Squishy McFluff: Secret Santa: 1 (Squishy McFluff the Invisible Cat)

This keyboard has the perfect size to be the best small keyboard. I've had other 60% like the Anne Pro 2 and the Hunstman Mini which felt really cramped and typing was strange. I hated typing on the Hunstman Mini because the keys were too close to each others. This Asus keyboard have some spacing between keys which is really necessary imo for typing. It has the best RGP on a keyboard and comes with tons of features like the side sound volume feature. Also. this is the only 60% keyboard (that I know of) that comes with the arrow keys on the right which was one of the reasons for me to buy this, hence it is just a few mm longer than the Huntsman Mini. Build quality wise, is the best I've tried on a keyboard. Very sturdy and elegant.So, what are the cons of this keyboard? It wobbles just a little bit. Huntsman Mini wobbled worse than this. I've tried this on different straight surfaces and the wobble was the same. One last thing to say, while this keyboard has 3rd party keys, the Red Cherry, I am not a fan of Cherry's keys. I much much prefer Razer's keys. The Huntsman Mini with Linear keys has the best keys on any keyboard. They are very good to type on. So, let's hope that we see more companies implement what Razer's did by making their own keys because let's think about it, if companies use 3rd party keys, then all keyboards will be partially identical right?

I switched to the 60%-65% layouts after wanting to reclaim my desk space from using a full size keyboard. The ROG Falchion does a great job of giving me space on my desk, and providing a great typing experience without compromising on the additional controls typical 60% layouts remove. I'd actually go so far as to say this is about as good as keyboards get without going the custom route.The keyboard uses Cherry red switches, and they work well, are fast and slick, and although my personal preference is for a more antisocial clicky switch, I have found the typing experience to be an absolute delight on this keyboard, once I got used to the linear switches and the lower actuation force. The customisable slider on the side is an interesting alternative to keyboards with rotary switches, and although I would like to be able to switch the functionality of the control to more things, its really good to have something to act as a volume control on the keyboard.Its absolutely great to have this keyboard in a UK layout. That means no running around trying to find backspace (useful when you need to access network shares) and all the buttons are exactly where you need them to be. It also means we get a full height enter key. Its great to have the key navigation keys on there too. Dedicated cursors makes a huge difference to a lot of text based activities such as coding and navigating round a spreadsheet.Customisation is done through the Armoury Crate application, and it works pretty well. Although there is an option for custom lighting, I avoid it as having separate lighting configured for the keyboard layers makes it easier to tell them apart. There are five customisable layers on this keyboard, and what I have done is setup layers with certain keyboard shortcuts and to run certain programs that I commonly use, making them easy to get to without going through the start menu. The RGB is bright and clear, but easily adjusted to be less intense, and RGB modes can be switched temporarily with the keyboard controls.I have seen some people have issues with Alt+function key presses, but this is easily remedied by using the left alt key instead of the right (right alt would technically be AltGr, not Alt anyway).Overall, this is not a cheap keyboard, its definitely a premium product, and although not perfect, its the one that is closest to my ideal keyboard that I have found and the only way I will get everything I want is to go the full custom route and spend about three times the price. At that point, I'll take almost perfect, which is pretty much how I would describe the ROG Falchion.

There are some things that can be addressed to improve it further. My main issue is the slide on the left hand side, which is one of the selling points of this product. You can change its function which is super cool but I find myself accidentally touching it when I try to change the position of the keyboard on my table for whatever reason. I can't exactly tell how to overcome this, perhaps if they could put it more in the middle rather than top corner as (at least for myself) that's the point of contact when you want to move the keyboard or when you want to hold it. If you really hate it, there is an option to disable it too which is a good addition.Second issue for me is the charging. While charging it increments in 10s so battery goes 30%, 40%, 50% and so on which seems a bit odd? Given the price and the quality of other materials you would expect to see the exact amount of battery left. Not a huge deal I suppose but still I wasn't expecting this either.Last point will be the lack of keycap removal tool. It shouldn't be extremely expensive and I would personally not mind paying a little bit extra just to have a dedicated tool for that. Although I got this on discount, at MSRP it's closer to the premium range than the budget range.Other than this, I really liked it. Coming from a full size keyboard I honestly don't miss any of the extra keys. At times I needed the F1-F12 keys but you can toggle the fn key so if you need to use those buttons heavily you can just lock it and press them as usual (that would mean no numbers 1-9 and symbols assigned though). However, this can't be seen as a flaw as it's clearly stated this is a 65% keyboard. Battery life is great, I don't use the RGB so it's even better but RGB significantly affects the battery life as far as I can tell, especially if you keep it at highest brightness but again that is normal. Included cover is really handy too, both when I travel and when the keyboard is standing on the table unused.It's not THE BEST keyboard, and certainly not the best option if you're into keyboards and you know a fair bit about keyboards (didn't mention it but the keycaps aren't the best + you can hear body making some noise at times) but for a general user, given it's on sale like now, this is a really good buy. Would give 4.5/5 if I could.