I lastly discovered my excellent one-handed gaming keypad

Then I noticed it: Redragon. Redragon, when you have been an individual (or maybe a dragon?) as an alternative of a price range accent maker, I might kiss you. The corporate has made just a few of those, however they have been typically lacking the options I wanted. Now not. 

Meet the Redragon K776-WL, generally styled because the “Grind 39” in keeping with the field through which it arrived. It’s one-handed, with a semi-standard structure for a QWERTY keyboard, so your muscle reminiscence wants no adjustment. It’s wi-fi, each 2.4GHz with a slim USB-A dongle and Bluetooth. It recharges with USB-C. It’s programmable, with an admittedly ugly however purposeful Home windows driver. And it’s hot-swap. We’ve lined all of the bases. 

As soon as I procured this little fella for simply forty US {dollars}, I proceeded to customise it, like a youngster who needs to impress folks with a bone-stock 2004 Honda Civic. I changed the switches with my favourite for gaming, Kailh’s BOX Heavy Yellow, a linear design with a bolstered stem and stiffer springs, since I are likely to backside out. I moved the keycaps over from my earlier one-handed challenge, which was based mostly on a GameSir machine (now apparently discontinued?) supposed for the Nintendo Change. Word the metallic WASD keycaps, a HyperX add-on, to distinguish them from the lower-profile XDA keycaps round them.

The keycaps are the one true sore spot on this little board. The bundle comes with all-matching keycaps, clearly. However the small spacebar, the T and G keys, and the tilde key are all non-standard sizes. I couldn’t discover printed keycaps that matched them, so I changed them with black generic choices, discovered right here. And sadly there’s no easy-to-find area bar that matches, so I swapped within the one from Magee, which is barely much less annoying. I additionally swapped out the rotary dial with a barely chunkier one from the Magee design. 

Michael Crider/Foundry

Subsequent I added my favourite wrist relaxation, elegantly secured with Gorilla Tape. I moved over the “tenting” ft that I beforehand had caught to the GameSir, which add a little bit of cant peak for barely higher ergonomics. These are chunky and in addition magnetic, so now it sticks to my PC tower underneath my desk, for simple storage. I hooked up the included strap, only for enjoyable. And that’s it. My excellent — or excellent sufficient — one-handed keypad is full. 

The enhancements over my earlier hacked-together design are USB-C charging, hot-swap switches, a programmable structure (that don’t require a considerably sketchy Android app), and I suppose RGB lighting. And I’ll level out that I bought it for precisely half the worth of the newest model of the Razer Tartarus, which is wired and doesn’t use mechanical switches.