Nuphy Air75 V3 Keyboard Review

Introduction:

I spend a lot of time writing. From writing my book to keeping track of information and ideas to posting on social media, my fingers are always flying over a keyboard. Typing feel and good connectivity make a massive difference to me. With my hearing loss, I'm not always a good judge of how intrusive the noise generated by my typing has been. While I absolutely loved the feel of the last generation of the Air75, it proved to be particularly noisy and bothered people around me. When I heard that version 3 of the Nuphy Air75 keyboard could come with silent switches installed and that extensive effort was made to dampen internal keyboard sound, I decided to preorder the keyboard taking advantage of savings on the board and the protective folio designed for it. Other aspects, especially the improved connectivity, also helped to convince me that the upgrade would be worth doing. Before we go on, I should point out the following: I bought this keyboard and both prior versions of the Air75 keyboard from Nuphy with my own money. They have absolutely no influence on my opinion of their creation. These thoughts are entirely my own. Also, I'm looking at this keyboard strictly from the standpoint of an average iPhone user. I want something to make typing and navigation reliable and enjoyable. Some aspects of the keyboard's full capabilities aren't available for iOS users. For instance, the 2.4G wireless dongle can't be used because it requires an USB A port commonly found in computers but lacking in iPhones and iPads. However, you can enjoy the 1000 poling rate by directly connecting to your iPhone via USB C cable provided your iPhone is current enough to have a USB C port. More detrimentally, the Nuphy IO software needed to take advantage of the ability to customize what keys do on the keyboard, create macros, and such, is inaccessible. This limits blind users to the built-in key functions set for iOS and iPadOS. I'm doubtful but uncertain whether the software is accessible to blind users of PC or Mac computers. None of the above limitations greatly impedes my ability to enjoy this keyboard as an average iPhone user. Efficiency purists or elite level gamers should perhaps look elsewhere. Keeping those limitations in mind, these are my thoughts:

Keyboard Description:

The Air75 V3 is roughly 319 mm or 12.56 inches long, 129 mm or 5.08 inches front to back. It's around 13 mm or 0.51inches thick. Weighing 724 grams or 1.6 pounds, this isn't the lightest keyboard out there. That weight helps it remain stable and in place on the lap while travelling. The keyboard case is a black or white polished aluminium top frame over an ABS plastic bottom with a steel plate in the upper middle. . The frame surrounds the keys extending a bit beyond them and overhanging the base. It's very smooth and sturdy with the added bonus of making it easier to pick up the keyboard. There are ridges near the front of the bottom. Two very thin rubber feet are near the front edge. At the back, there are folding feet with smaller ones in their centres. These unfold to provide typing angles of 8 and 10 degrees if this is preferred over the default 4 degree angle. Along the back of the keyboard beneath the aluminium frame, you'll find the USB C charging and data port at the left end. Near the right end, you'll find two sliding switches. The left switch sets the operating system. It has two positions. The left position is for Mac and this is what I recommend iPhone or iPad users set it to. The right position is for Windows. Meanwhile, the right most switch selects the mode of connection and also has an off setting. It has three positions. From left to right, these are wireless, wired, and off respectively. The switches are easy to feel and determining which position they're set to is easy. The overhanging frame should protect them against accidental position change due to contact with items. This frame also protects the keycaps from damage and dust intrusion surrounding their bottom edges even when they're fully raised. The keyboard is rugged and should withstand ordinary bumps during travel pretty well. However, the keyboard isn't waterproof. Do everything possible to avoid spilling liquid onto it. The keycaps which come on your keyboard by default are concave in their centre, square, of average size and made of PBT plastic. They're very durable and smooth to the touch. One disadvantage of these keycaps is that they don't allow the RGB lighting to shine through them. Different keycaps which allow for this are available from Nuphy if desired.

