Hoo boy, you missed… an absolute nightmare hellstorm of drama around it. The short version is that the person leading it briefly stepped aside, the person who stepped in to keep it going got in a massive poorly-translated fight with ThereminGoat and kicked tons of folks out of their discord, and now the original person is back and trying to get stuff back in order/on track.
So my guess is the site is temporarily down while they’re trying to do that.
Looks like IK is back up, I see my order, but no update on the Yok Panda V2. Anyone have any info?
Last update about it in their discord was a week or two before my last comment in this thread and all it had to say about the YOK Panda V2 was:
YOK Panda V2: …I would need a talk first before I can get a full picture of what is going on.
EDIT: FWIW NovelKeys does have PCB-mount YOK Pandas in stock at the moment so at the very least the existence of PCB-mount YOK Pandas has been confirmed and they’ve hit the market (I have a shipment of some waiting to be opened, I think). Doesn’t help your situation, unfortunately.
Would appreciate a review of those new NovelKeys YOK Pandas when you get them in a board, seems a shame to give up all the benefits of the v2 Don mentioned in the thread header.
I’ll have some time on my hands soon (due to both the end of the year and some major changes to my overall work/life scenario) to give them a try, but at the very least I can say the high-level 5-pin change is definitely welcome (although it means I can’t test them in my tester boards without clipping those legs. *makes note* 2021 Resolution: Get Hotswap Tester Board That Isn’t Trash).
We’ll see if any of the other changes are actual things BSUN did or if the situation was messier than that. I’d imagine NK would have advertised the UHMWPE stem and POM housing if what they got from BSUN had those features, so I think the 5-pin YOK Pandas they’re selling are a bit more of a YOK Panda v1.5 or something. Might still have the center pole adjustment/wobble improvements/polishing, though.
Interesting, honestly the polishing and the wobble improvements are the most important for me, I don’t know if anyone has perfected the UHMWPE stem yet, but a housing with the smoothness of the JWK housings, but a better sound profile would be a major improvement IMO. Thanks for the update, happy Holidays
I finally settled on a good ol’ GK61x after using a Massdrop CTRL followed by an un-badged Rakk Lam-Ang Pro (both 3 pin). The GK is comfortably a “budget” board; tray mount, plastic case, what looks to be a stamped steel plate… but it makes a fantastic switch tester - and a suprprisingly good daily driver. They’re decently well-made, and apparently produced by a small handful of manufacturers.
I find myself actually using it a lot more than I expected to; it’s a solid little board with decent weight, and @ajoflo pointed out that you can even use keycap o-rings as improvised burger gaskets for it. (Noice!)
Plenty of much higher quality hot-swaps out there (counting the days until my Grid 650 gets here) - but this one is cheap, and if you’re looking for a usable tester that represents a realistic experience for the average user, I think the GK family is a collection of very suitable choices.
Within the range, there are some differences to note depending on your personal priorities:
Has “61” in the name: Standard 60% form-factor
Has “64” in the name: 60% with dedicated arrow keys
Has “68” in the name: Modified 65% layout with Backspace key all the way to the right instead of the usual 1u key between it and the edge
Has “s” in the suffix: has bluetooth
Has no suffix, or only “s” in the suffix: uses older case & plate design that has more rounded corners and with a little more space between the outer keys and the case bezel, plate screws sit flush when installed, some parts of case have gloss finish, layout is fixed
Has “x” in the suffix: split space support, plate screws not recessed (might need to shave one of them down for chonky switches - I did), less gap between case bezel and outer keys, tighter corners on case, all case surfaces matte finish (can also be paired with bluetooth, denoted as “xs”)
Wow, thanks for the very thorough detailed response! I’ll definitely be looking into this next year so this is extremely helpful!!!
As a mini-update on the 5-pin pandas Novelkeys is now carrying, I took some photos to try to show whatever differences I’ve noticed (without having put them in a board).
Left switch is always the old trash panda, right is always the new. Specifically, these are the ones with the tactile stem.
In terms of stem wobble: the newer one seems to have very slightly more wobble, but the stem itself has also changed and my gut says it has more to do with that than anything else. I’ll need to test wobble with the same stem to be sure.
Housing fitment is great, as is usual for these BSUN switches. Doesn’t seem like a candidate for filming at all.
Overall, between looking at the internals and playing around with these outside of a board, these very much appear to be a YOK Panda v1.5 where the biggest change is that they are now PCB-mount. That seems pretty good, though: same great thing, new compatibility.
Interesting, thanks for the in depth analysis! looks like I’ll be holding out for the promised land V2 then.
Has anyone gotten an update on this? I emailed Infinity Keys and they said they would get back to me, but nothing ever came.
hop on his discord and message the admins directly, you’ll be in for a surprise… the bad kind
lol “Waiting for sample” Updated Dec 30th 
if you bought in, message them directly on disc (they’ll add u to a seperate chat for the gb and … well you can read the rest later). gl
Come on, don’t leave the rest of us hanging like this 
Sry, but they specifically ask not to share any info from that channel, seems to be an internal channel.
