Introduction

Taiwan-based peripherals brand Ducky has had an interesting few years. It’s impressed consistently with keyboards for many years since inception, especially by offering novel designs and support for less-common form factors at a time when it was all black box keyboards in TKL/full-size. Ducky was also among the first, if not the very first, to come up with seam-less legends in doubleshot injected legends which made its PBT keycap sets and keyboards all the more popular among the mechanical keyboard enthusiasts. Add to this the use of new and uncommon switches and you can see why we’ve always been wanting to cover Ducky products. That said, I did notice that the recent few years have been quieter than usual with no more limited edition Chinese zodiac keyboards and increased competition from Chinese brands threatening to take over the market. As such, I was happy to visit Ducky at Computex this year and see what the brand had planned. There was a lot to see and yet one thing caught my eye almost immediately—ProjectD.

ProjectD can be considered as a new keyboard platform from Ducky with no doubt different entries planned. There are currently two such versions—the ProjectD Tinker 65 which uses a plastic case and comes either as a pre-assembled keyboard or a barebones kit, or the subject of today’s keyboard build called the ProjectD Outlaw 65. This is a 65% form factor keyboard using an aluminium case and only comes as a barebones kit. In fact, it’s so bare in bones that you get individual parts and instructions to build your own keyboard. It’s a similar experience to the Wind Sin65 we recently saw except this time you have to assemble the case as well. This can be a fun project, hence the name, for many but others may not want to go through this when there are pre-assembled kits/keyboards available. Think of the ProjectD Outlaw 65 as something you’d do when the thrill of building your PC has left you wanting more and now you get the idea. Thanks to Ducky for providing a sample of the ProjectD Outlaw 65 in addition to switches and keycaps as we begin this new keyboard build which also features Cherry’s brand new MX2A switches!