> Mid-price enthusiast players are under the risk of irrelevance from cheaper/better competitors. The higher-end of the market-- the Steelseries, Corsair, Razer, Das Keyboards-- are being perpetually undercut by the Redragons, Akkos, Aulas, and a bunch of AliExpress/Amazon no-names.

To be fair, you get what you pay for - I can’t really justify the fancier options since the cheap ones are good enough (I even occasionally return to my backup Logitech K120 and it’s okay for getting things done), but my daily drivers are Redragon and a bunch of lesser known budget options and they just work. At the same time, I had a case where a particular model (I think it was an older Genesis) developed the issue of the same keys not responding both before and after RMA and in the new keyboard the store sent me, must have been a bad batch/design.

I’ve had some keyboards with Kailh or Outemu switches for years and they’re okay, a bit hit or miss. Then again I have like three mechanical keyboards in total (and since I don’t need one for when I’m in the countryside anymore or office where I got o-rings to make it silent, I treat it as a stockpile of backups) so I’m probably good for years to come.

The more expensive options will buy you a bit more consistency across the board and decrease the risk of just getting a bad product.