Nuphy Air60 HE review: This sleek magnetic keyboard is a joy to use

The gamers have spoken: they demand adjustable actuation. The feature is spreading out to more and more keyboards in more and more form factors, perhaps none so dramatic as this one. The Air60 HE is a new variant of Nuphy’s colorful low-profile designs, this time packing magnetic switches.

This slinky little keyboard tries to have it all, with one notable exception. And darned if it doesn’t pull it off.

This slinky little keyboard tries to have it all, with one notable exception. And darned if it doesn’t pull it off. If you can live without wireless or robust software support, it might just be your new favorite, especially if you want a gaming keyboard that you can throw into a backpack.

Design

Okay, I can’t go any further without praising the visual design of this thing. The Air series was already funky with its multicolor keycaps, but the HE variant pushes it even farther by adding in some translucent caps for a bit of 90s flair. I’m reminded of the Game Boy Advance or the Cybiko (and if you know that one without resorting to Wikipedia, I’m impressed).

The visuals aren’t going to appeal to everyone — it’s a long way from Razer and Corsair’s sleek stealth or Logitech’s more button-down office stuff. If you’re not a fan, you can replace them with low-profile keycaps, which aren’t as easy to find as standard MX-compatible ones but should still offer plenty of options. But if you like them as much as I do, especially in conjunction with the RGB lighting, you won’t want to.

Unlike Nuphy’s earlier, low-profile, 60% keyboard, the Air60, this one has a standard full-sized right shift key. Thank goodness, because otherwise this review would have taken me a lot longer to write up. If you don’t like the translucent caps because you’re a meanie who’s no fun (or you just need the legends, I guess), the box comes with slightly more button-down black and grey alternates. Which still make this thing look like an Super NES tribute. Man, Nuphy literally cannot contain its style.

The colorful keycaps are augmented by small RGB light strips next to the Escape and Backspace buttons. These are more blingy than functional, but can communicate basic keyboard status too. The bottom of the case is a semi-translucent black contrasting with the aluminum of the top frame, and once again I like how the purple keyboard feet (dual-stage, nice!) match with the keycaps. A reflective badge is the last stylish little detail.

Look around to the left edge and you’ll find the USB-C port, in an unusual spot for a keyboard. And since this is a wired-only board, you’ll get very familiar with that odd placement. Across the corner on the top edge is the only other physical interaction element, a three-way switch. Again, since this is a wired-only board, this isn’t the power switch it appears to be at first. It lets you swap between three (and only three) programmed layouts.

Wherefore art thou, wireless?

Yes, despite inheriting the “Air” moniker from its wireless progenitor, the Air60 HE has as much wireless capability as an Air Jordan. (Okay, I guess sneakers are technically wireless…unless you count the laces?) It’s an interesting choice, especially considering how small and thin this thing is, practically begging you to take it on a roadtrip. But there are two big advantages to this decision.

One, adjustable actuation keyboards have a tendency to suck down battery life like a kid playing Fortnite on mom’s phone. Combined with the small frame and far less internal space for a battery, it makes sense to just cut wireless and battery anxiety out of the equation.

And two, gamers are kind of obsessed with speed and latency, two factors that are complicated by a wireless connection. Plug in the USB-C cable and you now need to be superhuman to notice any kind of latency thanks to 8K polling, which is doubly important with the speedy maneuvers enabled by adjustable actuation.

Which isn’t to say that the USB-C cable is without issues. The right side placement is awkward at best, debilitating at worst, if you’re of the southpaw persuasion and use a mouse with your left hand. I could chalk this up to a stylistic choice, but since the only slightly bigger Air75 HE doesn’t do it, I think it’s probably a limitation of the tiny and complex circuit board in the keyboard.

Altogether, this keyboard is striking in both its bold visual design and its teeny-tiny footprint. While being wired (and having a weird wire placement) isn’t ideal for adapting to travel, I’m tempted to say it’ll still make a good travel companion if you want to add hall effect capability to a laptop or tablet. Your other options are either far larger, or so power-hungry that they aren’t practical. Or both.

Lower profile, fewer options

Alright, enough waffling about the physical design. Aside from being wired, the big difference between the Air HE keyboards and their non-HE predecessors is the hall effect switches, which enable adjustable actuation.

Hall effect means that there’s a magnetic sensor under each key that can detect how deeply it’s depressed, as opposed to a binary on/off state in a normal keyboard. This makes it easy to change up how hard or soft you need to press each key, and do a bunch of other tricks mostly useful for gamers.

It’s not common to see adjustable actuation and low-profile switches together, at least not yet. But I should point out that the Gateron switches Nuphy is using here are particularly good, with 3.3mm of travel distance that makes them pretty darn close to full-size (4.0mm for a standard Cherry MX switch). In layman’s terms, typing on this keyboard feels much more like a full-sized mechanical keyboard than other low-profile boards.

Hall effect keyboards and other designs that offer adjustable actuation are complicated and fiddly, to use a technical term. While you can use them like any other keyboard, to truly customize the experience and take advantage of that hardware, you need some good software to go along with it.

Like other Nuphy boards, the Air60 HE leans on a browser tool for programming instead of a stand-alone driver or manager program. Adjustable actuation is beyond the ken of the cross-platform VIA, so Nuphy made its own version, NuphyIO. And considering the limitations of a browser-based programming tool, it’s pretty good! You get the basic key binding, macro, and lighting settings, with a surprising variety of the latter. I wasn’t ever confused or intimidated by any of them…but I’ve reviewed hundreds of keyboards, so take that for what it’s worth.

