KPREPUBLICbm60rgb bm60 Poker RGB 60% gh60 hot swappable Custom Mechanical Keyboard PCB Program qmk Full RGB Switch underglow Type c (BM Poker PCB Only x1)

First of all the BM60 Poker and the DZ60RGB are similar in a lot of ways except for SMD LED placement and switch orientation. DZ60 is south facing and BM60 is north facing. I mostly type in the dark with dim lighting. With that said even with the LED lighting at its brightest was still hard to read the legends because the light barely shined through and the LED sitting at the bottom shinning in my face making it blurry. The keycaps I have are made for a north facing LED. I bought the KBDFans ABS keycaps which are made for their south facing PCB's but they are cheap, the Q,R, and G keycaps broke in about 3-4 weeks splitting in half where the stem goes into. Shine through keycaps made for a south facing LED configuration are hard to find and limited in color and styles too. Since the LED's are at the bottom of the key switches, the light shinned in my face all the time which was so annoying. The light glared into my eyes. I could of dimmed the lighting but then it would of made reading the legends even harder since again I'm in a dark room. But if you don't care about lighting, the DZ60 is a very good board.I will also go through a bit on how to get the BM60 to work with VIA instead of QMK which in my opinion sucks. With QMK Configurator when you make changes you have to then compile the new firmware, save the new firmware, Flash the new firmware with QMK Toolbox which is another program you have to use, and repeat every time you make changes to your layout. With VIA all changes you make are instant without all of those steps, just change a key layout and done, you don't even have to click on a save button because there is no save button to make those changes, it's instant, that's it.So now the Pros and Cons of the BM60 PokerPros:-Hot swappable switches.-North facing LED for larger range of shine through keycaps.-Very bright RGB.-Very customizable.-Uses screw-in stabilizers-NKRO (6 Key Rollover-6KRO)-Reset button under the keyboard is right over the hole that many other case makers use unlike other PCB's that have the reset button anywhere else other than that reset hole.-RGB lighting underneath the PCB for clear cases.Cons:-Installing the stabilizers can be a bit hard to go in the hole. It seems the holes are a tad small at which I had a hard time making them go in. I even broke two of the plastic clips on the stabilizers to make it go in. Its holding in with the screw and a part of the plastic part of the clip went into the hole.-My PCB came in slightly warped. The mid section was sunken in and was a little twisted too. It might have been the heat or something during shipping but I got it some what straightened out and the two posts in the middle of my case is pushing it up and leveling it out.-The USB-C port is shallow and my cable doesn't go all the way in like it did with my other PCB by 1mm and the cable easily disconnects if I wiggle the cable side to side. I might end up unsoldering that port and soldering on a deeper one later if it becomes annoying.-RGB lighting underneath the PCB gets very very warm. My aluminum low profile case gets uncomfortably warm. I have my brightness set to medium low to medium because of that.- Not compatible with Cherry profile keycaps because of clearance issues with many of north facing switches.On to the Firmware flashing. Not going to go in detail but here we go.PCB comes with QMK firmware, we need to reflash it with VIA firmware. Follow the link here at the store page for the firmware or KPRepublic website or which I did because I couldn't get it to work with VIA after trying both of those out is to go to VIA's site and directly download it from them.Once you have your firmware make sure to download and install the drivers too, download and install QMK Toolbox and flash VIA firmware. Download and install VIA, open VIA and you should see your keyboard and its name at the top right corner.Make changes to your layout to your hearts content. When done save your layout as a json file and keep that and your VIA firmware in a safe place just in case you need to flash your board again for whatever reason and you can then load your layout without starting from scratch too. Done.

This board is a little bit of a unicorn. It's a hot swappable 60% board with north facing LEDs if you are more interested in illuminated keycaps than you are cherry profile keycaps. It's supported by QMK, VIA and VIAL. Out of the box, layer programming was a little odd on layers 1-3, but layer 0 was normal ANSI with KC_GRESC programmed to ESC (ESC with no mods, shift+ESC for ~ and WIN/CMD+ESC for `). It took me only a few minutes to reprogram it to the way I preferred.Unlike other reviewers, I had no issues installing Durock screw in stabs.Do note that the RGB controls on this board are for the underlight. RGB Backlight is controlled with F16-23.F16 = backlight toggleF17 = Mode +F18 = Hue +F19 = Hue -F20 = Saturation +F21 = Saturation -F22 = Brightness +F23 = Brightness -TLDR;The Good:- hotswap sockets that take standard size pins.- QMK/VIA/VIAL support- AffordableThe Bad:- Odd key mappings for the top facing backlight LEDs and no insert in the box explaining that.The Meh:- North facing LEDs. I prefer them, but I don't like Cherry profile keycaps. YMMV.

The board is great RGB is great but it took over a month to arrive

i ordered two of these to use in builds... they shipped one.the one that was shipped was dead on arrival.... no lights... no usb device connected.contacted customer support that wants a "video" which is impossible to send via amazon messaging... so they sent me an email address, which doesnt exist and bounces back as undeliverable.i am fully aware that kprepublic is a bargain brand... far from a premium product - but i expected more than this. id suggest looking elsewhere.

I recently set this PCB up with the Durock V2 Screw-In stabs and had one hell of a time inserting the hooks because of the size of the PCB's hole.Also, they said that an NKRO firmware would be easy to find, but I am having a hard time tracking it down. Besides that, the PCB is decent for the price.

10/10 recommend this product. If you're building a keyboard this PCB is perfect having great RGB, great plug and play also provides great package updates, and has a great delivery time

Like other reviews said getting screw in stabs to fit in this board is pretty tough. I was using durock stabs and I had to use enough force with a short flathead screwdriver to hurt my hand. The rgb controls are not very good either. So far I can only control the underglow LED's and cannot control the topside rgb. Not sure if mine is defective or not.Also For anyone that's going to buy this and didn't see it anywhere it will ship from china. So just a heads up on time. The majority of the waiting for this is shipping after customs. It will get transfered to a crappy company with little to no tracking updates. And then it will just show up at your home through USPS. Other than those things the hotswap aspects of the pcb are great. And my board works for typing and switching layers. Ill have to figure out their guide so I can get via FW on mine.I think big improvement would be an included instruction booklet. And having firmware on a dedicated portion of the website vs having to go through hoops and guessing on google drive. The link they have here links to a google drive with a document with another link. That link takes you to their website repository where you then have to navigate to the board you have. I can't tell If I have the V2 or V1. Ill figure this out one way or the other stumbling through this.

very good lighting is hard to use