless charging coil built into its bottom to keep it charged by the Cybermat charging pad, which will cost you another $300 or so when it's not sold out.
Similarities to other Angry Miao keyboards are also found in the keyboard. The AFA uses the same keycaps and switches as the Cyberboard and Am Hatsu. The stock AFA out-of-the-box sounds and feels a lot like those boards. I like Angry Miao's signature sound, but some colleagues thought the keys sounded deadened when I used a Cyberboard R2 at our office. If you prefer an aggressively thocky or softer clacky sound, it is just like having a preference for vintage fuzz on a guitar.
If you want a bare-bones kit, you can get it for $780 with keycaps and switches. There's a big "woof."
The benefits of the Alice setup are reflected in the ergonomics of the AFA. The keyboard has a steep incline and a tilt from the sides to its split center that made my shoulders and wrists very comfortable. The status LEDs for connection, battery level, and CAPS Lock are located in the center of the AFA. It gives the underglow space to spill out onto your desk and keeps your hands apart for better comfort. The arrangement of the right shift and up-arrow keys makes it feel like typing fatigue is disrupted by the terrible arrangement of the right shift and up-arrow keys.
The lines are clean.
The shift key location puts a premium on aesthetic.
Miao put the right-side shift key to the right of the up-arrow in order to fight against the memory built from just about every other keyboard. The long reach causes a lot of mistakes and typos. The number of times I have moved my mouse up and down a line while highlighting text has become so repetitive that it has become completely insane. When you look at the clean symmetry of the arrangement, it becomes obvious that it was done for aesthetic reasons. I understand that design is important for Angry Miao, but this placement isn't worth it. On a daily basis, it makes this keyboard extremely annoying.
While I like design exercises and experimental concepts brought to life as real products you can buy, if it requires too much compromise in theFunctionality department, it ends up on a shelf as a collector's piece. If you are a big fan of Macross and want to spend a lot of money on a keyboard that is inspired by Shji Kawamori's mecha design, there is a good chance you already own a beautiful and expensive figure. Function shouldn't be sacrificed in order to get the keyboard to end up there.
There is a 1/6th.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto took the photographs.
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