Mistel Barocco MD770 Split Mechanical Keyboard Review
Tags: keyboard
Published: 2020-08-29 20:11:49

As a software developer, my keyboard matters to me. Personally I do not like standard full-size keyboards because I find the number pad forces me to move the mouse too far to the right.

So I've always preferred the smaller (ten keyless or TKL) designs, the smaller of which mostly look like laptop keyboards.

For the past 12-13 years I've been using a Kinesis Freestyle keyboard (Mac version), which is a split TKL design. This means that the keyboard is literally split into two halves, which are connected by a cord.

The benefit of such a design is that you are able to keep your shoulders and wrists nice and straight when typing. With a normal keyboard, such as with a laptop, your wrists are twisted slightly to line up with the keys which can cause strain after a while.

I liked the Kinesis Freestyle 2, but it was pretty large and took up a lot of space in my keyboard tray. They keys were also nothing special, just standard mushy, membrane keys that you find on most low-cost keyboards.

A month or so ago I started doing some research and stumbled upon the world of mechanical keyboards. I had a TKL mechanical keyboard a while ago but found the clicky Cherry MX Blue switches it used to be far too noisy for me. It also was not split so I stopped using it when I went to the Kinesis. But now I learned there are other types of switches! And there are even split mechanical keyboards. I had no idea and down the rabbit hole I went.

It turns out Kinesis made a mechanical keyboard, the [FreeStyle Pro](https://kinesis-ergo.com/keyboards/freestyle-pro-keyboard/), which is essentially and updated FreeStyle 2. They also make a "gaming" version that has RGB lighting, the [Freestyle Edge](https://gaming.kinesis-ergo.com/edge/), for a bit more money.

I seriously considered these two but they are pretty expensive and large. I did like the programmability feature and Kinesis was a quality company, but I kept looking.

I then came across the [Mistel Barocco MD770 split keyboard](https://www.mistelkeyboard.com/products/5e53c3254c6f41f25c914273fb3a4d8b), which was available with or without RGB lighting. This one was smaller than the Kinesis and also a bit cheaper.

I also had to decide what type of switch to get. The most common are Cherry MX Blue (very clicky and tactile), Cherry MX Brown (not clicky, but provides some tactile feedback) and Cherry MX Silent Red (not clicky, not tactile).

I decided I would choose Brown as they seemed to match what I thought I'd prefer in a keyboard.

I watched videos, read reviews and in the end I went with the Mistel Barocco MD770 with RGB lighting.

## Mistel Barocco MD770 RGB

I have to say that I really like the Cherry MX brown switches. They are not clicky at all, but you do hear pleasant sounds from them while typing. The keys themselves require slightly more pressure to activate than standard mushy membrane keyboards so that takes a bit of time to get used to. But the feel is wonderful. The keycaps themselves also have a great feel to them, although I'd prefer a larger bump on the F & J keys to make it a little easier to find the home row. After a bit of practice I am back to my usual 80-85 WPM, so I can't complain.

The black color is gorgeous and it looks especially nice with the orange keycaps.

I knew this going in, but the LEDs are not all that practical. They are fun, however. Because the keycaps are not translucent in any way, the LEDs cannot light them up at all. Instead it's more of an underflow. This is fine and I think it looks nice, but it doesn't help illuminate the keys in the dark. I tend to use a solid red at medium brightness which I find is easy on the eyes. It was only $20 more for the LED feature and even though it's not super-useful, I think the fun factor makes it worth it.

Perhaps the biggest issue I have with the keyboard is that it does not have great Mac support. First, there's no way to update the firmware from a Mac. I had to hook the keyboard up to a Windows PC to do that. And second, although there is a DIP switch to enable Mac mode, which essentially flips the Alt & Windows keys and changes the function keys to do their Mac commands (volume, play, skip, launchpad, etc.), when it is enabled there is no way to use the actual function keys as function keys. On a regular Mac keyboard you would press FN+F8 to get F8 instead of doing the Play/Pause thing, but there's no way to do that on this keyboard.

Instead what I did was flip the DIP to just swap Alt & Windows key and then used [Karabiner Elements](https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org) app on Mac to re-map certain F-keys to the values I wanted. Essentially I really wanted F1 & F2 to pass through as is because I use them often in development tools.

I really like that they included all the extra keycaps from a full keyboard set (and a keycap puller). I used several of these to represent my Karabiner Elements re-mapped function keys.

Speaking of re-mapping keys, you can also re-map keys directly on the keyboard itself, in one of several layers. I have re-mapped the left spacebar to be a backspace and the CapsLock key to be another enter key. This is a great feature, although I've yet to see a way to remove a re-mapped key without wiping all the mappings on the keyboard layer.

Lastly, the most important feature of this keyboard is that it is split. The overall compact size of the MD770 makes it really easy to adjust to your preferences.

I like that this includes the little nubs so you can tent it, which is what I use. I don't use a large separation, maybe 3-5 inches, but you can put them very far apart if you wanted. It would probably be more ergonomic if the keyboard itself was more flat, rather than having the back be slightly higher than the front.

So overall, this is a wonderful keyboard and perhaps one of the best split keyboards available.

Recommended!