Mechanical Keyboard Review: Varmilo VA108M

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The Problem

My wrists were hurting this past week, which drove me to figure out a way to solve this.  I had been looking into mechanical keyboards in the past but never pulled the trigger because of the expense, and also the thought: "It's just a keyboard".

Well, since all this COVID stuff has had me at my home desktop for hours on end, I've been typing quite a bit on my old Kensington keyboard: sending messages out on MS Teams, typing up emails, and various other keyboard intensive tasks.  It was taking its toll as I was trying to multitask and keep people on track and informed.

The Old Keyboard

I'm a quick and heavy typist so my first thought was that I'm jamming my finger too hard on the keys of this cheap "membrane" key keyboard.  The board itself doesn't have a lot of key "drop" in which to slow your fingers down, and little to no resistance to the key presses. It's good if you're on  your keyboard a few hours a day, but if you're furiously typing out emails like I sometimes do, you can start to jam your fingers right to the bottom of the keys, with the force going right up to your wrists and forearms.

The New Keyboard


I did a bit of research previously on key switches so I knew that I wanted some Cherry MXs, the problem however, was deciding what kind (color) that I wanted.  Luckily www.mechanicalkeyboards.com had some reviews on a few of the switches, and for my situation I knew that I was going to be typing a lot, with not a lot of gaming.  With that in mind, one of the highest rated MXs for typing ended up being the Cherry Clear -  I went with these for two reasons: 1) great for typing 2) doesn't have a loud "clicky" sound to it.  This second part is a necessary feature for home as I work not 10 feet away from my spouse, otherwise I might have gone for the more satisfying "click" switches.

After reading some reviews, I went for the Varmilo VA108M (CMPYO version).  I liked the design and the folks that reviewed it on the site gave it some good ratings (between all the different designs of the VA108M).

Review: The Good

  • Very sturdy keyboard that is much heavier than a standard one that ships with your computer.
  • As this is my first mechanical keyboard, I can say key presses and typing are much more satisfying.  I do like the Cherry Clear switches, but I honestly don't have much to compare them to.
  • Backlighting was a cool extra, but not necessary
  • Comes with a full numpad
  • Once working, all the keys and functions aren't overly complicated (see below)
  • Comes with spare gray keys if you don't like the colors
  • Extra key caps for Num Lock, Caps Lock, Scroll Lock are crucial as they have lights in the to let you know when the button is enabled.
  • Comes with key cap puller

Review: The Not So Good

  • Out-of-the-box, I couldn't figure out the Fn key.  My left Ctrl was was actually the Caps Lock (it made the caps lock light up), My Windows Key wasn't working (either of them), and it appeared the Fn button wasn't working at all:  I couldn't change the back lighting or anything else detailed in the manual.
  • After a few hours searching around, and even trying to install drivers from Varmilo that was written in Chinese (which didn't help), I figured out what was wrong: My Fn and left Windows key were swapped, as were my left Ctrl and Caps Lock keys.  I also suspect my Win key was disabled.

The fix

  1. Held Fn + Esc for 3 seconds to reset to factory (However in my case Fn was actually my left Windows key, so it was actually Win + Esc)
  2. Held Fn+Left Win key to swap keys back
  3. Fn + Left Ctrl for 3 seconds to swap Caps lock back to its original position.
  4. Success!

Function Check

I did a quick function check to make sure everything worked:  Cycled through the back lighting, hit Fn + F10 to mute/unmute, hit the left Windows Key, Caps Lock, and all the bonus buttons on the top-right of the keyboard: Media, Email, Calculator, Windows Explorer buttons.  Success!

Review: Typing

I'm using this keyboard to type up this blog, and I must say it's nice using this KB.  When I first started typing I did noticed a few miscues, but I think it's mostly my hands adjusting to the new layout and feel of this board.  Now that I've typed a bit more, I've started to hit my rhythm and am really starting to enjoy this board.

Overall:  4.5 out of 5

I docked it half a point simply because of how annoying the Fn key was right out of the box, otherwise I'm pretty pleased.  I was honestly thinking I might return this board if I couldn't get Win and Caps lock key situation figured out, but in the end a few Google searches helped me out.

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