It’s already frustrating enough how many different specs there are for each laptop. I just discovered that even the keyboard can vary wildly within models. I had my eyes on the Omnibook 5, I had tested it out at Costco and found the keyboard to be somewhat to my liking. I ordered a Ryzen 7 model from Walmart during a Black Friday sale and when it arrived I was severely disappointed with the keyboard experience. It was mushy and takes too much force to activate the keys which slows down my typing. The listing also said the screen is 120Hz which is a big reason I picked it over the OLED Snapdragon model. I’ll be returning it because of that and I was watching a review of the snapdragon model and the reviewer said the keyboard was great. I ordered it to try out the OLED screen (I love it). There are so many differences with this keyboard. First off, I absolutely love it and I can reach my top speeds on it. However, there is no numpad which will drive me crazy and it’s not backlit.
Is there any way to identify these differences before purchase aside from scraping through reviews and product pictures. It’s crazy to me that the same model can have a different chassis and keyboard, what does the model identity even represent?
I also went back to costco to test out other laptops in person and re tested one of their Omnibook 5. It had the exact same specs as mine besides being 1TB instead of 512GB and it was definitely a more tactile typing experience. This makes me wonder even more how the keyboard experience can be changed just from a storage configuration.