Major Capabilities:

This third generation Air75 keyboard packs a lot of improvements into its aluminium frame and ABS plastic underbelly. The 4000 MAH battery was in the prior version. However, thanks to new efficiency and software, you get as much as 1200 hours of continuous use provided the RGB lights are turned off. Using the Air75 V2, you could get a maximum of 220 hours. The brighter those lights are, the less time you get on a single charge. Getting a full charge takes around five hours. Charging is done with a USB C cable. The one included in the box has a USB A female and USB C male end which goes into the keyboard. You can use any good USB C cable for charging if you don't like what's in the box. The U"SB C port is on the left rear of the keyboard beneath the overhanging frame. To turn those lights off, hold down the fn key which is the second to the right of the space bar. While holding it down, tap the down arrow at least ten times. There's no firm indication when the lights are all the way off, but apps like Seeing AI should help with this. For connectivity, you have Bluetooth 5, wired, or the included wireless dongle which is useless for iPhone or iPad owners without some sort of adaptor cable. You'll find that dongle in a storage slot in the back left next to the USB C port. The Bluetooth connectivity is much improved over the Air75 V2. I've had no missed keystrokes and haven't noticed any latency at all. The Bluetooth connected poling rate is 125. Connecting via USB C cable gives you a poling rate of 1000. This thousand poling rate is, according to comments I've read, apparently good enough for casual to mid level gaming. The lower poling rate of 125 is fine for typing. Essentially, the poling rate refers to how many times per second that the keyboard checks to see if any keys are pressed. The keyboard layout is 75%. This includes the function key row, home, end, page up and down. The spacing between these keys on larger full sized keyboards is absent. The arrow keys are in the bottom right corner with the left arrow being under the shift key. The home, end, page up and down keys are in a column directly above the right arrow key. There is no number pad or insert key. This results in a keyboard which is compact but well spaced out and very suited to use on one's lap. The keycaps have tactile bumps on the f, j, and up arrow keys. This helps with orientation. The bump on the up arrow is helpful enough to be worth a special mention. It has saved me countless split seconds and accidental wrong key presses while finding the arrow keys tucked into the bottom right corner. I would have appreciated two more such indicators on the F4 and F8 keys for better ease of tactile orientation up top. This would make for the most friendly arrangement for tactile orientation that I can imagine. For mechanical switches beneath those keycaps, you can choose from Three kinds of Gateron nano version 3 low profile switches. These include red linear switches, tactile brown, and blush silent switches. The red and brown switches have 3.5 millimetre key travel which is comparable to high profile keys. Blush silent switches sacrifice a couple of millimetres of that travel in order to cushion the top and bottom impacts with silicone padding inside each switch. The board his hot-swappable so you can change to different switches and keycaps if you wish.

The Knob:

The keyboard comes with a knob which can replace the top right key. The knob will allow you to easily control the overall volume of your iPhone or iPad. It will click when turned and can also be pressed down. You'd have thought that this would have been assigned the equivalent of play/pause. Sadly, this isn't the case. There doesn't appear to be a way to put this down press to any use without resorting to the currently inaccessible Nuphy IO software mentioned above. Installing the knob is absolutely possible to do without sight. Nuphy provides the keycap puller and small screwdriver in the box along with some alternative keycaps to make the keyboard's appearance conform to whichever major computer operating system, Windows or Mac, which you'll mainly be using. To install the knob: 1. You first need to remove the top right keycap as well as the small keycap to its immediate left and the backspace key which extends directly below and to the left close to the tiny screw. Do this using the combination keycap and switch puller found in the box. The end with the claw like pincers is for the switches so use the end with the triangular basket ends that can go under the bottom edges of the keycap you want removed and lift it off the top of its switch. Having these keys out of the way will make it easier to access the tiny screw with the tiny screwdriver. 2. Be careful not to lose orientation as you remove and set down the keycaps since it's impossible to tell which way looks correct by touch. They're perfectly square with nothing indicating which side should go at the top. 3. Feel the area just at the bottom left corner of the top right key switch housing and you'll find the tiny screw. Unscrew this and you'll then be able to remove the underlying small square tray. This exposes the contacts needed for the knob housing. Be very careful not to lose that tiny screw. 4. Now, it's possible to pop out the tray beneath the switch housing for the key in the top right corner. Once that's done, the real fun begins. 5. You have to put the knob housing in the top right corner with the hole for the screw facing down and left so it lines up with the tiny hole. You can then put the tiny screw in the more obvious hole and use the tiny screwdriver to tighten it well thereby securing the knob housing in place. 6. Finally, select either the short or tall knob and push it down onto the round nib on top of the knob housing you just inserted until it snaps in. I would recommend the low profile knob. It's more stable and will work with the folio if you choose to get that. Even if you don't, the shorter knob is far less likely to break off. While this procedure is conceptually simple, the tiny screw and parts made it somewhat stressful to actually do. I hope never to need to do that again. I was left feeling like I passed some sort of mechanical keyboard enthusiast's right of passage with sanity intact. My reward for this, aside from the knob being ready for use, was a small quantity of keyboarder's pride. perhaps, enough to fill a tiny screw hole, I can't say I've gained much in terms of added functionality. Each click of the knob raises or lowers the volume by a small discreet amount. This isn't like turning an analog knob. It behaves exactly the same as the f11 and f12 down/up volume keys or the volume buttons on your iPhone. The knob can be turned infinitely past the lowest or highest possible volume range. I tried using AI apps, but ultimately gave up on this approach. You'll need someone with sight to be certain you've put back your keycaps properly orientated. Looking back, I'd have to recommend leaving the knob and wireless dongle alone unless you're using something other than an iPhone or iPad. It's not worth the stress.

