WhiteFox Eclipse Mechanical Keyboard Review – Magnetic Assembly, Magically Smooth

This rather pretty thing is the WhiteFox Eclipse, a rather unique mechanical keyboard. There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get straight into it. This is a pretty small board – it’s comparable to around 65% boards, with no function keys row, number pad, and a condensed set of action keys on the right. While I won’t go into the impressively deep lore surrounding the BrownFox and original WhiteFox boards, this WhiteFox Eclipse is a slight departure from the previous designs with a fixed layout. What you see here is all you get – although I should note that in the incredibly premium box you do get a bunch of extra keycaps, primarily to allow you to convert between MacOS and Windows layouts (with Windows being the default out-of-the-box setup), although some nice WhiteFox system keycaps are included, alongside these vibrant blue arrow and escape caps as alternatives to the default all-white layout. 

By far the biggest change is that this is now a bluetooth board. You can connect this to up to three devices, switching between them using FN and Q, W or E. The built in 4000 mAh battery – which is pretty easy to get at to replace it you need to by the way – can power it for ages, and it’s easy to charge up with the included USB C port on the top too. You can use the board wired too, including while charging. You hear that Apple? None of that stupid magic mouse nonsense here! Anyway, the board is running QMK as its firmware of choice, on an STM32F103 specifically, and uses an FR5082DM chip for Bluetooth 5.0 BLE support. That does mean you can use VIA to customise the board, and there’s a lot to cover here. Now the default second layer – which you access from the FN key on the right – gives you function keys from the number row, RGB controls on the lower right letters, media controls on the arrow keys, and even print screen on Insert, plus hitting FN plus TAB will switch over to the Mac profile. 

The magic of QMK is that not only do you have the usual set-keys type options, but you have 10 layers available here, which you can either momentarily access – like the FN key already does for layer 1, or fully toggle between. That means should you want to implement, say, a partial number pad while leaving the left side of the keyboard as-is for your very specific workload or game, you can with no problems. It’s really easy to get your head around, and tweak to your heart’s content. You can also customise the RGB profile from VIA too.

Speaking of the RGB, this has south-facing surface mount RGB LEDs that shine through the frosted finish on the Gateron Yellow switches that, at least at the time of filming, are the only option when buying one of these boards. The keycaps, however, are not shine through, and personally this is a trend I’m not a big fan of. For me the purpose of a keyboard backlight is to be able to see the keys – even in the dark – and this doesn’t allow for that. It does look nice with the lights off, and as they say on the website, it’s very “office safe” RGB. This wouldn’t be an eye-sore in an office setting. 

It equally wouldn’t be a pain on your coworker’s ears either, as Alpaca have put an awful lot of thought into how the WhiteFox Eclipse sounds. I’ll let the board do the talking…

In short, this is one of the most premium, soft, buttery sounding keyboards I’ve tested. It’s quiet, while still having the unmistakable clack of a mechanical board. It’s soft and inoffensive, and that translates to the typing feel too. It’s just as soft and smooth to touch as it is to hear. The Gateron Yellow switches, which are listed as 50g linear switches, feel fantastic. They are heavy enough for good kinesthetic feedback, while being smooth enough to feel effortless. They are easily removable so if you’d rather use something else, anything with Cherry style pins should work just fine. 

The thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that this board is actually only held together by magnets. The bottom case just comes away from the PCB and switches by simply pulling – and it isn’t an overly strong bond. Now my understanding for this isn’t to be a right-to-repair masterpiece (although that is a nice benefit), but more so that the PCB and switch assembly effectively ‘floats’ on the edge gaskets, which allows for a somewhat suspended design. Instead of using screws which essentially hard-mount the keys to the base, these magnets give a more ‘air-ride’ type mount. Despite that, there is another layer of foam in the base which helps to dampen any sound that does come through, giving it the ultra-quiet, yet ultra-premium sound.

Now while the WhiteFox Eclipse isn’t specifically listed as a gaming keyboard, and is more aligned with being the ultimate office keyboard, I can’t help but play at least a little on it. I’m happy to report that, especially when playing wired via the USB C cable, this feels just as good gaming as it does typing. It’s such a premium feel, and is still plenty responsive and fast. The tight layout works well here too, save for when you want to rage-quit and have to press FN, ALT and then 4. I dunno, maybe that’s a good thing. Still, this makes for a compelling experience, regardless of use case.

I’m sure you can tell at this point that I really like this board. It’s well built, very well thought through, with some unique and clever design decisions to boot. The typing feel is incredible, and the sound is top notch. This genuinely is one of the best keyboards to bring to an office and quietly type on all day. It’s also pretty reasonably priced, with this plastic model retailing on Apos Audio for just $140 fully assembled. I do feel it’s worth noting though that when Apos offered to send me this board, from the time the order was placed to me receiving it was almost a month. It took two weeks from the order confirmation to it shipping, and then a further week to ship from Hong Kong. I mention this specifically because they placed an order in my name on their site, which makes me think this is what you as an end user might experience too, and so I thought it was something you should know if you are considering picking this genuinely amazing board up.