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8bitdo Xbox themed m+kb

8bitdo is one of the better budget-ish China based peripheral manufacturers in that they've been around long enough that (unlike a LOT ) of their competitors or just random Taobao/Aliexpress sales, their quality is reasonably consistent. Many in the same sphere that have low prices have inconsistent quality at best, while others that are more expensive and tend to stack their product pages with specs that look great on paper but the real world experience tends to differ . For instance, many "electromagnetic/hall effect" stick based controllers; users who only know that "hall effect is better than potentiometer, they don't drift" end up buying but find that a cheap hall effect mechanism may have crappy accuracy and other issues from the start. 8bitdo to their credit seems to avoid most of these issues and, combined with making their products available on Amazon as well as their own store, they seem to have a decent following. They've branched out both in terms of the styles of products themselves - the keyboards like you mention are a relatively newer phenomena - and licenses/collaborations with other companies, allowing them to make officially certified peripherals. They make a wide variety of gamepads/controllers in varied retro-inspired styles and color patterns, adapters to use your newcontrollers on older consoles, mice/keyboards, DIY conversion kits, and a host of odds and ends. They also have a selection of limited edition item variants which, unlike the majority of their products, are often sold only directly via their eShop as opposed to Amazon and the like. These tend to be numbered and started with the Famicom 40th Anniversary controller, 8bitdo's 10 year anniversary controller, gold/silver colored metal-constructed versions of one of their gamepads for 11th anniversary, and recently a keyboard commemorating the Sega Saturn 30th Anniversary that's part of the same series as the Xbox one.

The Xbox keyboard is pretty neat, putting aside the mild unease thinking of an Xbox as old enough to be "classic/retro" heh. Its layout and features are very similar to other keyboards that 8bitdo offers - TKL layout, mechanical hotswap, wireless 2.4g dongle + Bluetooth + wired, MDA-shaped MX compatible keycaps etc. The Xbox version has some differences compared to the Saturn, Famicom, NES, C64 and others in that its both officially Xbox certified and has the Xbox button, instead of the Kailh Box White V2 (which for those who are not aware, are good switches but one of the louder of the 'clicky' types; of course you can swap them so its not an issue really), they're Kailh Jellyfish which are also loud 'clicky' box-type Kailh switches, but fully translucent which is probably chosen because of the other major feature - RGB backlighting! As far as I'm aware the other 8BitDo keyboards lacked any backlighting , but this Xbox one does compared with the signature Xbox green translucent keycaps. The caps are ABS which is a little disappointing compared to the PBT on their other keyboards, but its probably to get the translucency at the price points they wanted to meet. As far as the price, the $115 seems reasonable enough considering its feature set, though some will suggest that it should be quite a bit lower given that you can find many similarly spec'd keyboards cheaper, but I am betting the aesthetics and the 8BitDo reputation is worth it to some. I'm curious to see a new mouse. In the past 8BitDo had a mouse that was NES-themed with Nintendo style buttons instead of traditional mouse button layouts and a DPad instead of thumb buttons. It seems they've iterated with the R8 mouse with both the Xbox theming but a more traditional and ambidextrous layout, putting the two side buttons on each side in the colors of the Xbox face buttons, similar to the arrow keys on the keyboard itself. Wireless, capable of charging using the dock etc...not sure how great a mouse it will be but the price is reasonable and the aesthetic is on point if matched with the Xbox keyboard.

Oh, the "big buttons" seem to be a thing that 8bitdo has done for awhile since they started making keyboards. They're just as you said, big ass programmable buttons with various game console aesthetics - meant to be extra macro buttons or for more tactile play, such as one of the other keyboard variants shows playing one of the Taiko No Tatsujin drumming music games using them. They connect via TRRS style jacks (I think) and each keyboard can support up to 4 of them - there's even a retro style joystick that I think was released around the C64 keyboard era - https://shop.8bitdo.com/products/8bitdo-keyboard-extensions?variant=44141790101681 . So yeah its just an added option macro button. I

n any event, it seems that 8BitDo will only keep moving forward with these sorts of projects if recieved favorably, which is a nice thing to see. They're not perfect - I'm a little disappointed that many of their controllers and keyboards that have any sort of Ultimate software or profiles seem to require a proprietary, Windows only utility (there is a separate only firmware utility for Mac in addition) which is disappointing but I admit its a more niche concern. Overall, they seem to be one of the more reliable 3rd party semi-budget options for peripherals and their expansion into KB/M is at least another nice option.
 
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