Halo75 & Halo96
As an innovation-driven company, we believe in the importance of deep involvement in building, supervising, and manufacturing our own parts and components as they are integral to the quality delivery and sharing of our vision on our products. For this reason we were unable to realize many creative designs on Halo65, despite its wild popularity and many firsts(among which the Halolight, Spacebar Silicones, battery-aware sidelight, and Twotone wrist rest to name just a few), and why we cannot hold back our excitement to finally debut some of them on Halo75 and Halo96.
Switches, with a NuPhy twist
The endless customizability and a plethora of switch/keycap choices, has been for many, the killer feature of mechanical keyboards. As avid fans ourselves, we have been thinking and exploring how to build switches in the NuPhy style, something that is enjoyable for everyday use and pleasing on all levels. With our two brand-new switches, Night Breeze(linear) and Rose Glacier(tactile), we believe we have found the answers.
The touch feeling is what makes or fails a switch, and why we have spared no material on an industry-leading 21mm extra-length spring, nor effort to find the optimal angle for the stem rail and the amount of pre-lubricant applied to bring you just the right kind of response for each switch.
The sound however is where we make our biggest breakthrough, with our industry-transformative stem made from the next generation thermoplastic polyketone, and in extended length, the extra flexibility and freedom we have acquired to shape and fine-tune the sound characteristics was previously unimaginable. Suffice to say, you have to hear it to believe it.
The looks are inspired by the design of perfume bottles, with distinctive yet soothing colors to match.
If a space bar is pressed but no one hears it in a chorus of keys , does it make a sound?
Ever since we started developing Halo65, we have been thinking about how to reduce its loud hollow sound. Careful users would have noticed that each Halo65 came with a BBK switch for the space bar, as part of our overall effort to deliver better sound performance. A third party solution, however, will never allow us a through understanding and realization of our hardware’s full potential like developing our own solution does, hence we set out to build our own space bar acoustic solution. Our effort culminates in the first space bar with a built-in damper system, the GhostBar.
Unlike what a silent switch tries to achieve, our goal is not to do away with the space bar sound completely, but to process it in such a way that it blends in perfectly with the sound made by other keys. A rethinking of the space bar’s internal structure is thus necessary without compromising on its lightness. Through trials and errors, we have settled on a design that produces remarkable(well, non-remarkable actually) results.
We divide the inner space of the space bar into five chambers to make sure the vibration produced by the switch and stabilizers do not propagate horizontally into the space outside of their own compartments. Next, between the surface of the keycap and the top of the stem a layer of silicone is inserted so that the vibration decays rapidly vertically before reaching the keycap. As a result of this all around approach, most of the hollow sound has been removed.
Below is a comparison of the sounds between a GhostBar and a standard space bar to demonstrate GhostBar’s outstanding ability to suppress hollow sounds. For those of you who prefer the old school space bar sound profile, we include a standard spacebar in each Halo package for your replacement and comparison purposes.
Beginning with our first product NuType F1, we have made it our mission to ensure that each and every of our products come through our own creativity and love, down to the small parts that make up the final products. Without which even successes in the market are hollower than the hollow sounds of a lousy space bar. Our capabilities maybe limited, much due to our smaller team, but we are determined to maintain it with the focus on the product and design themselves, over becoming a larger organization that is driven by the abstract concept of a market, instead of actual, individual customers.
Our path maybe narrow, but it will not be without fun and excitements, which we hope you are looking forward to as much as we do.