Already plenty of good advice here; I’ll just relate some personal anecdotes of my own keeb journey;
My first ~$30 Amazon keeb blew my mind, and knowing I’d started with one of the cheapest available, I thought, “wow how much better does it get from here?” One thing about it that impressed me was how solid it was - no flex (in the way Thomas / Chyrosran22 uses the term; you can’t physically twist the board, it unyieldingly holds its shape if you try).
I figured, well, since I like this cheap solid one with an aluminum top (plate) so much, I bet a full-aluminum one would be awesome! A few hundred bucks later and I’d modded a Filco Majestouch into one of YMDK’s machined cases for it. Finally, I had a big, heavy, solid-as-a-stone keyboard. I looked down with beaming anticipation as I rested my hands on the keys.
…Oh.
Turns out I hated it, almost completely. I think I’ve logged maybe ten minutes on that board. The height was ridiculous. The typing angle was brutal. And the sound. Oh, dear, the sound. Like whacking a pencil against a steel stairwell hand rail.
From that moment forward, I always took the opportunity to question not just what’s good, but what’s good for me personally - as Huey mentioned, answering those questions does get a lot easier with expendable income, but of course stuff like meetups can help a lot with that in the mean time.
Since assembling the underwhelming Monolith-shaped keeb, I’ve had the opportunity to explore my tastes in the intervening 4 or 5 years, and boy did they end up in a place I didn’t expect at the outset. I thought I wanted a super-heavy, solid-as-possible edifice of a TKL - and while I still like that idea, what I actually ended up preferring to use was a relatively light, almost completely plastic 65%.
If you have lots of practical (as in “in-practice”, not necessarily “productive”) reasons for thinking the Unikorn will satisfy the tastes you’ve developed so far, it’s at least worth thinking about - and that’s probably the best advice I can give personally, think about it. More specifically:
Make a list of pros and cons. When faced with a dilemma, I find it really helpful to get all the variables in front of me on a piece of paper (or screen). Dig-into why, for you, the Unikorn is desirable. Put that up against things like how what you have meets those desires, and then ask if the gulf between what you’ve got and what you want is big enough to justify the cost (and if that cost is worth a gamble, as you never truly know until its in your hands).
Another thing to consider; keeb-space is always evolving, and rapidly. If what draws you to the Unikorn has to do with just about anything other than specific aesthetics, there’s a good chance someone else is going to do it better sometime in the next six months.
Not too long ago, I threw down on what I’d consider an expensive keeb, and I’m really happy with it - but it took me at least three years of messing around with other stuff to inform that purchase to the point where I was confident I knew I was getting into. Granted I’ve watched you picking up on stuff like Gohan picking up moves, so I don’t think it’s going to take you nearly as long to hone-in on informed preferences as it did me. I’m just here to tell you it’s worth taking that time before putting big bucks on the table, whatever it is for you.
At this point I own a few really sweet custom keebs and I’m very glad to have them in my collection - but I do have to note that my favorite keeb to actually use is still a toss-up between the KBD67 Lite and Portico. Are there “better” keebs out there? Absolutely. Are there better keebs for me out there? Not that I’ve tried so far.
If it really is just (or at least primarily) the perceived value / hype of a given keeb that draws you to it, well - I’d lean towards resisting that, unless it’s backed-up by plenty of other things. Buying-into hype (literally) can be a slippery-slope, and you’re wise to question it.
It’s fine if reasons for wanting [x] aren’t logical so long as they’re real for you - for example, I really like my P.02 for purely aesthetic reasons. For me, it was worth about half a thousand to have that in my collection primarily as a display piece - but for someone hoping for the best typing experience would probably be sorely disappointed given what else is out there these days.
