Wear and tear on keys

uConsole
1

Am I the only one whose keys are already showing signs of wear after a short time? Is the skin on my fingers too rough?

wear_and_tear_on_keys
wear_and_tear_on_keys900×1400 376 KB

2

You can see the same type of wear in this picture I took August 2025:

Zoom all the way in and look at Esc and Shift.

My keyboard has worn a lot more since. I might send a picture of it later. If anything, I wish it would wear faster, because ClockworkPi never made alternate silicone keyboard covers and I always wanted a translucent one. I’d go ahead with some sandpaper but when I was 16 doing that with my Thinkpad T420 keyboard made it look uneven and a little ugly.

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3

That makes me feel a bit better.

But if the keys are translucent, they won’t have any lettering on them. Would that be OK with you?

4

By this point I’m extremely familiar with the key mappings. Here are two ugly pictures of a uConsole that hasn’t been cleaned in a little while.

A uConsole with the keyboard backlight on full blast, showing many regions of keys where the black coating on the keyboard has rubbed off revealing white patches.
A uConsole with the keyboard backlight on full blast, showing many regions of keys where the black coating on the keyboard has rubbed off revealing white patches.1920×2560 934 KB

A uConsole in sunlight, showing the pattern of wear on the keyboard, which is biased to the right side. As it's worn it's gone from a matte texture to a smooth and shiny one much like a well used office keyboard.
A uConsole in sunlight, showing the pattern of wear on the keyboard, which is biased to the right side. As it's worn it's gone from a matte texture to a smooth and shiny one much like a well used office keyboard.1920×1440 559 KB

I find these wear patterns interesting since I don’t think of myself as a frequent user of the letter ‘A’, and would imagine I use ‘F’ more than ‘J’, and I seem to be wrong on both counts.

3 Likes
5

It looks great! The device has clearly been well used. :grin:

1 Like