Mechanical keyboards trickled back into Western markets after almost entirely disappearing from the market in the late 1990s. You can thank gamers, influenced by Asian competitive gamers and streamers, for the upswing in interest in the West.

Now, mechanical keyboards are everywhere. They began the 2010s as niche items and ended the decade still as enthusiasts’ tools, but far more mainstream. Tons of big-name manufacturers make them.

But there are oldies from the 2000s that, although crowded out of the market they helped re-popularize in the West, still hold their own against the broad field of competitors.

Feel That New Millennium Nostalgia

Back in the 2000s, you couldn’t just walk into a retail store and find a mechanical keyboard. All the manufacturers’ names were unfamiliar as well. Logitech wasn’t yet in the game. Neither was Razer. Nor Corsair.

You had to do some detective work to find a semi-obscure retailer that would sell you one, and more often than not, it was an imported model from Japan or Taiwan. That’s how I came to experience Filco, a Japanese brand that was my entry into mechanical keyboards.

For me, Filco nails the ergonomics perfectly. They feel right to type on. Ducky, a Taiwanese brand, is known for its love of programmable, customizable, and light-up keyboards with RGB lights built into the keys.

Despite the faux-German name, Das Keyboard isn’t German. And uniquely for the time of its founding in 2005, it wasn’t an Eastern import, either. Das Keyboard was created in the US. As we publish this article, the Das Keyboard 4C TKL is currently out of stock everywhere, including Das Keyboard’s own web store.

If you’re reading this sometime in the future, click one of the links and find that it’s available once again; do a little celebratory fist pump for me. They’re sweet keyboards, and I remember the first time I typed on one, I thought it was very well assembled and solidly built.

In keeping with their 2000s heritage, these keyboards feature versions of the Cherry MX keys that dominated the mechanical keyboard market at the time. Check out this explainer to discern whether you’re a Cherry Blue, Red, or Brown typist.