Before reviewing the Varmilo V69M V3 CMYK/MIYA Pro keyboard I would like to give some more context about me and about my search for the “perfect keyboard”. I am working as a computer engineer for a long time and a keyboard is one of my most important work tools. I first summarized my experiences about different keyboards in this blog entry.

Then I discovered the world of mechanical keyboards and the plethora of different key switches, boards, … and was very fascinated by these keyboards. They seem to fit my typing style better than non mechanical keyboards. After some research I purchased a Leopold FC660M which sadly had some quality issues. I reviewed this keyboard in this blog entry.

After the bad experience with the Leopold I continued looking for another keyboard. I knew that I wanted to stay in the 69% keyboard size area, bigger keyboards or tenkeyless keyboards are not interesting for me because I want a compact keyboard. As I live in Germany and need a mechanical keyboard with a German layout, Candykeys.com was a good place to look for. From all the keyboards the saler listed, the Varmilo VA69M V3 CMYK caught my eye. I liked the retro color scheme, it got good reviews and seemed like a premium built kit of hardware. I just had to decide on the type of Cherry MX switch to choose from. Previously on my Leopold FC660M I chose the Chery MX Blue switches which I liked a lot. Sadly they were quite loud and annoyed my colleagues in the office although I damped the sound by putting O-rings under all keycaps.

The VA69M has some features that I like. First of all, it is a mechanical keyboard with a very solid and sturdy build. It has keyboard backlighting, a USB-C port, is a compact keyboard and it is available in Germany with a Germany layout, great! This time I chose Cherry MX brown instead of blue because they emit less noise than the blue and I do not really miss the “click” of the blue.

But it has some serious problems which I will describe later. I still love it but these problems prevent it for being a perfect keyboard!

Update June 2019: I got an updated firmware from Varmilo that fixed the Fn key behavior 🙂

First impressions

The keyboard came in a stylish package. I noticed that on the package the keyboard is titled as MIYA PRO. It seems to be a cooperation between Varmilo and Ducky. On the base of the keyboard the model number is Varmilo VA69M V3. So I am not sure if it carries different names depending on in which part of the world they are sold.

Inside the package I found the keyboard covered with a dust cover which I find very useful to protect my keyboard. Then a USB-C cable. A manual and a key puller are also included. Interestingly there is also an extra set of gray key caps included. With these keycaps you can replace the colored Strg, Alt, etc. keys by gray ones, very nice. Click on an image in the gallery to enlarge it:

VA69M packaging

VA69M set of extra keycaps

contents of the VA69M box

VA69M with dust cover and USB-C cable

The manual is in chinese and in english and describes its functions. The USB-C cable is not very flexible and I do not like it at all.

Here is a comparison between the gray keycaps and the colored ones. Click on an image in the gallery to enlarge it:

VA69M with gray keys

VA69M with colored keys

I really like the retro color style, here are some images from different angles. Click on an image in the gallery to enlarge it:











In order to see how small this keyboard is, I made photos putting it next to a Apple Magic Keyboard and a standard 102 keys keyboard. Click on an image in the gallery to enlarge it:

VA69M and Apple Magic Keyboard

VA69M and standard 102 keys keyboard

The specs

anodised aluminium case

USB-C

Cherry MX Brown switches

white backlight LEDs

Dye-Sub Printed PBT Single Shot Keycaps (Varmilo Profile, a bit lower than the Cherry Profile)

What I like about this keyboard

First of all, this is a very well built and sturdy keyboard. It is quite heavy and does not move on the table because of it’s weight, which is great. I use it at work and in private and carry it in my backpack covering it in it’s dust cover and the keyboard still looks perfect, it is very solid!

Then I like the keyboard layout very much. It removed the dedicated function key row and merged the function keys with the number key row, which saves space. The cursor keys are very close to the rest of the keys and you can find them very easy when typing blind, they are clearly separated. Then on the top right side it has a four keys block containing the page-up, page-down, delete and insert keys. I use these keys a lot and I am happy that they are easily reachable.

In order to reach a function key from F1..F12 I need to press the Fn key and the coresponding number key. Home, End, PrintScreen, etc. are on the keys j,k,l,comma and on the fullstop key and can be used in combination with the Fn key.

I am using this keyboard without problems on Windows machines and on my Macbook Pro 2016. On macOS the Win key ist recognized as Command key, no problems there.

Typing on this keyboard is a joy. The key caps feel a bit slippery but not too much. They are stabilized well. Especially the return key, the shift keys and the spacebar. I can alway very precisely hit the keys.

