Mechanical Keyboards

Ducky, GMMK, and Keychron are all on Amazon

You can certainly get a functional mechanical keyboard on Amazon. If you haven't used a mechanical keyboard at all and you want to try one out, I think buying a cheap gamer keyboard on Amazon and treating it as semi-disposable is quite reasonable.

If you want the ability to experiment with switches, look for one that has hotswap and cherry MX-style mechancial switches. If you want the ability to swap out for nicer keycaps, check and make sure the board uses a standard layout. Some consumer boards have unusually sized shift keys or space bars etc. that make them incompatible with many keycap sets.

Re: loud, this is also relative. Linear switches (red for lightweight ones, black for medium weight ones) will usually not be ultra loud, and you can also get "silent" switches, which have some dampening components.

It's easy to find cheap fullsize boards with numpad and arrows. (It's harder to find high end customs like this, though, as most enthusiasts prefer smaller boards.)

In addition to what others have suggested, Leopold keyboards are solid and are available on Amazon.

Amazon Link

This is the one I use. I’ve had it for a year and I’m happy with it. Colors & RGN effects look nice. Keys sound good too, and you have a variety of switch options too. I use brown switches.

Keychron Q series. Probably as a starting point to go into this - Q3.

Watching this post for some insight as well.

I’ve only ever used one keyboard off Amazon, and it was a Durgod TKL board with cherry mx browns which was very nice. Still use it from time to time. They do have some full boards (with num pad) if that’s your thing.

But to be honest the keyboard landscape has changed a lot since I bought that durgod board though and I think it’s now overpriced compared to the competition.

My advice would be if you know what kind of switches you like (linear, tactile clicky etc) find a cheap ish keyboard you like the look of with those switches. As a beginner cherry switches are a good bet, they’re not the best, but they’re far from the worst and a good starting point and a lot of other switches and keycaps are compatible with them. It would be good idea if the keyboard is hot swap enabled so you can swap the switches out to try other types of switches or even convert the whole board in the future if you like without soldering. But most importantly start cheap, don’t buy something expensive when you’ve never tried mechanical keyboards before and don’t know what you do and don’t like.

Keychron Q Series

I bought a Logitech g613 on Amazon. I wanted a normal size keyboard but wireless. Prior to this I was married to my dell multimedia keyboards that have proven reliable for a long time.

I don’t use those weird programmable keys on the left but they don’t bother me much anymore either.

Overall I do really like it. Every now and the. It will freak out and start jsut repeating a key press but only happens on windows. It could be some driver wonk or something like msi afterburner/ruvatuner causing it, or the kvm I run through.

As someone that has been hoarding those older black dell multimedia keyboards for years and using them exclusively, this is the first one that I haven’t ditched and gone back to.

My wife got the EPOMAKER TH80 pro and is happy with it! https://epomaker.com/products/epomaker-th80?variant=40057578651721

My main keyboard is a slightly modded Royal Kludge RK84. No number pad on this one, but still has arrow keys, F keys, the ~ key, can be wired and wireless, and the switches are hotswappable (which is great if you ever want to swap them out to something more your style, or to easily replace one if it doesn't work anymore).

If you want a quieter keyboard don't ever go with "clicky" or cherry mx blue switches or similar.

[](Amazon link)

This is the one I use. No complaints. Sounds nice and I’m happy with how the RGB colors work.