But the most crucial part of this system is the “Trigger Settings” section, wherein you can find all the juicy options for the magnetic switches. You get the chance to change the actuation point for each key, by itself or with a multi-selection tool, and set the super-speedy Rapid Trigger mode for each one with variations of as little as .1mm. (This is what Razer calls “Snap Tap,” and it’s contentious. You’ve been warned.)

You can also set a single key to two different actions upon press and release, or four separate actions based on different actuation and release points. I can’t actually think of any reason I’d want to do this, even if I had the finger dexterity to achieve it. But just to give you an example, you can program the “P” key to send a “P” stroke at 1mm, “O” at 3mm, a second “O” at the 3mm release point, and a second “P” at the 1mm release point, successfully typing “poop” with a literal press of a button.

Poop. There, I did it. You could also do this with a macro on a regular keyboard. Amazing.

Okay, I’m being dismissive here, because I’m not the kind of PC gamer who would spend hours and hours tweaking and testing this kind of thing for maximum esports efficiency. But the point is that, yes, it’s all possible, and fairly straightforward with the exception of splitting some functions across the binding and trigger screens.

There’s one important caveat here: the Nuphy Air60 HE and its big brother the Air75 HE have only three profile settings, manually selected with that physical switch on the top edge of the keyboard. You can have exactly three, no more, no less. Three shalt be the number of thy profiles, and the number of thy profiles shall be three. Four shalt not be thy profiles, neither shalt thy profiles be two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.

Three is better than two, and it’s smart that they’re so immediate and tactile to activate. But if you’re the kind of gamer who obsesses over layouts and trigger settings, it might not be enough, certainly compared to a dedicated Windows program that can activate dynamically for hundreds of different games. Like other adjustable actuation keyboards without per-game profiles, this could be a deal-breaker. It continues to be a severe limitation for the smaller, more niche gaming keyboard brands.

Typing and gaming

While I acknowledge that I’m not personally interested in the adjustable actuation powers of the Air60 HE, I am fully interested in how good its switches are. They are very good. As I said earlier, they have an even longer travel distance than the customized Gateron switches in the other Air keyboards, which makes them feel that much closer to a full-sized keyboard. There’s no gasket mount, so it’s a little stiffer than a super-premium custom board, but far less so than the super-thin Lofree Edge.

Typing on this thing for hours is super-comfy, easily the best low-profile board I’ve ever used. I should note that Nuphy sent me a keyboard with the Jade Pro magnetic switches pre-installed, and the only real difference between these and the non-Pro Jade is a slightly stiffer spring. That doesn’t seem worth the $20 upsell.

Adjustable actuation keyboards also tend to be even louder than standard mechanical keyboards — they’re more complex, more parts to click and clack. But Nuphy seems to have adequately accounted for this with carefully selected layers of foam and silicone. It’s not as quiet as a fully “silenced” mechanical keyboard, but it’s more than polite enough to use in an office or a coffee shop — only a little more noisy than the keyboard on my Dell work laptop, for instance.

I was so impressed with the typing experience on this thing that I threw it in my bag on a work trip to New York, eschewing my usual phone keyboard, the Keychron K9 Pro. Thanks to the near-universal USB-C standard it worked just fine, albeit with a little extra baggage.

I’d be tempted to steal the switches out of the Nuphy and put them in the Keychron for wireless…but nope. Despite the stem and body looking like a near-perfect match for standard low-profile Gaterons, these magnetic switches have no electrical contacts in the switch itself. So not only will they not fit in any other keyboards (for now), no other Gateron low-profile switches besides the Jade and Jade Pro will fit in these keyboards (for now).

It severely undercuts the utility of having any kind of hot-swap function, even for the already-limited selection of low-profile switches. But I guess it’s nice to have the option, when, if, Gateron makes more switches in this very narrow niche.

Gaming on the board is likewise excellent. Like I said, I don’t take advantage of the adjustable actuation beyond a bit of functional testing. But that extra travel distance in the switch and that oh-so-comfy padding means hours of gaming without issue (so long as I have a wrist rest).

Gamers who need more physical keys without relying on layers might find the lack of a function row limiting. No worries, there’s a 75% layout version in the Air75 HE. It’s only $10 more for the base model.

Conclusion

I wasn’t expecting to like the Air60 HE as much as I do, since I am a known skeptic for adjustable actuation. But darn it if it isn’t an excellent keyboard even without that extra functionality, with a funky style that really appeals to me. And losing wireless capability versus the other Air boards, though it pains my minimalist heart, makes sense if you’re targeting gamers who want those powers.

I wasn’t expecting to like the Air60 HE as much as I do.

At $120 for the standard switches, it’s a little on the pricey side — you can find similar low-profile designs with hot-swap Gateron switches at a bit of a savings, plus wireless and sans hall effect. And the fact that you only have two switch choices, and a surprising $30 surcharge for the nearly-identical Jade Pro option, makes this board a bit of a bougie option in the realm of low-profile boards.

That said, $120 is still a low bar for an adjustable actuation board. Razer’s cheapest one is $180, Corsair’s is $230, and even the trailblazing Wooting starts at $175. That makes Nuphy’s sleek little contender a deal…unless you need more than three keyboard profiles. And you might.

So the Nuphy Air60 HE and its bigger variant the Air75 HE have several points that might knock it out of your consideration: lack of wireless, lack of hot-swap options, only three profiles. But everything else about them is fantastic. If you can get over those issues for the sake of great typing and a minuscule, stylish design, you’ll find they’re well worth the price.