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Aug 26, 2023

KBDcraft Kit Adam review: My first mechanical keyboard is made of Lego

I'm new to the mechanical keyboard world, and my first experience involved

I'm new to the mechanical keyboard world, and my first experience involved putting together a kit made up of Lego-like pieces. And it was a blast!

One night I was scrolling through my TikTok feed, and I saw a promotional video for something I absolutely wanted to buy. It was a mechanical keyboard kit called the KBDcraft Kit Adam, and while the product name wasn't the most catchy, I was almost immediately sold.

This all-in-one kit lets you put a casing together on your own using Lego-like bricks, and then you snap together your keycaps and switches onto the PCB core board. Despite my years of experience reviewing traditional productivity-focused keyboards, I've never seen anything like this before, and I've certainly never put together my own keyboard from scratch.

However, I quickly discovered how fun building your own mechanical keyboard could be. Being a fan of Lego and a technology enthusiast, this keyboard kit combined two of my favorite things into one fun weekend experience.

KBDcraft Kit Adam is a 60% custom mechanical keyboard with a Lego-like brick-built casing. The full kit includes the casing, keycaps, USB-C cable, switches, pre-lubed stabilizers, keycaps, and PCB board.

Pros

Cons

Easy and fun to put together

Lays flat on the desk

RGB lighting is highly customizable

Moves around too much

Sounds and performs great

No batteries/requires wired cable

The KBDcraft Kit Adam isn't your typical mechanical keyboard. You have to purchase it through the KBDcraft store. A full kit costs $99 and includes all the parts to make the full keyboard, including the pieces for the brick-built casing, the keycaps, the USB-C cable, the switches, the stabilizers, and the PCB board. The base kit only includes the PCB board, USB-C Cable, and stabilizers, but it doesn't have keycaps, but it costs nearly $40 less. All kits come with instructions.

The keyboard is designed by a cross-tech studio that develops and innovates tools and electronic gadgets into new forms. The campaign launched in July 2021 with the announcement of the first prototype, and the product launched in September 2022. The company is based in Shanghai, so unless you live nearby, you can expect shipping to take a while (mine took about a month).

The best part of the KBDcraft Kit Adam is building the casing. It's clearly designed for those who are mechanical keyboard beginners and want to learn about the building process. I do want to be clear that t his is NOT an official Lego product. Rather, the kit uses non-branded Lego-like imitation bricks. KBDcraft mentions in its product listings that it plans to sell different color casings in the future, but you can use actual Lego bricks to customize it if you want.

Anyway, Lego-like step-by-step instructions are included for how to build out the casing for the keyboard. It's quite simple. There's a large flat plate, as well as a secondary plate that can extend the keyboard out to a reasonable size for typing. You start by connecting the plates together with smaller bricks and building on top of them till you get a wall-like structure. After you get to a certain point, it's suggested to switch over to building the PCB board, which you'll insert into the top of the open case and then cover up with taller bricks and smooth white plates.

Building this casing was similar to putting together an official Lego set.

As a fan of Lego, building this casing was similar to putting together an official Lego set. The pieces are a bit softer than Lego's (KBDcraft notes that the materials help with the overall acoustics of the product) but still snap together nicely. I spent the bulk of my time on this step, as I sorted the bricks by color and shape, and size to speed up my building process. The full brick-based part of the build took less than 20 minutes. If you're worried about durability, the casing seemed pretty tough, standing up against me applying pressure with my palms when complete.

While I am familiar with putting together Lego sets, I wasn't familiar at all with putting together keyboards before I picked up the KBDcraft Kit Adam. Luckily, the included instructions made the process of building my first mechanical keyboard easy.

It begins with putting together the main board. You add the stabilizers to the plastic top sheeting and place the PCB board into the casing, followed by the padded rubber sheet and the completed plastic sheeting. It all comes together as one piece in the end.

I had trouble snapping the stabilizers into the plastic sheeting, but I am thankful that the stabilizer came pre-lubed. Putting together the stabilizer into that plastic sheeting required some patience, especially with properly looping the metal stabilizer bar under the sheet and clipping the sides into place. My dad was watching me put the keyboard together and offered some help when I expressed concerns.