Performance and Typing Feel:

This keyboard is by far the best I've ever experienced in every way. The Blush silent switches are easy to press and have a bit of bounce to them. I'm a heavy typer and the majority of noise I made came from my strokes "bottoming out", as it's called in typing circles. These switches sacrifice a couple of millimetres of key travel to cushion the bottom and top of the switch so that the impact at both ends is lessened. The bottoms of the keycaps don't actually contact the board before the padding absorbs some of the shock. You can still hear the taps, but they're muted. It's like there was a sheet of rubber preventing the plastic on metal contact. Just for thoroughness, I removed one of these silent switches and installed one of the brown switches I ordered in case I really didn't like the silent ones. The result was a frankly disappointingly slight barely detectable tactile bump and a notable click resulting from my stroke bottoming out. Nowhere near as loud as it is on my Air75 V2, but still there. You'd certainly notice it in a classroom, library or other quiet work environment. What Nuphy has done internally has made a big difference regardless of which switch type you go with. There's much less of a clack even with the noisier brown switch. However, for truly unobtrusive typing, go for the blush switches when choosing the set which will be installed on your keyboard. You'll have a premium typing experience and you'll give the gift of much appreciated quiet to everyone in your vicinity. You can always change them later if you like. It's tedious work and you risk screwing up the orientation of your keycaps if you can't see what you're doing, but it's certainly doable. Besides silicone pads, Nuphy has also installed a gasket mount to improve typing feel and acoustics. Gasket mounting provides cushioning between the keyboard case and the PCB which absorbs shock and reduces flex. All these things add up to a palpable difference in sound and typing feel compared to my Air75 V2 keyboard. The connectivity difference is also tremendous. On my last keyboard, I would always have to check for occasional missed keystrokes. On this new one, I have yet to experience even one missed stroke. I keep checking for them and not finding any. Also, there doesn't seem to be any lag whatsoever. Responses to navigation and other commands happen instantly. When it comes to battery life, I tend to keep my keyboards charged up as a general rule. However, I have no particular reason, other than real world conditions being different than lab conditions, to doubt Nuphy's claim of 1200 hours with RGB lighting fully turned off. Real world results will vary. Especially when you can't tell for certain that the lighting is off completely. It's possible to check the charge level using the battery widget which you can add to the "Today view" on your iPhone. For sighted people, lighting along the sides of the keyboard reports battery charge and other things like connection status. Blind users can get at all of that information somewhat less conveniently by visiting various areas of iOS.

