Quarry TKL review: boring in the way good tools are boring

Nothing to report

Four months in, and the most interesting thing I can say about the Quarry TKL is that there is nothing interesting to say about it.

It arrived. The stabilisers were clean. The switches were consistent. It measured 3.4 ms, the fastest figure on this site. It has sat on the desk since, done its job, and asked for nothing. When I sat down to write this review I had no notes beyond the measurements, because nothing happened that was worth writing down.

That is the review. What follows is elaboration.

The firmware

QMK, with source published by the manufacturer. This is the board’s one genuinely distinguishing feature and it deserves more attention than it usually gets.

VIA — which several boards here support — is a configurator that talks to firmware someone else compiled. It is good, and it covers what most people need. QMK is the firmware itself: you can build it, change it, add layers and macros and tap-dance behaviours that no configurator exposes, and flash it yourself.

The practical difference is ownership. Vendor software can be discontinued. A configurator can drop support for a board. Firmware whose source you have cannot be taken away from you, and on a keyboard you intend to keep for years that is worth something concrete.

The speed

3.4 ms wired at a verified 1000 Hz. Fastest here, ahead of the Aperture at 3.8 ms and comfortably ahead of everything wireless.

Some of this is the firmware path being short and clean. Some of it is simply that the board has no wireless stack to traverse — being wired-only is a limitation that happens to buy you latency. If you are choosing a budget board on measured input lag, this is the answer, and it is not close.

Typing and sound

Polycarbonate plate, gasket mount, 2.1 mm of flex. Softer than the aluminium boards, firmer than the Castor or the Tessera. It sits in the middle and there is nothing wrong with the middle.

55.3 dB with pre-lubed Gateron Yellows. Clean, unremarkable, slightly higher-pitched than I would choose. The stabilisers are properly done on every large key including the right shift, which several boards here get wrong.

The TKL layout keeps the standard cluster gaps — navigation island separated, arrows in their own block. If you are coming from a full-size, everything is exactly where your hands expect it minus the numpad. That transferability is the argument for a TKL over a 75%, and it is a stronger argument than it sounds until you have tried switching.

What it does not do

No wireless. No backlighting at all — not dim, not white, none. And the cable is not detachable on this revision, which is the one thing I would call a genuine design failure rather than an omission, because the cable is the component most likely to fail and here you cannot replace it.

The case also creaks slightly when lifted by one corner. It does not creak while typing, which is what matters, but it is there.

Four months in

Nothing. The stabilisers are unchanged, the sound re-measured at 55.5 dB — within the margin of the first reading — and the sockets are as tight as they were. No degradation of any kind.

Who this is for

Someone who wants to stop thinking about keyboards.

If you want to enjoy a keyboard, buy the Castor — it types better and it has character. If you want the best all-round board with wireless, buy the Ferrule.

Buy this if you want a TKL that will still be working and unchanged in three years, whose firmware you control, and which will never need anything from you. It is boring in the way that good tools are boring.