JBL Live Beam 3 – True Wireless Noise-Cancelling Stick-Closed Earbuds

Bought this for my wife’s WFH setup. She fell in love with the Creamy Switch craze on TikTok and this was a reasonably priced keyboard that fit the bill. I found a cute sakura themed keycap set to replace these, but she said she’d have been happy with the blues and purples that came preinstalled.It looks great, feels and sounds fantastic, and does everything you’d want from a keyboard. She loves the size, specifically that it includes the number pad. Not enough decent keyboards do these days. People want minimalism in everything, but the functionality of a dedicated number pad is hard to beat.Connecting is super easy. We’re using the hardwired USB-C option, but I was able to use Bluetooth on my laptop at work while I was testing and installing the other keycaps prior to giving this as a birthday gift. She loves that it’s such a lightweight feel of typing, even noticeably so to someone without the heavy handed typing of myself, having grown up on IBM and Alps switches which allow for some decent banging.I’m not a keyboard snob or really a deep enthusiast, but some of my friends and coworkers that care more than I do really loved it as well. It’s a crowd pleaser, and that wonderful little subdued THOK on each tap is soothing as foretold.

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This keyboard is a dream to use, and my only true regret about it is that I didn’t get one sooner. This keyboard looks, feels, and sounds unreal so I’ll go over a few more of my favorite points in detail.* The greywood switches are fantastic. The action is smooth and the actuation force is incredibly low. Having already come from an AP2 with linear red switches I bottomed them out assuming they’d feel the same, but I’m loving them being an even easier press than that. They sound fantastic when you bottom out on this board as well, it’s hard to really appreciate from sample videos. They are indeed very easy to hotswap too as I’ve already accidentally popped them out while pulling keycaps – they’re very easy to remove and set, and I look forward to trying other switch types in the future.* The key lighting is bright and comes through well on the default switches. The vertical lightbar is a beautiful little addition with a few colorful presets and pops out in a great way.* The software is very light and capable. It’s very familiar-looking coming from using stuff like Obinskit for the Anne Pro 2, but it’s a little rougher around the edges as you do modifications to your lighting and bindings on a low-resolution mockup of the board. It’s hard to see what has been set when doing so, but it gets things done.* The keycaps themselves are beautiful and feel solid but my only con is that they have no shine-through at all. In a dark room you’ll be pressed to see your keys and having the board backlight on actually only makes that harder. For this, I transplanted my AP2 alphanumeric keys with shine-through letters onto the F99 and it works like a charm. I like the rest of the board so much and it can be rectified easily so I won’t even knock a star for it, but be aware of this if you’re used to your other boards having more visible letters. Not having that certainly came as a surprise to me.After all, I heartily recommend the F99 for making it feel exciting again to have a keyboard hobby again!

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The Aula F99 is a “96%” mechanical keyboard that comes in around the $90 price point normally, but can get as low as $60 on sale. That form factor means that it does have a numpad and arrow keys as well as home, delete and page up/down keys, but those keys are moved up in-line with the function keys and the numpad/arrow keys are squished up closer to the main keys with the arrow keys set a little further down to make space. Having a numpad was a must for me because I like to play games that often use the numpad for important functions, and I also prefer typing numbers on a numpad when the occasion arises. At this price point, this is probably one of the best options for people who want a numpad and/or arrow keys but still want a keyboard that looks and sounds more like a custom keyboard you see in YouTube shorts of people doing sound tests.It has linear switches meaning there’s no “bump” or clickiness to them, I’m not 100% sure what exact switches they are because there is some conflicting information online. I think mine has “Star Vector” switches? Regardless, the switches are quite light on force and very quiet, which brings us to the sound. This keyboard sounds great for the price. It’s a little on the clacky side, but the switches have no scratchiness to them and are obviously pre-lubed, and there appears to be some kind of sound-deadening material inside the case as there is none of that hollow pinginess you get from something like a cheap Logitech mechanical. Overall it is a massive improvement from the Logitech keyboard I had previously to this one.The case is plastic but seems to be fairly high quality. The keyboard is surprisingly heavy which is very confidence inspiring and gives you a very stable feeling typing experience. It also has RGB lighting on all of the keys but the keycaps are not shine-through meaning the lettering doesn’t light up. If that’s a big deal to you, I’m sure you could swap them out for something else later as it does come with a keycap and switch puller, which also means you can change the switches if you want. It also has 3 different connection modes: “Wired” which uses a USB-C port on the board for connection (and it does come with a USB-C to A cable in the box), “2.4 GHz” which uses a little wireless dongle that sits in a little slot on the top edge of the board when not in use, and it’s also able to connect via bluetooth. I haven’t tested the battery life as I use this keyboard at my desktop computer with the wired connection, but having the different modes and a physical switch to change between them means you could have this board connected to multiple different devices and switch between them whenver you want which is cool and useful if you need that.I’m fairly new to the world of mechanical keyboards, this is only the second one I’ve ever owned, the first being a Logitech board that didn’t sound or feel nearly as good as this one. As I type this review out on this very keyboard, I find myself liking the sound and feeling more and more. I’m sure there are things about it that someone with more knowledge and experience could pick apart and criticize, but overall I am very happy with this keyboard and would definitely recommend it to anyone who’s not an expert and is looking for something better than the offerings from companies like Logitech and Razer.

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Let’s just say this is one of the best purchases I’ve made. I’m not an expert on keyboards and things like that. I just work in an office where I have to type a lot, and hates “pointy” sounds from the default company keyboard. This thing is sturdy, versatile because you can pair it with every device, and the sound is so so so satisfying. Another coworker complimented it and went to buy it too.You have bluetooth, type, USB wire connection. The keys are bouncy and heavy at the same time.

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