Introduction

If you asked me to name one company in the keyboard space that I was really excited about, it would probably be Akko. The Chinese peripheral brand has been growing from strength to strength in the past couple of years, having ditched all “borrowed” keycap designs in favor of original concepts, coming out with premium DIY keyboard kits, growing its own in-house developed switches, and even obtaining licensed IP to come out with new and interesting themed keyboard designs, all while retaining its core attraction of value for money. Indeed, every single Akko review to date has featured a new design and there are more featured in our “Building a Keyboard” series too! A lot of these reviews were based on an older base keyboard that did need some updating to keep up with newer keyboard releases, and Akko did just that as seen in the review of the impressive 3098B series. Today we examine a latest gen Akko 5108S keyboard thanks to Mechkeys having kindly provided a review sample to TechPowerUp!

As with every other Akko keyboard, the last three digits in the keyboard number represent the number of keys of the product. As such, this 5108S unit is a full-size keyboard with 108 keys in the US ANSI layout. We also notice the unique theme of yellow and white employed here, which is relatable to most folks here as representing the whites and yolks of eggs—specifically, one particular lazy egg called Gudetama. It’s a Japanese cartoon character that’s become extremely popular in east Asian for its proclivity towards procrastination, as well as various difficulties surviving modern-day life—there’s even a recently released Netflix show worth the watch! As such, note that this particular keyboard review will cover both the base 5108S keyboard experience in addition to how well, or not, Akko has implemented the Gudetama license. We begin our coverage with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications