Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard Review - An Affordable Aluminum Gaming Board

TweakTown's Rating: 88%

The Bottom Line

Punching above its weight or price class, the Chilkey ND75 is a wireless mechanical keyboard with premium aluminum build and customization aplenty that puts quite a few more expensive boards on notice.

Pros

• Stylish, minimal, and sturdy aluminum build
• Hot-swappable switches and physical customization aplenty
• It's a premium board with a more mainstream price
• Great for all tasks, with excellent type-feel

Cons

• Some sharp edges on the underside
• The customization app is poorly laid out
• The display is there just for GIFs

Should you buy it?

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Introduction & Specification Details and Close-up

One of the reasons why it feels like there's an endless variety of mechanical keyboards from an extensive lineup of well-known and not-so-well-known brands comes down to the modular nature of the modern mechanical keyboard. With readily available parts, if you had the time and inclination, you could purchase each keyboard component - from PCB to dampening layers to switches and keycaps - and spend the time to build one yourself. This is all a roundabout way of saying that it was only a matter of time before a high-quality, customizable, and affordable aluminum keyboard like the Chilkey ND75 showed up.

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Available in multiple colors and prebuilt or barebones variants, with the latter pushing the price well below $100 USD, this is a keyboard that is all about delivering that high-end premium board experience without breaking the bank. It supports proper DIY-style customization with hot-swappable switches and the ability to pull it apart if need be. The barebones edition is an excellent choice for those wanting to level up the Chilkey ND75 with premium switches and custom keycaps, with the fully assembled version being great for that instant plug-and-play installation.

A quick look at the Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard

Mechanical keyboards with full aluminum casings are typically found on high-end or premium-priced options, so it's impressive that the Chilkey ND75 also includes a full-color display. Unlike displaying battery life and indicators for the various modes and things like when the Caps Lock key is pressed, the main functionality is to showcase a personalized animated GIF. It's a nice-to-have feature but not essential.

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As a brand that I was unfamiliar with heading into this review (I've since learned it's a sub-brand of Meletrix), it's safe to say that I was impressed with the overall performance of the Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard after using it for a solid month for both gaming and productivity. Are there differences between this and more premium boards out there? Yes, but for an affordable, customizable mechanical keyboard built like an aluminum tank, it's hard not to be impressed. Let's dig in.

Specifications & Close Up

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• Product Name: Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard
• Product Type: Wireless Mechanical Keyboard
• Size: 75% TKL
• Colors: Jet Black, Pure White, Mountain Blue, Elegant Purple, Milk Tea
• Switch: Kailh Blue Lotus (Linear), Gateron EF Dopamine Blue (Linear)
• Keycaps: Doubleshot PBT Keycap (Cherry Profile)
• Interface: Bluetooth, USB 2.4GHz and USB 2.0 (TypeC to TypeA)
• Polling Rate: 1000 Hz
• Compatibility: Windows , macOS
• Lighting: Per-key RGB
• Weight: 1680 grams
• Battery: 1800 mAh x 2
• What's in the Box: Keyboard (Includes Blue Lotus Switches, batteries, keycaps), Instruction Manual, TYPE-C Cable, 2.4G Receiver, Packing Box, Dustbag, Replacement Flexible Flat Cable, Accessories

Kosta's Test System

• Motherboard: ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition
• Display: MSI MAG 321UPX QD-OLED 4K 240 Hz
• Cooler: ASUS ROG RYUO III 360 ARGB
• RAM: 64GB (4x16GB) Corsair DOMINATOR TITANIUM RGB DDR5 DRAM 6000MT/s
• SSD: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD 4TB, Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Plus M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD 8TB
• Power Supply: ASUS TUF Gaming 1000W Gold
• Case: Corsair 5000D AIRFLOW Tempered Glass Mid-Tower ATX PC Case
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-bit

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Design & Software

Design

The Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard features a minimal design. Its 75% form factor size omits the numpad while retaining the arrow keys and situating a few of the other navigation keys around the built-in display. The case is made from high-quality CNC Aluminum, with most of the flair coming from the RGB lighting and the different colored options available. For this review, we chose the white model with white, grey, and charcoal keycaps, making it look like some old-school PC hardware from 1990.

