Back in January, KiiBOOM sent me the Phantom81 Lite, which I absolutely loved and which has very recently become my own go-to keyboard at home. Why only very recently? Because they have sent me a Phantom98 Lite to review, and it has very quickly ended up on my wife’s desk in place of the Phantom81. Also, tragically, I managed to tip about a quarter of a bottle of ink into my trusty B21, and the Phantom81 is the perfect replacement.
If you were as enamoured of the cosydiaries collaboration with KiiBOOM as I was, then you’re going to be very excited about Phantom98 Lite because it has even more keys and therefore even more frogs.
The Phantom98 Lite is an ANSI 97-key, 76% layout mechanical keyboard. It has three modes of connectivity: USB-C, Bluetooth, and 2.4GHz (dongle stashed nearly under the board behind one of the two-position flip-down silicon-padded feet). It has an onboard 8000mAh Battery, and weighs about 1.2 kg.
The Phantom98 Lite comes in Green, which is the adorable cosydiaries rainy frog theme. As I said last time, the whole chunky, rainy froggy theme is absolutely delightful.
Keycaps are PBT MOA profile, which are lovely. They look as if someone made a cube out of plasticine and then squished the top of it down with their thumb to form a concave typing surface. The characters and the images on the keys all have the same whimsical hand-drawn look and feel to them. There are a few extra keycaps in the box too, so you can do a bit of cosy customisation.
South-facing RGB/ backlights enhance the look of the board. You can toggle through a whole lot of onboard presets and alter the speed, brightness, hue, and saturation of the lights via keyboard shortcuts. Again, I set them to gently rippling shades of green, because that is what you have to do!
Like the Phantom81, the Phantom98 is VIA compatible, enabling users to customise every key, macro, and RGB lighting effect.
The Phantom98 comes with a choice of KiiBOOM’s own Mochi linears or Mossy silent linears. Again, I got the Mochi linears, which are lovely.
The Phantom98 is a gasket-mounted board with layers of latex sandwich foam, ixpe switch pads, PE transparent film, PCB Foam, and a bottom Silicone pad. This means that the Phantom98 has next to no sound transference onto the work surface.
Essentially, if you liked the Phantom81 Lite, but felt the lack of a numpad, then you’re probably going to love the Phantom98 Lite. For me, the only thing that’s missing is a vol knob. I do like a vol knob. It could be shaped like a frog, couldn’t it? I think I need to drop KiiBOOM an email.
The Phamtom 98 Lite is available to order directly from KiiBOOM now for $109 USD