Keysme Mars 03 Custom Keyboard Kit Review
The Keysme Mars 03 is one of the most unique mechanical keyboards I’ve ever seen. Themed after space exploration, its appearance is equal parts spaceship and custom mechanical keyboard. With a fully aluminum chassis and some of the best attention to detail I’ve encountered, there’s nothing else like it. It also offers a great typing and gaming experience thanks to its smart design, pre-lubed switches, and tri-mode wireless connectivity. At $330, it’s middle of the road for custom keyboard pricing but is more than a little original.
Specifications
- Current Price: $330 (Keysme)
Keysme Mars 03 — Design and Highlights
Keysme has been around for a while but first came into the mainstream with its Lunar 01 mechanical keyboard. It launched to Kickstarter with a modest $40,000 HK goal (about $5,100 USD). Its unique spaceship design, complete with fidget spinner magnetic “rockets” and an RGB sound meter along its top, garnered it a groundswell of support, 8X’ing its goal, ending at $322,410 HK raised. Since then, it has been advertised to me nearly weekly on Facebook, so I was intimately familiar with the keyboard when the company reached out about its next project, the Mars 03.
The Mars 03 is the Lunar 01 on steroids. It combines all of the creativity of the Lunar and meshes it with custom mechanical keyboards. It continues with the space exploration theme but takes it to the next level with a full aluminum chassis complete with spaceship-like tilt feet, an LCD screen, a joystick, and an exposed, highly decorated switch plate. Internally, it uses a gasket mount design and layers of sound dampening, sound enhancing foam.
The keyboard uses a 75% layout, which retains a function row and arrow keys but does away with all but a single column of navigation keys to provide a compact footprint. It’s a good middle ground between work and gaming by leaving plenty of space for the mouse hand while also providing most of the keys typically found on an office-friendly TKL. The keys