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On the underside, you'll find a spot for silicon feet and some brushed metal that carries over to the back, covering the USB-C port. Weighing in at an impressive 1680 grams, the Chilkey ND75 has the overall heft you'd expect from a keyboard with a sturdy metallic build. Being heavy is a plus for keyboards because it means that when sitting on a desk, it's an immovable object that won't rattle or move. If there's one criticism you could place on the overall physical shape of the keyboard, it is that some of the edges on the underside are pretty sharp.

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The Chilkey ND75 supports three connectivity modes: USB wired, low-latency 2.4 GHz wireless via dongle, and Bluetooth. The keyboard's tri-mode capabilities are another plus, born from including a PCB with these features and the ability to support Windows and Mac. There is one little thing that isn't highlighted on the product page, and that is for the wireless to work, you need to lift the right-side Shift key to flick a switch that turns the battery on - a design that was implemented so that the battery wouldn't drain while in transit.

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For the Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard we were sent for review, we paired it with pre-lubed linear Gateron switches and Doubleshot PBT keycaps. With multiple dampening layers and stabilizers, the overall sound of the Chilkey ND75 is pretty smooth. It's not quite as satisfying as some of the more premium boards we've tested, but it delivers a satisfying type compared to some of the harsher or more clicky-sounding boards out there.

Software

Interestingly, unlike other custom modular boards that rely on QMK and VIA for customization, the Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard features a custom application for key remapping, lighting, and changing the display's GIF animation. It's a somewhat cumbersome app because the UI design is noisy, with a background that clashes with the foreground, and there is very little explanation for changing the GIF.

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That said, key remapping is relatively simple, as you can access the base and function layers quickly. You are limited in the options you can access, as you can only choose an alternate key from the virtual keyboard presented or one of the system functions like 'Mail' and 'Multimedia' presented as buttons. Again, the UI design leaves much to be desired and feels slapped together in a single afternoon. The macro recording and import section is similarly poorly laid out, and it's even hard to read the text because of the noisy space-themed background.

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Changing the lighting settings is probably the most intuitive process. You're given a list of the various options and can select a single color or rainbow-like pattern. This showcases some of the limitations found in the RGB lighting, where the LEDs struggle to recreate white and other more subtle colors. It's not bad; you have an extensive list to choose from, including a musical one that lights up the keyboard based on your system's current audio.

Gaming Performance and Productivity

Gaming Performance

The Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard, in either wired or wireless form, is a solid keyboard that performs well in many tasks - gaming included. Playing first-person titles like Call of Duty or Counter-Strike 2 is comfortable and smooth, with responsive linear switches and a satisfying debounce from each key press. The solid and weighty build is also excellent for quick keypresses and keyboard movement, whether quickly typing a message into chat or switching between various skills in an RPG.

Productivity

With the ability to pair the Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard to multiple devices, including Bluetooth ones, there's definite versatility here. And overall, for the price, you're getting something that punches above its weight regarding the build's overall type, feel, and quality. As a day-to-day productivity driver, you do miss out on not having a numpad. The display is pointless for providing any helpful information outside of the current time, but even so, the Chilkey ND75 is the sort of keyboard you'd gladly use to write up a few emails, reports, or an in-depth review like this one.

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The keyboard's minimal design looks great on a desk. Even though it doesn't ship with a wrist rest or feature an adjustable height or angle, it can sit right next to most 75% form factor keyboards in the productivity department. The good news is that you don't really need the app to make most changes, as you've got shortcuts for lighting, audio controls, and switching between Windows, Mac, wired, and wireless connections.

Keyboard Click Sound Level

To test a keyboard's overall sound level, we use the Ozito Digital Sound Level Meter, capturing the sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" multiple times and recording the maximum dB level. This indicates how "loud" the switches used are for everyday usage. The following chart showcases where the Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard sits.

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Final Thoughts

Despite its shortcomings, the Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard delivers a premium feel you simply don't find in its price range. The premium aluminum build, customization, excellent switches, and versatility make it an overall winner. Sure, it would have been nice for the screen to be more than a glorified GIF display box and for the ND75 app to feature a UI and design that matches its functionality, but these are things that aren't essential or critical to the overall experience.

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The immediate satisfaction of using a premium keyboard with great-sounding and great-feeling keycaps is always up there as the primary driver of whether or not something is worth looking into. For the Chilkey ND75 Mechanical Keyboard, the answer is a resounding yes. It nails the premium feel of more expensive boards while offering deep customization - right down to the mounting and being able to pull it apart into all of its various layers. It's also wireless with Bluetooth support - which you rarely see on an aluminum hot-swappable board for around $100.