How to build the best keyboard in the world

The term "endgame," among keyboard enthusiasts, is sort of a running gag. Endgame is when you finally dial in your perfect layout, case, features, switches, and keycaps, so you can stop noodling around with parts and get on with whatever it is you actually use the keyboard for - work, presumably. Then a few months […]

Jun 15, 2025 - 16:00

How to build the best keyboard in the world

side view of a white man in a cluttered workshop using an electric screwdriver to assemble a keyboard. — Ryan Norbauer in his garage / workshop. | Photo: Taeha Kim / Norbauer & Co.

The term "endgame," among keyboard enthusiasts, is sort of a running gag. Endgame is when you finally dial in your perfect layout, case, features, switches, and keycaps, so you can stop noodling around with parts and get on with whatever it is you actually use the keyboard for - work, presumably. Then a few months later you see something shiny and start over.

In the search for endgame, most of us have to compromise somewhere - usually time or money. Sometimes the thing you're looking for just doesn't exist.

But what if you didn't have to compromise? What if you had the time, the patience, the creative vision, and the cash to create your endgame keyboard from scratch? And I mean really from scratch, from the cable to the switches and stabilizers.

This is how you get the Seneca, the first keyboard from Norbauer & Co. It has a plasma-oxide-finished milled aluminum chassis, a solid brass switchplate, custom capacitive switches, the best stabilizers in the world (also custom), spherical-profile keycaps with appropriately retro-looking centered legends, zero backlighting, and a completely flat typing angle.

It weighs seven pounds and costs $3,600.

You might have some questions, l …

Read the full story at The Verge.