The dark imprints on the keys are of very high contrast and easy to read. The keys do have a long travel and, that is what I like so much about mechanical keyboards, give a very good tactile reponse on when a key is pressed/actuated. The Cherry MX Browns make for a very pleasant typing experience. They are not clicky like the Cherry MX Blue, but give exact feeedback of when a key is pressed. I can type much faster on this keyboard than on most of the slim laptop keyboards including all modern Lenovo laptop keyboards! It is so much fun typing on it. The sound emissions are much lower than a Cherry MX Blue. Here is a recording of me typing on the keyboard uploaded to SoundCloud:

All in all the typing experience is great, I love typing on this keyboard. But this keyboard also has some serious issues, which also concern the typing. First of all, the Fn-key handling is broken. And the second issue is that the backlighting is unusable for me.

Sadly the keys do have two very shallow markers on the home row on the F and J keys which make it a bit hard for 10-finger-typers to find these keys!

The backlighting

When you order a keyboard with backlighting you do this usually because you want to use it in bad light conditions like in the evening or in the night. To make it short: with this keyboard you cannot do that. Let me show you two pictures that I made, one with backlighting turned on in the evening and one in complete darkness. Click on an image in the gallery to enlarge it:

Backlighting in dark environment

Backlighting in complete darkness

If it is dark and you want to see which keys you are typing on, you are out of luck with this keyboard. It is completely unusable for this purpose. This is surely dictated by the used keycaps.

When you press for example that Caps Lock key, the Caps Lock key does not have an integrated indicator but it uses the background lighting from below to indicate the Caps Lock state, which is hard to see even in daylight.

Other than that I will only write that the backlighting has four settings for its intensity and that there are some light effects which are only a gimmick, I am using this keyboard only for typing.

The lack of completely disabling the backlighting

Let me elaborate on this one. Of course you can disable the backlighting on the keyboard by pressing Fn-Q. But I am A heavy Fn-key user because I need frequent access to the function keys F1..F12, Home and End while working with Java-IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA. Especially in the first days I very often somehow accidentally used the Fn-key with some combination that started backlighting effects on the keyboard and this is very annoying. I will talk about the Fn key problematic in the next section.

Sadly this keyboard provides no DIP-switches on the bottom which could allow for disabling it altogether. I got used to this problem after two weeks with the keyboard. But I still from time to time find myself watching lighting effects ‭that I did not call for.

The Fn key problem

Update June 2019: I contacted Varmilo and told them about the Fn key problem. One week later they sent me a new Firmware which updated my Firmware from V2.0 to V205_Test. This Firmware fixed the Fn key problematic completely! It now works as expected. So if you do not have problems with the Fn key you probably already have a newer firmware and can ignore the rest of this section 🙂

Original Fn problematic: This is my real problem with the keyboard. Accidentally enabling/disabling backlighting effects is not so annoying as accidentally enabling other functions like swapping the Windows key and the Fn key, etc. which happened to me two times until now. I don’t know how, maybe I am clumsy. Putting this functionality into DIP switches on the bottom, which is what other manufacturers are doing for a good reason would solve this problem.

If you do not use the Fn key for accessing F1..F12, Home and End, you probably can ignore this section. If you do, read on.

The problem with the Fn key is that it does not work in the same way as other keys do. Let me elaborate:

when I want to type Ctrl-Shift-F6, which is a command I often use in IntelliJ IDEA, on the VA69M I have to type because of the missing function key row: Ctrl-Shift-Fn-6.

In theory everything should be fine. But with this keyboard, you have to press the Fn key FIRST and then the rest of your combinations. I did not know this in the beginning and thought the keyboard is broken. On a normal keyboard when I type Crtl-Shift-F6 I can press all keys nearly simultaneously. It does not matter if I touch one of the keys a little sooner or later than the other ones.

In theory everything should be fine. But with this keyboard, you have to press the Fn key FIRST and then the rest of your combinations. I did not know this in the beginning and thought the keyboard is broken. On a normal keyboard when I type Crtl-Shift-F6 I can press all keys nearly simultaneously. It does not matter if I touch one of the keys a little sooner or later than the other ones. On the Varmilo the Fn key works like a switch which you first have to turn on and then off by releasing the Fn key, it is very annoying.

Another example: I type Shift-Home in order to mark from my current position in the text up to the first position in the line and keep shift pressed and go up two lines.

This should on a normal keyboard mark the actual line unto the beginning and then the next two lines above. On the Varmilo this does not work!

On the Varmilo I have to press FN-First, then shift and Home to mark until the beginning of the line. Now I have to release the Fn key and the Shift key and then press the Shift key again to mark the two lines above, this is very unpleasant!

I got used to this problem now, but from time to time it really angers me because it is completely unnecessary, I do not get why they built it this way. The Leopold FC660M did not have this problem.

I had a look on the Varmilo homepage to see if there is a newer firmware or some tools to change the things that I critized but I found none.

Synopsis

This a good keyboard but it has two major flaws: the horrible Fn-key handling and the backlighting. Other than that I got used to work around those problems and like the keyboard, but I maybe sell it some time in the future and be more careful about Varmilo products in general.

Update June 2019: When you have a newer firmware that fixes the Fn key then it is a very good keyboard with the only annoyance being the background lighting 🙂