For the longest while, getting somebody into the “better” part of the hobby was as simple as one word: Tofu. KBDfans made the honey pot of enthusiasts way back when that the Tofu became the de facto board to get if you’re starting out and want to treat yourself. Times have changed and made this board mostly obsolete… mostly.

Design/Aesthetics

The Tofu series is iconic for its simple, no nonsense rectangle design. Even up until 2023 when they released the Tofu 2.0, the Tofu always remained a single-piece wedge design without even any chamfers or fillets to smooth out the edges. The only sort of flair ever added into the original Tofu design was the external brass weight, which either spanned a decent amount on the exterior or the interior.

Assembly

As with all tray mount cases, the build is as simple as the design. PCB, plate, switches, PCB screws into case: keyboard. The only change that has occurred is the Tofu Redux case is the inclusion of a movable USB cutout to accommodate different placements of the USB port.

PCB and Firmware

At the time I acquired the Tofu 65, it came with the DZ65RGB V3 PCB which is about as simple as it gets for a 65% PCB. It was hotswap, has RGB SMD LEDs, no layout options, and an integrated USB-C port. The only caveat to the board, like most other integrated USB PCBs, is the two switches next to the USB port, Esc and 1, needing to be flipped to be north-facing, which for R1 is of little-to-no consequence. The DZ65 PCB came pre-flashed with Via-ready QMK.

Typing Experience

It’s a tray mount, so as expected the typing feel is extremely stiff since nothing can move. With the brass plate, pretty much whatever switch you use, the Tofu still gives off a surprisingly sharp and full sound, but the one thing that always hits hard is the spacebar. It’s a stiff spacebar, somehow in spite of the stiffness of the stiff tray mount, but that may be attributed to the fact that the plate is very open near the spacebar to allow for what ungodly amount of bottom row options exist with the old solder PCB. Even without foam the sound only changes a little bit with or without the weight, but you will get varying resonance based on your application. You can also try to do a plateless build, but if anything I feel that lost some volume and fullness, so I’d stick with the plate for this one to keep the sound tamed.