Half of the nerds are into making their own keyboards. As a person who has built his own PCs since childhood, I feel like I should be one of them, but I never wanted to spend the time or effort to get too far into bespoke keyboards. The NZXT Function was perfect for me because of this.
If you discover the subreddit for mechanical keyboards, you can ruin your ability to talk to other people. Are your keys linear or Tactile? How is the force used? Have you changed your switches? It's a lot to take in, especially for beginners who aren't sure how to start.
People like that are the same demographic as NZXT. The company is best known for making PC cases and components, and more recently letting people build their own PC builds, which earned it one of our top picks for gaming PCs. The same process is being applied to boutique keyboards. It might be enough to get me to care about the switches.
Hardware for everyone.
What is a switch? The mechanism underneath the keycaps is what it is. When you press a key, you press the switch. People like to modify keyboards because they don't have the same switches. Each type of switch provides different levels of audio and tactile sensations. Do you want that old-school clickety-clackety feel? No problem. Do you want a typing experience that is still satisfying? Done!
The real star of the show on the NZXT Function is this level of hardware customization. Many mechanical keyboards have switch options. You can choose between smooth, more sensitive switches or clicky ones.
You can keep modifying even after you get a keyboard. You get extra switches and an array of alternative keycaps to swap in, along with tools for removing both keycaps and switches. A set of WASD keys with a grippier texture and slight curve that feels more natural for gaming is one of the many options.
It felt like getting an electronics starter kit. The box has everything a newcomer to keyboard customization would need to learn, but still leaves room to expand in the future. The NZXT Function works perfectly if you just want a nice keyboard.
The first company to offer an experience like this was NZXT. All the tools to replace them are included in the Drop Ctrl keyboard. Most kits like this don't have extras like the volume wheel or mute button, and are often more expensive.
The NZXT CAM software is one area where the company goes a bit further. This allows you to remap every key. Do you not like where the deletion key is? Move it's cap to the new location in the software. This kind of tweaking can be done on other keyboards, but NZXT's approach makes this kind of tweaking feel accessible. The NZXT CAM is not very robust compared to competitors. It covers the basics well. You can record basic macros.
There is coordination of color.
One of the best reasons to change your mechanical keyboard is to make it look better. It's possible to put some RGB LEDs in there like every other mass-produced mechanical keyboard. Picking some colorful accent keys is the way to go.
The Function makes this easy by including a set of colors for your accent keys that you can choose when ordering from the site. For my review unit, they come in a variety of colors. The keyboard has black, white, or gray keys. It is not a huge selection compared to the wider keyboard space, but it is an excellent starting point.
The company sells accent keyboard cables in the same five colors as the accent keys, if you really want to commit to the palette of your choice. The NZXT Function has RGB LEDs under every key. You can turn off the lighting. It feels like you can make it your own.
Extras that are thoughtful.
I have always found that a volume roller is the most convenient way to control volume on a keyboard. NZXT improved on that idea beyond what I anticipated. The function puts the volume roller on the left side of the board, close to the Escape key.
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