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

At a glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Great, deep switches for low-profile
• Funky style
• Good software support
• Tiny footprint

Cons

• No wireless
• Only three maximum game profiles
• Limited switch choices

Our Verdict

The Air60 HE is the best low-profile keyboard I’ve ever tried for pure, quality typing, something I wasn’t expecting for a gaming keyboard focused on adjustable actuation. It’s also great for travel, but gamers might not like the lack of per-game profile options.

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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. 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). 

Michael Crider/Foundry

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. 

Michael Crider/Foundry

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.

Michael Crider/Foundry

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. 

Michael Crider/Foundry

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.