 Hot Spot Shield service makes your internet browsing safer, more secure, and fully private. Click now to learn more. Welcome to a long overdue unboxing and review. This is the Ducky Shine 3, and as with any unboxing, we're gonna start with the box itself and the content. So the first thing you find is cardboard. Oh wait, no, there's actually a keyboard in here. That'll be important later in all likelihood. We've also got some accessories, including, but not limited to, a WASD set of keycap replacements. Alright. We've also got a keycap puller in order to apply said replacements if we're not happy with the black ones that are already on there. We've also got a USB-A to mini-B cable that's wrapped up in a nice little cable management thing. Happens to be gold plated, although that doesn't really matter. And we've got a replacement space bar if we don't like the snake graphic on the stock space bar. Last but not least, so I guess we are limited to the things that I just found, we have a registration thing for your warranty as well as a user's manual, which you will need. So, the keyboard itself. I mean, what is there to say that every other reviewer in the world hasn't said about Ducky? The build quality is immaculate. There's almost no flex to the thing whatsoever. It is extremely heavy. The keys have a very satisfying sound to them, just like you'd expect with a mechanical keyboard, but it's even better with a solidly built mechanical keyboard. And of course, there's the stuff that you can't see, such as the dual layer PCB that's inside and the UV coated laser printed ABS keycaps. So those are pretty darn good as far as keycaps go. There are better ones out there, but they're generally considered to be aftermarket options. On the back of the unit, we find four rubber pads so that it doesn't slip around on you, as well as two little risers if you prefer to have a bit more of an angle to your keyboard. We've also got cable routing options for the detachable USB cable, so it can come out straight to the right or to the left, whatever you prefer. We also find our serial number on the serial number on the back, as well as some dip switches. More on those in just a moment. All right, so while this might not be the most user friendly way to implement different, you know, control changes, what these four little dip switches do is they disable the Windows key. So it doesn't have like a gaming mode button on the front. You can actually do that with a dip switch on the back. You can actually swap control and caps lock. You can swap Windows and alt placements. And if you want to to be adventurous, you can put it into demo mode, which might be more useful for shopkeepers and less useful for individuals who are buying things. What demo mode does is it cycles through all the different lighting modes and stuff like that without actually any USB data going back and forth. It just makes it take in power. So it doesn't actually work in demo mode. All right, Linus, it's a ducky, so we know it's extremely well built, but tell me about the features. All right, so it's available in either a 104 key or a 10 keyless. That is to say, without the number pad layout, it's available in a variety of colors, although we've only got blue here today. So blue, red, green, white, magenta and orange for the LED backlights. And it's available in the kind of the standard four key switch type. So that's brown, red, black and. Blue, that nice clicky sound. It has shortcuts for media keys, although I think what Ducky means by that is volume up, volume down and mute because there's no play pause or or track skip or anything like that. It also has and these are classic calculator, computer, email and Internet shortcuts in the top right. I actually kind of love that. Other than that, most of the labels on the keys are just for controlling lighting and other advanced functionality, such as changing the repeat rate or how fast characters will appear when you hold down a key and changing the repeat delay or how long until repeating begins. In practice, a repeat delay above about two X caused me to double press spacebar just while I'm typing. But your mileage may vary on these very cool functionality there either way, particularly for gaming. Overall, the configuration is completely driverless, but you will need the manual to set it up. It's not too bad, though. I figured most of it out in about five minutes. All right, but that's just the regular features. What about the lighting? This is a shine. Well, we'll start with the seven different modes, which you cycle through by using function and F10. Number one, which you just saw was 100 percent on that self explanatory. You can adjust the brightness down here with the up and down arrows and function. And that's about it. In breathing, you can use the arrow keys to adjust both the speed and the maximum brightness of the breathing effect. The range is very wide and it should please pretty much anyone in wave mode. You can adjust the speed of the wave, but not the actual brightness of the wave. So that's what you can see right now. And in snake marquee mode, this one I actually quite like, you can change just the speed of the snake, but not the brightness. And it crawls around on the keyboard like that in reactive mode. You can change both the pressed and non pressed brightness. So you can either have the keys turn off and then fade back in as you type, or you can have them be off and then turn on and fade away as you type. I think this one and ripple are my personal favorites. Speaking of ripple, both it and Aurora are cool modes that send out patterns when you press on particular keys. You can adjust the speed of either effect, but only ripple can have the brightness adjusted. So this one right here is Aurora, which always runs on full brightness. You can see it sends out horizontal waves. Now, the space bar is a bit of a unique situation. It only has rather it has one blue LED, which matches the color of your keyboard, and it has two RGB LEDs, one on either side of the blue one. So you can change the color effects of the space bar by using the insert home and page up along with function to achieve pretty much any color. You could possibly want so it's R G and B and you can mix them in whatever way you find most pleasing or turn those ones off. And then another option that you'll have by using the custom configurations here. So let's go ahead and press function record one where we can turn on or off whichever keys on the keyboard we want. So we can turn on everything. Let's say, OK, let's say, for example, you guys imagined so function record one. Let's say you guys imagined that I turned on everything except the space bar. So I can either have that middle one illuminated or not illuminated. And it's totally up to me whether to have it add some of the original color or none of it at all. And then you can recall those by using. So let's go ahead and stop recording by just pressing function CM one or CM two. And that's on the F11 and F12 keys. Now, if you're anything like me and particularly the first time around, if you get just overwhelmed at some point and you just want to go back to stock, all you have to do is hold down both of the windows keys for three seconds. The keyboard flashes and boom, you are back to factory settings and you can start tinkering again. So the conclusion for this is pretty simple. If you're looking for an extremely well-built keyboard that's available in a wide variety of configurations, at least some of which you're bound to find pleasing and you want the best lighting features, then I guess just go buy one. With that said, the Shine 3 is not cheap. It's well over a hundred dollars and given the spotty retail store availability, you'll likely have to get it shipped to you. So you're probably looking at one hundred and fifty dollar plus or minus investment. It's probably going to last forever, however. So as long as you have the discipline to not run and buy more mechanical keyboards, it really is addictive. Then you may be able to justify the expense for the faster, more satisfying typing experience that a mechanical keyboard provides and you can treat yourself to one that is particularly awesome. As always, guys, like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you dislike it, leave a comment, let me know what your thoughts on mechanical keyboards in general and the Shine 3 in particular. And as always, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips.