By Typface
Feb 29, 2024
It’s been a while since I reviewed a board like this. Something with design inspiration rooted in something really interesting: a font. Univers was designed by Adrian Frutiger and released in 1957. It was one of the first fonts that pushed the notion of typefaces being part of a family of varying but similar weights and styles. It’s likened to one of it’s extremely popular sister fonts - Helvetica - released at the same time, and bearing prominence in branding throughout some of the world's most popular companies. But univers remained pretty ambiguous. Until now. This board marks the entry of Typface into the custom keyboard market, bringing the essence of the Univers family to the very tool that allows us to experience it.
My packaging is a very early prototype so the final retail units might have differences. And I do have to say that it’s quite beautiful. It has some elements of typical throwaway packaging, but also this really nice carrying handle. Immediately on the inside is an empty box, which I assume will be for accessories that come with the final retail board. Under it is tadpoles, screws, bottom feet, and a wooden accent. This wooden accent has a free engraving option, but mine is, unfortunately blank. In here is also a really red aluminum plate, and an FR4 full plate that can be converted to a half plate. The section under this has our daughterboard, solder PCB, which has a really unique top pattern, And the board itself. This has a decent amount of protection.
The univers is a tadpole mounted 70% keyboard. 70% refers to a few different layouts - for one, there’s the XOX70 I reviewed a while back with a nav cluster and no function row. The univers is the opposite. It has a function row, and no nav cluster. We have both hotswap and solder PCBs, both being 1.6mm. Hotswap supports stepped caps and split backspace, and solder additionally supports split left shift and ISO enter. These both have daughterboards and utilize VIA. For plates, we have only aluminum and FR4, which can be converted into a half plate. For colors, we have anodized black, silver, and prussian blue. Lastly, the Univers will run for around $245 for the solder kit, and $255 for the hotswap kit.
In the PCB are TX stabilizers lubed with 205g0 and BDZ. I’ll add on the aluminum plate, and for switches today we’re going to use stock Cherry MX2A browns. These are lubed from the factory with something similar to 205g0, so let’s see if they stack up to manually tuned Browns in terms of sound and feel. Of course, since this board is soldered, we’re going to go ahead and get these switches soldered in. After soldering, we can install the tadpoles onto the PCB, and that concludes the inner assembly. Let’s move on to the case. I’ll connect the daughterboard, which is the kind that pushes inward, making things a bit easier, and install the inner assembly. We can close up the top case, screw the board together, and lastly, I’m going to install GMK Striker.
The sound profile is great. It’s the pretty typical gentle and high-pitched sound of tuned browns, which means that the stock MX2As perform decently. I thought this would be a good pairing with the aluminum plate and tadpoles, and surely enough, it’s pretty solid. A theory I have is that getting rid of the tadpoles closest to the spacebar might help give the spacebar sound a bit more life. Unfortunately, the board still does have a decent bit of hollowness, which I’m sure can be mostly fixed with a force break mod, but is a little bit annoying nonetheless. It’s not audible with the deskmat, but definitely is if I pick the board up, and probably will be if you use louder switches. I wish I could test some more configurations, but because of the solder PCB, we’re locked to this one, and foams aren’t included to help modify the sound beyond this. Although, due to the available plate selection only really having this cut, and the PCBs not having any, most high-pitched configs should sound pretty good.
The feel is very neutral and pretty stiff, as I used the aluminum plate. Tadpole mount also isn’t a very forgiving mount to begin with, so don’t expect this board to have noticeable flex or bounce. These tadpoles are 60A, which is a decent middle ground stiffness. The way this board treats sound and feel customizability is a stark departure from the budget-oriented option overload atmosphere of the hobby today, which is obviously a preferential thing. With the Univers, I’m reminded of boards that came out years ago, with a heavy focus on a high-quality sound signature and not customizability across many aspects.
One cool aspect of the customizability of this board, though, is the accent piece on top, bringing us to the design. You have the option between this copper waffle pattern one or a wood one, which can have a custom engraving. On top, we can see there’s a slightly larger top and bottom bezel, and also a cherry lip that doesn’t go past the arrow keys. The top edges have nice fileting, which help make the board look more premium. I also like how you can see glimpses of the bright red aluminum plate from underneath, which helps create some nice contrast depending on the colors of your keycap set. The side profile is pretty simple, with a slight contour only on the left and right of the top case. Moving to the back, we can see this gilled or scored pattern on the bottom case, adding some visual flair. Also cool is the logo above the centered USB port, which is inlaid with some white paint that isn’t very high quality, and the USB port itself, which protrudes from the bottom case. On the very bottom is the univers wordmark engraved, making the entire exterior design fairly low-key. On the inside is an internal weight, which helps with the high-quality sound profile. So the design overall is definitely on the more minimal side, but still isn’t without its flair. Besides the logo, material quality is great, with my silver anodization being nice and smooth.
And at the end of the day, besides customizability, there are really no complaints for this board. I was told that there would be more options for the pre-order run, but this is what we have for the in-stock run for now. The board itself is surprisingly well-rounded, offering a good sound signature and a design that pretty closely matches the price point of $250. Although it’s nothing flashy, neither is the design inspiration, so it ends up making sense, and the Univers proves to be an interesting take on an interesting piece of design history.