Special Key Commands:

For iOS users, there are a number of useful commands. The function keys offer the ability to summon spotlight search with the F4 key. Also, there are a set of multimedia keys. The F7, F8 and F9 keys skip backwards, play/pause and skip forwards multimedia tracks like music. The F8 key can also serve as the magic tap which does context-sensitive things like answer or end calls. The F11 and F12 keys decrease or increase volume. The key to the right of F12 takes a screen shot. In addition to those, there are the special commands made available by the FN key. This key is the second key to the right of the space bar. Holding down this key and pressing the arrow keys will change your RGB lighting. There are numerous modes which are cycled through with the left and right arrows. Turn off the lighting by holding down the FN key and tapping the down arrow ten or more times. The function keys will become actual function keys labelled F1 through F12. Holding down FN and hitting the numbers 1 through 4 will switch between up to four connected devices. F4 is for the wireless dongle or for what you've connected directly using the USB C cable. The other slots are for any other Bluetooth devices. Hold the keys down for over four seconds to put the keyboard in pairing mode for the slot you want to assign. Go into Bluetooth settings on your iPhone and you'll see the ready slot as something like "Nuphy Air75 V3-1", which would indicate slot 1 is ready to pair. Double tap the item on your iPhone and a pairing attempt will be made. A dialogue should pop up and you need to flick right and double tap on the "pair" button. There are likely more commands which I have yet to learn about. Even more customization and macro commands are possible for Windows and Mac users. However, these will get you started using it with your iPhone or iPad in fine style.

The Folio:

For less than $40, the folio designed for this keyboard is well worth getting. The keyboard magnetically attaches to a section at the bottom of the folio when it's unfolded. That's the functional reason for the steel plate in the base of the keyboard. I'm told that it also looks cool. This bottom section of the folio has small indentations for the rubber feet on the bottom of the keyboard to go into. The magnetic force is strong enough to keep the keyboard in place but not ridiculous when you want to take it out of the folio. Once the keyboard is attached to this section, you can protect your keyboard during travel by folding the remaining two sections down over the top and around beneath the base section. This will provide excellent protection spreading any impact over the keys rather than having the force concentrate at the point of impact. The aluminium sides of the keyboard are left exposed. However, they're solid enough that this isn't a concern. Magnets in the folio sections hold it securely closed. There's much more to this flat folding folio. The top sections are made with fold seams and magnets which offer a few more capabilities. It can be configured to provide a steeply sloped stand for phones or tablets. This is kept balanced by the top sections folding into a kind of triangular tent behind the stand surface behind the keyboard. Alternatively, it is possible to reverse fold these sections so that instead of a stand, there's a contained cockpit shaped area in front of the keyboard. Had I discovered this a little earlier, I might not have spent ten minutes searching for that tiny screw which rolled off the table where I installed the knob. The sheltered area would also prevent anybody not standing directly behind you from seeing what you were doing on your iPhone. The area is triangular and likely wouldn't fit flat objects with footprints much bigger than a large smartphone. It's a bit enough area to fit a power bank or other small items you might need while working. Sighted people might use it to keep pens from rolling away. This configuration would work well as a stand for larger tablets which would be held up by the triangular edges. This would provide a somewhat less steep viewing angle. Note that you would need to work on a solid surface to make any use of these stand configurations. The fold behind the keyboard would allow the stand or cockpit area to hand down uselessly if unsupported from beneath. The folio can also fold into a cushion for the keyboard which makes it more comfortable to use on your lap or further dampen keystrokes if used on a desk. The rubbery surface is smooth but surprisingly grippy. It can fold so the exterior rubbery surface is outward which works well on a table or desk. Alternatively, the interior fabric can be exposed on the bottom. I find this to be more comfortable on my lap.

Conclusion:

Even with savings for preordering my keyboard, I still ended up paying over $200 Canadian when you include the folio. In retrospect, I should have picked up some extra Blush silent switches and perhaps some extra keycaps. I plan to stick with this keyboard for the long term. It does everything I want a keyboard to do and feels absolutely marvellous to type on. Some might find it counterintuitive to use a one and a half pound foot-long keyboard to type on a pocket computer weighing seven ounces. For shorter excursions I tend to agree. For those wanting a more portable keyboard, I would direct people to the Protoarc XK04 folding keyboard. It's not larger or heavier than a pocket paper notebook. You need a solid surface beneath it and it has its quirks, but it gets the job done. While out and about, with dictation as a ready alternative, this is quite adequate. However, for more lengthy serious writing, I'm happy to make room for and carry the Nuphy Air75 V3. With its spacious layout, comfortable quiet typing, sturdy build, stupendously long battery life and reliable connectivity, it's an accessory that is well worth its price, weight and bulk. A well built absolute delight to type on.