This is my review on the Ducky Shine 3 Mechanical Keyboard with Cherry MX Red switches. The feel of the click and the clack is indescribable! My fingers float above the keycaps eagerly waiting to press them in a satisfyingly quick motion. The response my fingers receive from the Cherry MX Red switches is immediate and orgasmic! Ahhh this keyboard is amazing!!!!! I love writing on it so much. This is my first mechanical keyboard ever and I have to say I am glad I bought one! I was on the verge of buying the Razer Blackwidow Ultimate Stealth, but watching the video from Linus Tech Tips changed my mind and I began my hunt for the best mechanical keyboard. One of the reasons I chose the Ducky Shine 3 is the fact that no software is needed out of the box. Managing the Blue LEDs is all done on the keyboard itself. I’m also not a fan of this ridiculous RGB craze going on right now in the keyboard market. I love the fact that my keyboard and mouse have LEDs, but it’s not the sole reason I bought them. Their performance and build quality were the main reasons. LEDs were just a bonus to the amazing package. This was also why I didn’t buy the Razer Mamba 2012 immediately after it was released. Yes the DPI was increased a bit and yes it did come with an improved sensor system, but it wasn’t enough for me to spend another $130.00 on another mouse. My 5 year old Razer Mamba was still working perfectly (for the time being at least) and I wasn’t even going to close to the 5600 DPI max on that, so the DPI increase didn’t motivate me too much. Also the mouse was the exact same physically, except for the RGB lighting. It wasn’t until this past November that I finally became fed up with my old Mamba giving me issues. And when I say issues I mean big problems. My mouse’s sensor wasn’t tracking properly at all and would skip VERY often. And this was only after I managed to turn it on and get it to work at all. Sometimes the sensor was so bad that I wouldn’t manage to get it to even start tracking period. I even tried a new battery for it thinking that might be the source of the problem, but nope. I gave in and bought the Razer Mamba 2012. The RGB lighting is nice and all, but I still don’t use the sensor’s max DPI setting of 6400 at all. The most I use is 4600 and that’s on Skyrim. Overall I’m glad the mouse functions perfectly and all, but if my old Mamba hadn’t failed I would probably still be using it to this day.

Now as for my Alienware M15X’s keyboard, I love it! It’s been great and hasn’t failed me in the 6 years that I’ve been using it. The Alienware FX lighting is also really nice, but like I said before it isn’t the sole reason I love it. The texture of the keys is really nice! Almost like PCB keycaps. Also the tactile response I get from typing on it is great. It’s definitely one of the better keyboards made for a laptop. After watching many videos on keyboards, I finally decided to buy a mechanical keyboard. I first looked at Razer’s own Blackwidow Ultimate since I loved their Razer Mamba gaming mouse. But after almost buying it on Newegg, I watched another one of Linus’ videos on keyboard reviews. This was actually the Corsair K70 RGB keyboard review. One of the “Recommended videos” on the side of the video was Linus’ review of the Ducky Shine 3. It blew me away! Finally a keyboard that isn’t obsessed about RGB lighting that, at least according to Linus, had a phenomenal build quality. I looked further in to the keyboard itself and after finally making up my mind about Cherry MX switches vs Razer’s own Razer Switches, which many reviews said were worse, I decided I was going to buy the Ducky Shine 3.

It finally arrived today in the mail and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling (although this tends to happen to me when I am eagerly awaiting a package delivery). I took great care in un-boxing it and took my time appreciating the box in which it came. I read the box’s description many times and glided my fingers over the textured lettering on the cover of the box. I finally opened the box and slowly took out the keyboard and the rest of the contents. I laid the keyboard to the side while I appreciated the small wire keycap puller Ducky provided. I also looked at the extra “WASD” orange/red keycaps that were also provided before setting them back in the box as I knew that I was going to keep the black keycaps already on the keyboard. I gave the manual a read or two, but I was already fairly familiar with the keyboard seeing as how I had spent many days prior to its arrival watching both in depth reviews and un-boxing videos on the keyboard, as I tend to do with most things I take time purchasing. I gave the warranty card a quick read and then set both of the paper contents back in the box. I grabbed the keyboard with both hands and immediately felt the weight behind the keyboard. I love this as it gives a true physical measure of an item’s “premium” quality. The keycaps are gorgeous and I love the layout. I was also happy to find that the keyboard itself fit in the keyboard drawer of my desk. I used the included wire puller to pull one of the keycaps to double check that my keyboard had Red MX switches, as the Amazon webpage I bought it from was slightly confusing. It claimed in the “title” that the keyboard was indeed Blue LED lit and that it had Red MX switches, but further reading led me to believe that the keyboard might actually have Black MX switches. I assumed as it was the actual description that I had made a mistake and bought Black MX switches, but I gave in to the idea anyways. It wasn’t a huge deal to me. I watched many videos and written reviews on comparisons of the many different switches Cherry offered. Seeing as how the Red switches were made with gaming more in mind, that’s what I wanted to buy. Further inspection though revealed that Brown MX switches are the preferred switches for most gamers as the switches provided a tactile bump that gives the user a physical indication that the actuation point in the keyboard has been achieved, whereas the Red switches made for gaming are linear and provide no tactile bump. The benefit of the Red switch though is that the switch’s actuation point requires less force to reach and as such lets players effortlessly press multiple keys with little to no fatigue.

Anyways, after using the keyboard now for a day I can say with complete certainty that I love the keyboard and the Red MX switches. A little getting used to is in order and that will develop over time and usage, but even after just a single day I love the feeling of typing on this keyboard! I actually opened this Microsoft Word page with absolutely no intention on writing a 4 page document that would turn in to a full review of my experience with the Ducky Shine 3 and the research that went into buying it prior to clicking that “buy” button. Ultimately I figured after writing sentence after sentence to try out the typing experience of the Ducky Shine 3, I might as well double check my grammar and spelling errors and finally post it online with the only intention being to give possible buyers of this phenomenal keyboard a more “personal” kind of review and not a strictly detailed review with facts and numbers that might only give a reader so much understanding on the usage of the keyboard. I know that at least for me, reading the facts on the “actuation point” and “tactile bumps” only gave me a theoretical understanding with no prior history on mechanical keyboards to help me better understand what I was getting myself in to. Finally, if this quaint little review helps you out in any way then great! If not and you managed to read all the way until the end, then my bad bro! There are plenty of more in-depth reviews on the Ducky Shine 3 though, including the wonderful review Linus made. Regardless, thanks for reading the words from someone who rarely feels like commenting on practically anything, much less writing pages about it! Haha Take care everyone!