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Designer: Fox
Fulfilment: Fox
Original Price: ~330 USD
I Paid: 310 USD
Reason for condemnation: damage, unsellable, unusable
When the Orange80 went live, I was just getting into the deep of the hobby and saw glimpses of it on Reddit come and go. I didn't really know how to use Geekhack at the time, and even if I did, I probably would've been offended at the price. So it was only years down the line where I was exploring flat/negative angles that I got to try this guy out.
The mechmarket listing said there was a bit of damage but that was really an understatement. The micro arc oxidation (MAO) coating was very prone to damage, and there were marks on essentially all faces of the board.
MAO has a finish unlike the usual anodizing on most aluminum keyboards. It kind of feels like a piece of paper in that it almost feels absorbent. As a matter of fact, it did seem to absorb some lube to create a spot that wouldn't clean.
It also scratches shockingly easily. Any light contact with something like a metal USB connector you can expect to leave a permanent black mark.
From a durability point of view this was an absolute nightmare, but it's not like I've not dealt with fragile stuff before. Plenty of polycarbonate boards need to be babied to avoid looking like a Ziplock bag full of screws in a toolbox.
No, the real reason why this didn't get much attention from me was because of how it looked. When it was first becoming an option, MAO was sold as a "white". Because white anodizing isn't really a thing, I think the original buyer got excited about a potential white-blue combination that didn't really end up working. MAO is a super cold off-white gray while the blue was a warm sky blue. I tried on a lot of keysets but it never really looked quite right. To be fair, I'm not sure a more white white like e-white would have saved this cheapo blue, but as-is, this was definitely a color disaster.
As always, as a part of the review, I gave it a fair shot and the usage experience was somehow even more appalling than the looks. The first switches to go into this were lubed + filmed Greetech Browns I got as a recommendation for light tactile switches. They made such a horrid noise that I thought Greetech were bottom tier garbage plasticy cheap switches (they might still be but also maybe not).
My next switches were stock Gateron Yellows. I already knew what these sounded like, so when I put those in, I really knew that this board was one of the most awful sounding boards I've ever touched.
So after the review, I was left with a board that was bad to look at, bad to type on, and bad to listen to. So it sat dormant until I had the brilliant idea to try and refinish it. I bought myself a buffing machine and over the course of a week, tried to turn MAO into a mirror.
This ended up being an obvious disaster as I lack both the patience and the experience, and maybe a quality tool to pull this off. On the Orange, I was left with all sorts of streaks, polishing compound residue, and sanding marks. From afar it looks kinda neat, but sitting and using it, I couldn't bring myself to possibly contend with the outcome of my own failings, so that was the final nail in the coffin.
As a send-off, I tried putting in some TTC Bluish Whites which are a downstroke-silenced tactile. Even with reduced noise, it made an awful racket, so I knew the time was up for this strange relic of the past.
After the video, this was already unsellable due to the extensive damage, but after polishing, even more so. Who'd want a halfway destroyed board? When I brought it to the parental residence, it made no strong impression and sits to this day in the guest bedroom closet. The fate of this keyboard remains uncertain, but its prospects are looking dim.
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