Drift 64
Cheap, loud, and honest about it.
4.8/10$22
Review · Compact
Aperture 61 review: the stabilisers let it down
Three months with the Aperture 61: a competent $45 hot-swap 60% with genuinely low latency, one loud flaw, and a 40-minute fix that the score deliberately does not account for.
Verdict for the Aperture 61
6.9/ 10 · acceptable
A competent, boring 60% with one real flaw. The board itself is fine — the stabilisers are not, and fixing them is a 40-minute job with a tube of dielectric grease. If you were going to open it anyway, this is the best-value hot-swap 60% here. If you were not, the rattle will bother you.
Build
Typing feel
Sound
Stabilisers
Software
Value
What works
- Full VIA support with no account and no vendor driver
- Hot-swap sockets that survived four switch changes without a loose pin
- Genuinely low measured latency for the price
What does not
- Space bar rattles audibly out of the box and needs re-lubing
- Tray mount produces a noticeably stiffer typing feel near the screws
- No wireless at all
- Buy it if
- Someone who wants a hot-swap 60% to modify, and considers a stabiliser tune part of the fun rather than a defect.
- Skip it if
- Anyone who wants a board that sounds right out of the box, or who needs arrow keys without a function layer.
Photographs
4 shots · click to enlargeMeasured figures
Sound
57.4
dB(A) at 30 cm
Latency, wired
3.8
ms, median of 500
Polling
1,000
Hz, verified
Actuation
52.1
g, measured on E
Case flex
1.4
mm under 5 kg
Measured on my desk, not read off the box — clearly audible across a room. The manufacturer rates the switches at 50 g; I measured 52.1 g. How each figure is taken.
Living with it
The Aperture 61 arrived doing almost everything right and one thing conspicuously wrong, and three months later that summary has not changed.
What it does right is unglamorous. The hot-swap sockets are properly seated — I have changed switches four times and none of the pins have loosened, which is not a given at this price. VIA works in the browser with no driver and no account. The case is plastic and looks it, but nothing creaks and nothing flexes anywhere it should not.
The typing feel is fine rather than good, and the reason is the mount. A tray mount screws the plate to posts in the case bottom, so the board is stiff directly over each screw and softer between them. On a 60% there are five of those posts and you can feel every one. Typing across the bottom row is noticeably firmer than typing in the middle of the alphas. It is not unpleasant, but after a week on a gasket-mounted board it feels like typing on a surface with structure underneath it rather than a uniform one.
The space bar
Out of the box, the space bar rattles. Not subtly.
It is the specific budget-keyboard sound: a metallic tick trailing the keypress by a few milliseconds, coming from the stabiliser wire moving in a housing that has no grease in it. Every keystroke on the space bar produces the click you meant plus a smaller, higher one you did not. Once you hear it you cannot stop hearing it.
I lived with it for two weeks before fixing it, which is long enough to say confidently that it does not fade into the background. It is worse in a quiet room and it is worse on video calls, where the microphone picks up the tick more clearly than the keypress.
The fix is well documented and takes about 40 minutes: dielectric grease on the wire ends and inside the stabiliser housings, plus a strip of thin tape where the wire contacts the PCB. Afterwards the board measured 2.1 dB quieter and the tick was gone completely. It also sounds better than it did before in a way that has nothing to do with the fix — a clean stabiliser makes the rest of the board sound more deliberate.
The score does not reflect any of that, and it is worth being explicit about why. The board that ships is the board that gets scored. Scoring the modified version would mean scoring a product you cannot buy, and it would quietly let a manufacturer take credit for work the customer did.
Where the measurements landed
3.8 ms wired at a verified 1000 Hz is genuinely good — second lowest on this site and better than boards costing twice as much. If input latency is what you care about, this is a real result and not a marketing figure.
57.4 dB is on the loud side, and about 2 dB of that was the stabiliser. The switches themselves are pre-lubed Gateron Yellows and they are the best part of the board: consistent across all 61 keys, smooth in a way that unlubed budget linears are not, and 52.1 g measured against a 50 g rating, which is close enough to call accurate.
Three months in
Two things changed. The rattle got worse before I fixed it, which suggests whatever residual factory lubricant was in there worked its way out. And the keycaps started showing wear on WASD despite being PBT — this batch is dye-sublimated rather than double-shot, and the coating is thinner than the material implies. Cosmetic so far.
Nothing structural has degraded. The sockets are still tight, the case has not developed a creak, and the USB-C port has no play in it.
The honest position
If you were always going to open this board — to change switches, to try a different plate, to lube the stabilisers because that is a thing you enjoy — the Aperture 61 is the best-value hot-swap 60% here, and the flaw is a first-day chore rather than a defect.
If you wanted a keyboard that works properly out of the box, this is the wrong purchase, and the right answer at this price is to spend a little more. The Ferrule 75 ships with its stabilisers already done, which is the single largest quality-of-life difference between a good budget board and a mediocre one.
What happened next
bought Apr 11, 2026 · 96 days- After 2 months
The rattle got worse, not better. Re-lubed the space bar with dielectric grease and added band-aid mod — sound dropped 2.1 dB and the ticking stopped entirely. Score for stabilisers reflects the board as shipped, not as modified.
- After 3 months
Legend wear starting on WASD despite PBT caps — dye-sub, not double-shot, on this batch. Cosmetic only so far.
Aperture 61 — questions
Is the Aperture 61 good for gaming?
The measured figures say yes — 3.8 ms wired at a verified 1000 Hz, which is the second-lowest latency on this site. Linear switches and a rigid tray mount suit fast repeated inputs. The stabiliser rattle is irrelevant to gaming performance and very relevant to whether you enjoy using it.
How hard is it to fix the space bar rattle?
About 40 minutes if you have never done it. Pull the space bar and the stabiliser inserts, apply dielectric grease to the wire ends and the housing, and add a strip of thin tape under the PCB where the wire lands. Sound dropped 2.1 dB on my unit and the ticking stopped entirely.
Why did the stabiliser score stay at 4 after you fixed it?
Because the score describes the board as shipped. Every buyer receives the rattling version; only some will fix it. Scoring the modified board would mean scoring a product nobody can buy, and would quietly reward manufacturers for shipping something half-finished.
Does it work on macOS and Linux?
Yes, and this is one of its better qualities. VIA runs in the browser and talks to the board directly, so there is no vendor driver and no Windows requirement. Remapping worked identically on all three systems during testing.
Is a 60% layout usable for actual work?
For writing, yes, after about a week. For anything involving arrow keys and function keys constantly — spreadsheets, video editing, IDE debugging — the layer switching stays annoying indefinitely. A 65% costs one extra unit of desk width and removes most of that problem.