BeQuiet Dark Mount – A Personal Review
Wrap Up
Wrap Up
Very rarely is a product worthy of a more personal view. It’s vital to the core business of OC3D that we take everything on its own merits and do all we can to not let personal feelings influence things. Obviously reviewing will always have an amount of personal bias, but that’s exactly it. It’s personal bias. Just because silence is vital for a WFH writer like me doesn’t mean you all care. I know people who, back in the old days, would happily run OG 2000 RPM Delta fans on their rig and not care about the noise. To me any fans above 700 RPM are audible, and above 1000 RPM it becomes annoying. The downside of ears like a bat.
Hence I adore this Be Quiet Dark Mount keyboard for its silence. I need my life to have as little strife from others in the room when I’m writing. This ticks that box in a way that you won’t believe until you heard it. Or, rather, didn’t. Writing thousands of words a day also demands robustness. This is flawless. Not a squeak, flex or wobble. The switches might be hot-swappable, but they also don’t come out of their own accord.
Speaking of the switches, the feel of them is luxurious. I’ve typed on every switch that exists, from the aforementioned rubber keys of a Spectrum 48, through a IBM Model M – which I still own – to membranes, scissors and every variant of a Cherry style mechanical switch invented. The Be Quiet Silent Switches have a silky linearity that beggars belief. It’s like dipping your fingers in honey. They activate lightly and quickly. Everything you want. Fast, accurate, smooth, silent.
Room For Improvement
So it is massively customisable and types like a Rolls Royce. There are only five tiny things that I don’t like. Again, these are personal enough that it wouldn’t suit a review as such, hence this more personal take on the Dark Mount. Firstly the lighting, as mentioned before, needs to have the rainbow setup as a default option and the far left of the speed slider needs to be stop. Not 20%. Being able to adjust things using the media keys and screen is great, but one of the keys needs to be a back button. Waiting for everything to time out to return to the main menu is an odd design choice. I’d also like the media control keys to be screens, even black and white ones, just to swap mute and play whilst retaining the correct symbols.
Speaking of which, the eight Display Keys would be much handier if they supported dual image icons for those toggle setups. If they are determined to replicate a Stream Deck then it would really open up their usability. Lastly the feet. I get what they were going for. By using stacked feet you can have it exactly as high as needed. The trouble is there are 4 places to attach the magnetic feet, and you have eight. So that’s two per spot. Or just 6° of angle. Keyboards normally have 9. You can have 9 degrees by going with three ‘stackable feet’, but that only works on each end.
Normally that’s where feet are, but the Dark Mount has a detachable number pad, so the join requires the extra support feet would provide. In short, if you’re going to give me four places to put feet, give me enough feet in the box to have it at a comfortable angle.
tl;dr
The Be Quiet! Dark Mount is nearly flawless. What sets it apart is how luxuriant the typing experience is, whilst being basically silent. You might think that a regular linear switch keyboard is silent. You might think that keyboards which proclaim to be quiet (ha) are. This Dark Mount isn’t just quiet by mechanical standards, it’s quiet by laptop standards. Everything within my reach, and a keyboard that doesn’t upset those who form the home part of my working from home? Glorious. If you need a quieter life, get this. Trust me.
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