I think more die-hard keyboard enthusiasts might have wanted to build and lube that stabilizer on their own. However, as a beginner, it helped with my eagerness to finish my build and was one less daunting thing to worry about. This part took me about 10 minutes, after dealing with the stabilizer issues.

Who knew that building a keyboard would be like building a Lego set? That's exactly what I told myself as I moved on to the final steps in the building process. In this step, I snapped the switches into place on the PCB board — no soldering or tools necessary. I heard a satisfying clicking noise as I clicked the switches onto the board, similar to clicking together Lego bricks. Little did I know, though, that the pins on the switches are quite fragile, and I might have pressed them too hard.

Since I've never seen the inner workings of a keyboard before, I thought that the switches looked pretty cool with two prongs on the bottom end, similar to an outlet. But the rookie mistake I made was pressing the switches too hard onto the board. It ended up bending the pins, and when I went to test things out (as suggested by KBDcraft) several switches registered no input. I panicked, but a quick trip to Reddit told me I could use tweezers to bend back the switches. That did the trick, and I was ready for the next step, inserting keycaps.

Who knew that building a keyboard would be like building a Lego set?

The process of putting in the keycaps was also fun. Sorting them out in the keyboard layout and snapping them into the switches took me a good 20 minutes. Fixing the bent pins took another 10 minutes.

The entire build (counting my issues) took me about 2 hours. When I finished, I not only was proud of my work, but I was so happy to type on it. The KBDcraft Kit Adam is a great mechanical keyboard. KBDcraft uses Linear POM switches, with a traveling force of 3.6mm, pre-travel of 1.5mm, and an operation force of 40gf. The lifecycle is rated for 60 million cycles. When typing on it, the keycaps make a great clicking noise, similar to what's heard in the Lego video games whenever an item is being put together. There's no bottoming out, things don't feel too hollow, and I am easily able to speed my way through typing. In fact, I hit a 78-word-per-minute speed in a Bing.com typing test, proving how accurate this keyboard can be. I was also happy to see that KBDcraft included both Windows and Mac-friendly keycaps.

And yes, this is a wired keyboard, although I am curious if the case can be modified to accommodate a battery. Otherwise, I'm fine with the included coiled USB-C cable. It's a nice red color, and looks great on my desk. As for customizing the keyboard, you have total control over the RGB lighting effects. KBDcraft uses Val to let you customize the lighting and change the layout. The software works on macOS, Windows, and even Linux.

I do have a couple of nitpicks. The keyboard sits flat, which KBDcraft says is on purpose to create a better acoustic performance. That means there aren't any bottom feet. The bottom surface is smooth, so the keyboard will move around a lot if you don't use a desk mat. KBDcraft sells a cork work mat for this keyboard, and I regret not buying it. I ordered one from Amazon, but it has yet to arrive. I'm also disappointed that this is a compact, tenkeyless keyboard with no function keys, requiring you to program shortcuts instead. There are other compact keyboards like the Logitech MX Mechanical Mini that are around the same size and still have function keys.

You should buy KBDcraft Kit Adam if:

You shouldn't buy KBDcraft Kit Adam if:

The building experience makes this mechanical keyboard easy to recommend, especially if you're a fan of building Lego sets. It doesn't require any extra tools, so all you have to do is snap the pieces in place. While I wasn't a fan of how this sat flat on a desk or how it moved around, it was still great to use, with a tactile, clicky feel. Regardless, I'm satisfied with my purchase and am proud of my new daily driver keyboard, which I can pair with my laptop when plugged into a monitor.

KBDcraft Kit Adam is a 60% custom mechanical keyboard with a Lego-like brick-built casing. The full kit includes the casing, keycaps, USB-C cable, switches, pre-lubed stabilizers, keycaps, and PCB board.

I have over six years of experience covering Microsoft, Surface, Windows, macOS and ChromeOS news and rumors for sites like Digital Trends and OnMSFT. I also write laptop reviews and how-to guides. I am a Microsoft fan and I have a drawer full of PCs and other devices. You can follow and interact with me on Twitter if you want to chat! I'm always there making new friends!