Wooting 80HE

“My hot take is that the 80he has better constituent parts, but overall is mostly a downgrade from the 60he. I appreciate what wooting was trying to appease the 75 and TKL audience, but this FC660-with-F-Row layout is just not it, I hate the way it's spaced on the bottom row and the full right shift, and a 2x2 cluster just looks so oddly imbalanced on a board that is mostly consisting of long-wise rectangles, never even shapes. The silicon gasket mount is also a huge miss because it greatly lowers the customization aspect of the board that they so highly tout on their boards, and silicon is not a great material for keyboards unless you're also pumping in all the other foam, tape mods and super low-travel long pole switches to balance out how much the sound gets dulled. I'm glad it's something not tray mount, but the execution makes it almost not matter because it doesn't follow any pre-existing footprint in the hobby like the 60he did for the GH60. I haven't been hands on with either of their zinc alloy cases, but I have no doubts that it's at worst good since zinc is more dense than aluminum, so I really appreciate them leaning more into it and having it as an option at launch and not as an aftermarket option. As it is, the 80HE is the better board for people not really into custom boards and/or people who want something that works out the box, but the 60HE has more potential because it uses the same switches, and because it follows the GH60 footprint that's existed for probably at least a decade now, had more ways to customize it and will likely continue getting more ways to customize it because you can very easily make a 60% that can use either HE or mechanical switches at the swap of a PCB.”