Introduction

Varmilo has been quietly making waves locally in Asia, and impressed me greatly with its take on different themed keyboards the company goes into a lot of detail with. Take the MA87M Beijing Opera or the MA108 Forest Fairy keyboards, for example, whereby not only is there a consistent theme across the keycaps, the packaging and accessories, and the case, but there is also a specific texture applied to the case material allowing them to be a multi-sensory experience. The company is still doing new themes, but also found time to bring out a brother brand (yes, they call it as much) called Shurikey Gear which is more fun and accessible to those on a budget. I was waiting to see what’s next from Varmilo and the company answered in the form of a new 65% keyboard series called Minilo.

At the time of this review there are multiple different SKUs in the new Varmilo Minilo series and there are different themes planned too. All of them take inspiration from Italian Painter Giorgio Morandi, whose works also helped bring out other keyboard/keycap products such as the Akko Silent series. This particular theme is called the Minilo Eucalyptus and it comes in three options—wired-only + hot-swappable switches, wired + Bluetooth dual mode, and wired/2.4 GHz/Bluetooth triple mode + hot-swap. The last set is clearly the most expensive of the lot and also has per-key RGB backlighting as opposed to the white lighting the others get, and there are also different switch options depending on whether you get the hot-swappable switch feature or not. Today we will examine the Varmilo Minilo Eucalyptus dual mode version that uses Varmilo’s own electrostatic capacitive switches that have to be soldered onto the keyboard but give you Bluetooth connectivity in return. Thanks to Varmilo for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp, and we begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below!

Specifications