The prebuilt keyboard market is filled with a lot of compelling boards at both budget and ultra-premium price points. While the budget ones leave out a lot of features in the name of cost-cutting, the premium offerings with features like gasket mounting and hefty aluminum chassis demand a prohibitive price tag. There’s a distinct lack of reliable keyboards in the mid-range space offering a good mix of features at a palatable price point, and that’s exactly what Varmilo hopes to change with the new Muse65 Hall Effect keyboard.
Varmilo is a popular name in the keyboard space with a bunch of excellent keyboards in its catalog, and its new Muse65 HE keyboard, which it debuted earlier this year at Computex 2024, is now available to purchase for $159. I’ve been using it as my primary keyboard for both work and gaming over the last few weeks, and I’m here to tell you all about it. Head below for a closer look and my hands-on experience.
Review: Varmilo Muse65 HE keyboard with magnetic switches
The first thing you need to know about the Muse65 is that it’s a well-built keyboard and it both looks and feels more premium than what its price tag may suggest. The build quality here is just as good — if not better — than even some custom boards I have in my collection from the likes of Mode Keyboards, Drop, and more. What’s also great about the Muse65 HE is the addition of novel gaming features, putting it in the same ballpark as the boards from Wooting and the likes. That, in addition to things like an aluminum plate, silicone paddings and wraps for soft typing and sound consistency, etc., makes this a great keyboard for both gaming and a satisfying typing experience.
Varmilo Muse65 HE features at a glance
- Layout: 65% ANSI
- 67 keys
- Full CNC metal case
- Typing angle: 6.5-degree
- Keycaps: PBT bye-sub, Cherry profile
- Switch: Gateron Magnetic White
- Connectivity: Wired
- Lighting: RGB
- Dimensions: 14.1 x 6.6 x 2.7 inches
- Weight: 4.07 pounds (184g approx.)
- Features: Hall effect switches, Rapid trigger functionality, dynamic keystrokes, 0.2 low latency connection
- Price: $159
Build quality and feel
I plan on using the Varmilo Muse65 HE as my main keyboard even after writing this review and one of the main reasons for that is its build quality. I love using using keyboards with solid build quality and this one looks and feels just as premium as some other expensive ones I have in my collection, thanks to its full CNC-machined aluminum alloy case. It’s got a nice weight to it and the metal case also helps with the acoustics, making it sound more deeper than an average board with a plastic build.
The Varmilo Muse65 also has layers of silicone sound dampening, further helping produce a lovely deep or “poppy” sound, as the enthusiasts would call it. You’ll also find an aluminum positioning plate inside the Muse65’s chassis and it’s coupled with silicone paddings and wraps to complement the tray mount. It would’ve been nice to see gasket mounting for this keyboard as it allows for a significantly better and more comfortable typing experience, but I like what Varmilo has done here with the silicone paddings and wraps to ensure the tray mount assembly doesn’t take too much away from the typing experience.
Lastly, the Gateron Magnetic White switches on this keyboard are topped off with some dye-sub PBT keycaps which feel great to type on. My review unit came in the Sakura Pink colorway with matching keycaps to go with the whole Sakura theme, but there are four more similarly advanced designs available on Amazon.
Hall Effect chip, Rapid Trigger, Dynamic Keystroke, and more
The Muse65 HE is a wired mechanical keyboard with a Hall Effect PCB produced in-house by Varmilo, and it’s topped with Gateron’s Magnetic switches. While this limits the type of switches you can use on this board considering the selection of magnetic switches is quite slim compared to mechanical switches, it has its own advantages, especially for gamers. Just like other magnetic switch keyboards from the likes of Wooting, the Muse65 HE also lets you freely adjust the actuation point of each switch, allowing you to truly customize your experience. You can either set up the keyboard to have extremely rapid inputs for gaming or tweak it to have deeper presses suitable for coding and typing. It also has input latency as low as 0.2ms, which is great for gaming and is on par with many other modern gaming keyboards out there.
The software experience, however, leaves a bit to be desired. While the keyboard itself is compatible with both Windows and macOS, the driver used to customize the keystrokes and other aspects of the switches is only available on Windows. That’s not a deal-breaker considering most gamers using this for gaming would be on Windows over macOS, but it would’ve been nice if the web driver was available at launch instead of arriving later this year in October. That being said, the software on Windows to customize various aspects of the keyboard works very well and it even lets you choose the UI interface that matches your keyboard theme. Here’s a quick list of customization options the HE driver offers:
- Supports 4 custom layers
- Supports customization of multimedia/RGB/macro keys, etc.
- Supports custom range, minimum accuracy 0.02mm
- Supports RT and DKS
- Supports dead zone adjustment, minimum 0 dead zone
- Supports bottoming protection
- Supports manual calibration buttons, no need to calibrate all
- Supports real-time display of key parameters
- Supports theme switching, language selection, delay mode switching, polling rate switching, driver firmware update, etc.
Price
Varmilo’s Muse65 HE costs $159 shipped. While it may not be the most affordable keyboard on the market, it’s priced fairly, in my opinion, especially for the kind of experience it delivers. It’s priced a lot better than many other high-end offerings on the market that cost upwards of $300, while also delivering a good mix of features and a solid build quality to match. It’s not without its flaws considering the Hall Effect PCB limits the switches you can use with it while also offering overall customizability in terms of the typing feel and sound, but none of those are deal-breakers considering it’s priced well.
Not to mention, the Muse65 also has a lot of useful features for the price, making it that much easier to recommend. The addition of magnetic switches opens it up to a wide range of users yearning for a good gaming keyboard with Rapid Trigger and other features. Also, the sturdy build, beautiful design, and comfortable typing experience round up the experience for others who are simply looking for a good keyboard to type on.
Buy the Varmilo Muse65 HE keyboard
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