NES or C64. Which one are you picking?
8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard (N Edition) | Hot swappable | 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth, and wired connection | ‘Super Buttons’ | 200-hour battery life | $99.99 $79.99 at Amazon (save $20)
Already reasonably priced at full MSRP, this TKL keyboard has a great aesthetic, powerful battery life, nice feeling keys, and Super Buttons, which you can program to do simple commands. I use mine as a quick record button so I can slam my fist down after a good play and show it off to friends. They’re perhaps a little less impressed by my quick record function than they are by its look. View Deal
I am currently writing on the C64 version of 8BitDo’s Retro Mechanical Keyboard and, though I’d certainly recommend it to a fan who loves the aesthetic, I wouldn’t pay extra for the privilege.
With the NES-themed version now being $80 on Amazon, which is $20 cheaper, I’d pick that instead.
It’s a mechanical keyboard with hot swappable keys and it comes with a neat little receiver in the back of the keyboard that can be plugged into your rig for 2.4 GHz play. If you don’t mind a little latency, it also comes with a Bluetooth mode.
All of the 8BitDo Retro’s connectivity modes can be changed from a dial up at the top left of the keyboard. As well as this, the 8BitDo Retro has a volume dial and a red ‘Power’ light on the top right and these touches all feel a little extra in a great way.
The 8BitDo Retro keyboard collection commits to its aesthetic really well. Where the C64 one has a rainbow logo at the top and blends browns and greys in the keyboard, the ‘N Edition’, as it’s called, is modelled after an NES. In turn, it has a white base, with splatterings of reds, greys, and blacks.
$80 is a reasonably budget price for a showstopper of a keyboard. The first time I opened mine in the office, it was followed up by a sequence of ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’. The PC Gamer lot is a particularly geeky crowd but it’s easy to see why it appeals to a certain kind of person.
However, this keyboard isn’t just good for its aesthetic. With up to 200 hours of play from a single charge in Bluetooth mode, and a smooth typing feel, I’ve been using its C64 brother for well over a month now and haven’t swapped it with the more expensive keyboards I’ve got lying around. This is partially because of its rather weird ‘Super Buttons’.
Effectively, the Super Buttons are big red switches that you can reprogram to another key or sequence of keys. I have opted to make my left one ‘Windows + Shift + R’ to start or stop a rolling recording. The right one is then ‘Windows + Shift + G’ and it records the last thirty seconds of gameplay. I’ve found this useful as I’ve often forgotten the shortcut to record and missed the timing on really good clips before. Then, two extra programmable buttons on the keyboard itself have just become copy-and-paste keys for easy access.
In my time with the keyboard, I’ve found myself pleasantly surprised by how it feels to use day to day. However, the Super Buttons are definitely quite niche and I found 8BitDo’s own software to be quite restrictive. You don’t need it for the keyboard to function but, if you want to use different profiles, you may struggle to make certain key combinations function.
The biggest difference, outside of the look, between the N Edition and C64 versions of the 8BitDo Retro keyboards is an included ‘Super Stick’. It is effectively a joystick with four possible controls. This means the C64 version gets access to four more programmable keys but I almost never use mine. For $20 less, I’d skip out on that Super Stick, and happily take the NES look, too.
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