I've been testing some fantastic mechanical keyboards over the past few months, and recently, NuPhy reached out to tell me about its new Halo75 V2 keyboard. This 75% board does a lot right, with a good sound treatment resulting in a decently quiet typing experience, while also looking pretty good thanks to the RGB lighting effects, which can get fairly bright.

For the most part, I've had a good experience with the Halo75, but I've had more issues with typing than with any other keyboard I've tried. Resuming a wireless connection seems to be a problem, so I often miss inputs when trying to unlock my PC, for example. It's a good keyboard, but there's some fierce competition out there.

About this review: NuPhy sent me the Halo75 V2 for this review. The company had no input in its content.

Pricing and availability

The NuPhy Halo75 V2 went up for pre-order on April 2nd, 2024, and it became fully available later that month. Since launching on NuPhy's own website, it's also become available on Amazon.

Pricing starts at just under $130 on NuPhy's website, though Amazon is charging a bit more for it. You can also add to the price by adding a wrist rest, which NuPhy also sent me.

Design

It's a striking keyboard

NuPhy is a company heavily focused on design, with many ofits marketing materials reinforcing how its keyboards are unique and not boring. And yes, the Halo75 V2 definitely lives up to that claim, bu there are some caveats. But let's start with the basics. The Halo75 V2 has a two-tone chassis. The top is made of metal and it's totally black, but the bottom is made of translucent plastic. This is to allow the RGB lights on the keyboard to shine on your desk a bit more, and I love that idea.

The keycaps themselves also try to make an impact, with the colored Escape, Enter, and Space keys, and even the feet are nice and colorful. These colored keys are only on the Obsidian Black and Ionic White models, and admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of the clashing colors, particularly the yellow. If you want something more lively, I'd recommend one of the other color schemes, which are more cohesive and much more bold. Just based on the renders on NuPhy's website, the Mojito version looks beautiful.

NuPhy went all out with RGB for this model, using not only per-key RGB backlighting, but also edge lighting all around the keys, which makes this keyboard that much more lively. Even the basic wrist rest is translucent, adding another avenue for your RGB lights to shine.

This philosophy of making the keyboard as "loud" as possible with its lighting is undermined by the Obsidian Black colorway, in my opinion. Because it's designed to be darker, the translucent plastic is also darker, which applies to the wrist rest. Only by turning off the lights in my room at night can I see any light coming in through the wrist rest, and even then, it's very faint compared to the light from my monitor. It shows up visibly in this shot from my camera, but it's nowhere near that bright in real life.

I'd recommend any of the other color options if you're buying this for the RGB effects. Though, when it comes to being bright, the Cherry Xtrfy K5V2 is still miles ahead due to its completely trasnslucent chassis and shine-through keycaps.

RGB customization is lacking

NuPhy seems to want to embrace the open community in terms of customization, so rather than building dedicated software, the Halo75 V2 is designed to work with VIA (thanks to its QMK firmware) and SignalRGB for lighting customization. I have problems with both of these things, though. For one, VIA isn't a super straightforward solution. As a normal user, you need to look for the guide on how to use VIA on NuPhy's website, which then links you to the download page for the JSON file you need to upload into VIA in order to be able to configure your board. And uploading that file requires enabling a page with advanced settings. It's a lot of steps for something that should be much simpler, in my opinion. a company like Keychron added support for VIA to its keyboards, but it also developed a VIA-like tool that doesn't require any of this to support its own keyboards, which makes things much easier.

And then there's the problem of RGB lighting customization, which affects both VIA and SignalRGB. Most notably, neither program lets me customize the edge lighitng on the keyboard. I can only change the backlight for the keys, because, after all, that's what most keyboards support. A one-size-fits-all solution is great for coordinating different devices, but sometimes, there are advantages to having dedicated software, too. I also couldn't figure out how to change an individual key's backlight in SignalRGB, but I suspect that's my fault since I only spent a few minutes with the software. Of course, I could point out the exact same problem with the likes of Lemokey and Keychron, but in those cases, the RGB isn't as prominent, and there isn't additional side lighting like there is here. I just wish NuPhy had gone all the way with this idea.

The Halo75 V2 does have some built-in customization options, and you can cycle through different colors, effects, and speeds using the keyboard alone. I'm glad we have this option, but this limited interface makes it much harder to get the right colors and effects you want. And there are a ton of effect options available, particularly for the per-key lighting, so this method is far from ideal.

The typing experience

It's a good keyboard, with an excellent spacebar

You're buying a keyboard for the typing experience, though, and for that, the Halo75 V2 is pretty darn good, most of the time. The keyboard is available with four switch options, three of wehich being linear switches. Mine came with NuPhy's own Raspberry switch, which is designed in partnership with Gateron. It's a linear switch with 46 gram-forces required to actuate. The other options are NuPhy Mint (also linear, but lighter), NuPhy Lemon (tactile), and the Cherry MX Silent Red (also linear). Of course, both keycaps and switches can be swapped at your leisure, so you can get a more comfortable typing experience.

I really like typing on this keyboard, and it's both comfortable and fairly quiet

I've already expressed my preference for linear switches in the past, and that's no different here. For the most part, I really like typing on this keyboard, and it's both comfortable and fairly quiet. I think the noise dampening isn't dampening isn't as good as the very best keyboards out there (see the Keychron Q1 HE), but it's far from bad, and this is still a very quiet typing experience overall. In fact, there's one area where NuPhy exceeds anything else I've tried, and that's the spacebar. This is the quietest spacebar I've ever used, and whatever NuPhy has done here, I hope the competition takes notice.

My issues with the Halo75 V2 have less to do with the switches and more with how it seems to handle wireless connections. On other keyboards I've tried recently, the RGB lights won't turn on until the keyboard has connected to the wireless dongle, so it prevents me wasting keystrokes and time. The Halo72 V2 immediately turns on its lights upon interacting with it, but it's still not ready for typing, so I've mistyped my Windows PIN far too many times. The keyboard is also very quick to go to sleep, which is generally a good thing, but it means this problem occurs more often.

I've also had some weird issues with some keys getting "stuck". Not physically, but sometimes the keyboard will act as if I'm holding down a key, even though I only pressed it once. This seemed to happen more often shortly after waking the PC up from sleep. Another thing I've noticed is a propensity for not registering some keystrokes (it could have been me, but I've never seen this behavior on other keyboards). This only seemed to occur towards the end of my review period when the keyboard's battery was running low, so maybe that has something to do with it. These issues weren't frequent or overly problematic, but I feel I should mention how my review period went.

On that note, it's worth noting that battery life is quite good on this board. For a keyboard that's fairly bright with its RGB effects, I managed to use it for well over a week without having to recharge it.

Should you buy the NuPhy Halo75 V2?

I like the NuPhy Halo75 V2 in many ways. It's a nice keyboard to type on, and I like the RGB effects a lot. It strikes a good balance of offering a great typing experience (something I've loved Keychron for) with the flashiness of something like the Cherry Xtrfy K5V2, and while it's not the best in either of those areas, it lives in a nice middle ground and I think it might be able to find an audience there. It's also priced adequately, so I could see this being a nice purchase for someone lookin for an upgrade from their run-of-the-mill keyboard.

The issues I experienced do make this harder to recommend wholeheartedly, though, and I'm also more inclined to pick something that has either a fantastic typing experience like the Keychon Q1 HE or even the cheaper Lemokey P1 Pro. Or, if you want something flashy, I still recommend the Cherry Xtrfy K5V2.