THE BEST MECHANICAL KEYBOARD?? Ducky One 3 Mini Review

Mechanical keyboards are something that I’m fairly picky about – the experience of using one comes a lot down to personal preference, and while there are objectively good and bad features and designs, the subjective experience often overshadows those points. I’m generally not one for shaming anyone for their preferences, if you genuinely enjoy using a £10 membrane keyboard, then more power to ya. But this, the Ducky One 3 Mini… This is undeniably one of, if not the best mechanical keyboard I’ve used. It’s not jam-packed full of features like the Wooting Two, but as far as a premium quality everyday use board… This is just phenomenal.

The One 3 comes in 4 sizes, I have the smallest 60% style here, although you can get a 65%, TKL and full size options too if you’d rather. It equally comes in 4 colour schemes too, this is the Daybreak version, although you can get it in Yellow, Fuji and Matcha. All of the options feature hot-swappable key switches – by default you can pick from a range of Cherry MX switches although as far as I’m aware any Cherry-style switch with the same pin layout will fit just fine. You even get both keycap and switch pullers in the box – Ducky branded of course – alongside the detachable USB C cable with its incredibly cute Ducky silicone cable tie. Nice little details like that definitely add to the premium feel for me.

I have the Cherry MX Black switches – a switch I’ve personally managed to miss out on until now. These are the newer 100 million stroke lifespan versions too, and I must admit I am really liking them. Normally I can’t stand linear switches, and I don’t know that these have exactly converted me or anything, but the combination of the genuinely premium feeling keycaps, the solid build quality and the incredibly soft tying feel from Ducky’s special sauce, make me really enjoy these both for typing and gaming.

The special sauce here is really rather impressive, but to understand why you’ll have to listen to this while typing…

See what I mean? It’s practically silent! It has a nice, somewhat gentle, tactile click to it. Not loud enough to register to anyone else, and probably not even on a mic if you are streaming, but enough to enjoy while typing away on it. The silence of course does come in part from the linear switches here – even this black magic won’t silence a blue style switch, but it should go a long way to it not sounding like a cheap clack. The premium sound (and feel) comes from Ducky’s use of both an EVA foam pad under the PCB, and what they call “Q-Bounce pads” built into the PCB. They are made from 17 different types of rubber, and act as cushions for the switches to both dampen the typing force and quieten the switches. These combine into one of the most quality feeling typing experiences I think I’ve ever had. It’s hard for me to put into words how good this feels, but I’ll say this: it’s going to be hard for me to switch back to my standard board.

The doubleshot PBT keycaps definitely help that feeling too, with their slight frosted texture giving even sweaty hands a decent amount of grip without being actively coarse and uncomfortable. They are using a very legible font on the keys, with ninja-printing for the secondary functions on this 60% layout. The only not I have on the caps is that unfortunately they don’t have any level of transparency, so while the board does have RGB lighting behind the keys, you only get between-key lighting, not backlit keys so using this in the dark isn’t quite as user-friendly. Personally I’m not so bothered, with the only issue I have more being that this is a 60% board and I don’t like having stuff like the arrow keys be a secondary function, but it’s fine.

Speaking of the layout, like I said this is a 60% board, although you can get it as a 65% that’s basically the same size, save for a single extra row of keys on the right which allows the arrow keys, delete, page up and page down to get their own dedicated keys. I think that’s probably the better board for me to have personally, although the lack of things like function keys, Home and End might end up driving me mad too. Luckily if I was that desperate I could just buy the TKL – or more likely for me the full size – instead, although as far as 60% boards go this is easily, easily my favourite.

Of course playing some games on it is an enjoyable experience. I do like linear switches for games, they make me feel just a little lighter on my digital feet, a little faster to react, more of a hair-trigger. I feel just a touch more like a pro gamer, at least for the first few seconds until I see an enemy and get absolutely wasted… Anyway, the keyboard is great!

And if you don’t end up liking whatever Cherry MX switch you buy, or like anyone who gets into mechanical keyboards ends up spending weeks hand lubing your switch of choice, you can swap them in without any tools that don’t come with the board. On top of that, the price tag this sits at really isn’t too bad. It’s not cheap for sure, but considering many of the big name brand options are coming in at £150 to £250, the between £120 and £173 (for the full size) doesn’t seem to bad, especially since this is the sort of board I could imagine outliving me with some switch replacements over the years.

So, in short, I really like this board. It has legitimately exceeded my expectations, and feels like a truly premium typing feel. While this 60% layout might not be daily-driver material for me personally, it’s a board that won’t go far and might even find its way into my travel bag because hot damn this is good. As always I’ll be leaving an affiliate link to this in the description, specifically to OverclockersUK who sent this over for me to take a look at. I can definitely recommend this – if you can afford it definitely give it a look the next time you are shopping for a keyboard!