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The Miya Pro Sakura from Ducky & Varmilo is a collaboration that’s pretty in pink. A serious keyboard for enthusiasts that’s only 65% in size but delivers 100% in performance.
Ducky and Varmilo are considered by many to be the best of the best when it comes to quality mechanical keyboards. These two titans have collaborated to produce a premium feeling 65% keyboard.
A company from China and a company from Taiwan come together to produce a Japanese style keyboard and the results are sublime. The quality is of no shock as mentioned the two companies involved are known for the production of top-notch boards and the Miya Pro Sakura is no exception. This board isn’t much smaller than a standard TKL board thanks to the 4 navigation buttons located on the right and it’s packed with some premium Cherry Blue switches, backlighting and some space-saving functional buttons.
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No matter what keyboard you buy from Ducky or Varmilo the packaging is always of high quality and so a collaboration wasn’t going to be any different. The design of the packaging follows the design of the product….sakura! It’s a lovely pink and white box with what looks like a sakura water painting on the front. The packaging is as expected for a keyboard of this quality, the keyboard is wrapped in a sleeve to prevent scratches with a plastic cover for the top of the keycaps.
Inside we get:
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Ducky and Varmilo have collaborated on a few keyboards together all under the same range called ‘Miya’. The Miya Pro range has brought some fantastic designs together with unrelenting performance to give us a variety of 65% keyboard options. The one we have here is the Miya Pro Sakura and if you aren’t familiar with Sakura it’s basically a blossom tree hence why the board is pink. The pastel pink colour is actually really nice and reminds me of a soft bubblegum colour from back in the 1990s.
The Miya Pro Sakura is a 65% keyboard and that extra 5% comes from the 4 navigation buttons located to the right of the backspace. The overall size then as you can imagine is small but the length is still reasonably close to a TKL board at 34cm long. The board has 68 keys so you can see why the length is similar but they save the space on the width as it sits at just 11 cm and this is down to the function keys being paired up with the number keys near the top. The arrow keys appear to be shifted left on 65% boards and a column of navigation keys seems to be the main difference between this and a tenkeyless board which makes it less compact than some alternatives. I love the way they have implemented standard size keys into such a small case and it only has a height of 3.4 cm making it only half a cm taller than the Corsair K70 Low Profile board.
Rather than using OEM keycaps Ducky/Varmilo have gone for the preferred Cherry caps which have a lower profile and are often favoured in the community. The keycaps are PBT and you can be sure they won’t wear down too quickly. The legends match the overall sakura theme and they appear to have a slight tilt to them making them some of the nicest keys I’ve used. The keys are extremely durable thanks to the process of dye-sublimation with the alpha keys coloured white and the modifiers in pink. The board mixes white and pink in a very balanced way and looks fantastic which is helped by the specially designed space bar and escape key that resembles sakura branches. The keycaps have a slightly rough texture to them and they feel really comfortable to use but the one downside comes from the pink coloured keycaps as the LED appears to bleed through. The board comes with a spare plain space bar which, to be honest, should remain in the box as the sakura space bar is too nice to put away. The board also comes with a standard escape key already fitted which I swapped out with the spare Sakura escape key as it looks much better.
The board we have here features the Cherry MX Blue switches. Blue switches are always really satisfying to type on with that clicky response every time you make a keypress. Blues aren’t my normal choice for keyboards but the more I get to grips with blue the more I enjoy the tactile feel and sound. The downside to Blues for me as I’m used to linear Red’s is the fact sometimes a key isn’t pressed as I haven’t actuated the button properly and this can frustrating at times. I’ve come to like Blue the more I use them, the switches on this board never let me down while typing or gaming and sound unreal.
The board is available with 6 different Cherry MX switches catering for all preferences.
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The board is so pink it will make the boys wink but it’s a soft pastel colour and not a sickly pink which is a great touch. Sakura is the theme and you wouldn’t miss it as the crisp white keys are surrounded by a pink ABS plastic case and the modifier keys are dye subbed pink with all the legends being in pink too. So pink, pink, and pinker but the classy touches shine through with the escape and spacebar having some lovely looking sakura branches that bring the overall design together.
The Miya Pro Sakura follows suit and is identical in size and shape to the other Miya Pro boards released from Ducky and Varmilo. The board is rectangular and feels chunky in the hands with the shape reminding me of the Varmilo VA68M boards which are also 65%. The main differences between the VA68M boards and the Miya Pro are mostly down to materials and design as the latter uses a pastel-coloured plastic instead of aluminium. The board has a symmetrical 5mm bezel which frames the keys which visually appealing and it covers the switches giving the board a high profile design.
On the underside of the keyboard, we have 5 flat rubber feet to aid in grip and they do a brilliant job. There are 2 fold-out feet as you would expect and they also have a rubber base to them for grip which I normally hate as they collapse when the board is moved backwards but surprisingly not with this one. The cable is USB-C to A and is detachable which is a great feature to Ducky and Varmilo keyboards alike as it’s just more convenient for transport.
The keyboard doesn’t feature any RGB and has limited space for special media keys etc however it isn’t featureless! The board’s keys are individually backlit with a pinkish hue and there are plenty of different options to cycle through if you wish to customise the lighting. You can also set profiles and save different lighting effects to said profiles which are saved onboard. The backlighting really compliments the pink and white design and the board does feel a bit better without flashing RGB however, unfortunately, the LED’s bleed through the pink modifier keys in an unattractive fashion. I solved this by creating a custom lighting profile and only turned on the backlights to the white keys which of course don’t allow any light to penetrate through as the material is too thick.
There are a few functional keys that can be used for a couple of different actions, for example, the number row needs to be activated by pressing Fn Key + ‘page up/ page down’. Once activated with ‘Fn+page up’ the number row will work as expected.
This board could easily be a fantastic day to day keyboard because it’s so comfy to use whilst also being an extremely durable bit of kit. That being said if you are used to using a number pad then maybe this would be a bit of a struggle. The board is built to last and you can feel and see that immediately, its construction and attention to detail is outstanding as you would expect from the two gods of keyboards (Ducky & Varmilo).
I say ‘Ducky & Varmilo’ but I’m not quite sure what was done by Ducky with this board however that being said it’s an awesome keyboard and if you are thinking of a vibrant little tournament board or something for a small desk then this 65% will brighten any desk. If there wasn’t a Miya Pro with a panda theme I would probably go with this to match my pink EC2-A Divina. Well worth a look!
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