A pretty hard question to answer, if you think about it. In the age of completely customisable keyboards dubbing one keyboard “the ultimate keyboard” seems a little blue-switch obnoxious (Don’t worry blues, you’re still my favourite). So, instead, I should ask: is this MY ultimate keyboard? Simply put, yes, and here’s why:

Here at NAG, we were lucky enough to get the full Everest MAX setup to play around with, and it’s been a joy. I feel like it’s Christmas all over again and it’s only May *cue 2-minute noodle hair meme. Let’s start with the unboxing experience, everyone’s a sucker for a good unboxing, I mean you’ve saved up money for a couple of months now, sacrificed nights out and weekly ice cream waffles just to purchase the said thing, you want to feel like it was worth it from the very start. Mountain has smashed it out of the park! The Mountain Everest MAX comes in, what I can only relate to calling it, a toolbox with drawers upon drawers of goodies, each one smoothly topped with a matte finish and a satisfyingly snappy magnet to seal it all in. They want you to keep this box and trust me you will.

In the top half of the toolbox, lies the Everest Core, Mountains TKL keyboard, ready to rumble. Underneath sits a magnetic wrist rest, soft, squishy, and luxurious (Although I don’t actually use it, but more on that later). In the bottom half of the toolbox, a pull-out drawer filled with toys and trinkets; you’ll find the Mountain Media Dock, Mountain Core Numpad, a USB-C extender cable, one THICC USB-C power/data cable, keycap and key-switch puller, a stock ESC keycap and one of each colour CHERRY MX key-switch. I’m not sure why they throw these 5 key-switches in, perhaps to give you a taste of a colour you’ve never tried before, leading you further down the custom keyboard rabbit hole, or just to confirm that blue is still bae, either way, it’s a nice touch.

Three hours later, once you’ve relished opening each and every compartment of the toolbox, you’ll notice how premium and thought-out everything on offer is. The brushed, double aluminium faceplates, the textured, machined lines beneath the keys, the un-obtrusive branding, cutouts beneath the keyboard going in every direction for your cable OCD needs, MAGNETS! Flippin’ magnets everywhere! The slidey switch at the bottom of the Numpad allows you to decide which side of the keyboard you want it to be. I feel like the team at Mountain sat down for months on end, discussing what they wanted out of a premium keyboard experience and then built exactly that: a completely customisable, modular keyboard built out of premium materials for the keyboard connoisseur sitting inside us all.

Each key is RGB addressable and macro-able, there are 4 different USB-C ports on the keyboard for you to choose where you want the Numpad and media dock mounted, the riser feet are magnetic, and you get enough in the box to turn the keyboard into a literal Everest. The only thing not included with the Everest MAX is the kitchen sink, and thank God for that, there’s so much going on here and I haven’t yet spoken about what it’s like to use the thing! Let’s do that.

The Everest MAX setup has been so much fun to set up and play with, you can have 5 different profiles configured on the keyboard itself, so I have one profile set up for a plain old working day; Numpad hooked up to the right of the keyboard like it’s every other day. Twist the media dock one click right and I move to a streaming setup, where I have the Numpad plugged in via extension cable to the left configured as my own personal Stream Deck, each key doing something stream important and the customisable display keys showing off different emojis. One more twist of the media dock and I hit gamer central; a pitch-black keyboard where only the important keys matter, WASD.

Numpad? Binned. Media dock? Set to APM. KPD? You can’t divide by zero.

And all this from a little twist on the media dock dial. The standard keycaps it comes with are comfortable and if you feel like getting pretty with it, you can pick up some flashy PBT keycaps from Mountain themselves, or toss your own keycaps on, there’s no proprietary nonsense here. (Ok, so they do recommend you only use the USB-C Extension cable offered by Mountain for the Numpad, but they give you one of those so we’re good, we’re so good). I could go on and on and on about how good, nay, how great this keyboard is, but for every yang…

There’s not much to yin about here, it mainly falls to personal preference than the fault of the keyboard itself, but it’s only fair to mention what I didn’t enjoy on my trek up the Mountain Everest. First, the angle that I prefer to have my keyboard at and the height of the wrist rest at the bottom didn’t really work for me, so I moved back to my much beefier wrist rest, not to say the Mountain one was uncomfortable, I just prefer my wrists a little higher. Secondly, the standard keycaps don’t allow for the RGB to shine through on the number portion of the top row of keys, not a big deal, I just feel like, with everything else so meticulously thought on, this was something overlooked. Thirdly, and probably something that can be easily addressed in future updates to the software, I would’ve loved to be able to stick gifs in the customizable keys on the Numpad and on the dial of the media dock. Again, these are probably more personal things than actual faults, but worth mentioning when we’re discussing the ultimate keyboard.

Ok, ok, you’ve dragged it out of me, yes the Everest MAX is marginally, too ridiculously, expensive. To get the full package you’re looking at around R6,500. But remember, you get a full toolbox of goodies here. A hot-swappable piece of finely tuned equipment, that can be customised to fit your glamourous personality.

So, TLDR, is this the ultimate keyboard? Yes, yes some more, a third yes and a yes from the donkey being thrown through the window by some love-struck ogre. It’s most definitely MY ultimate keyboard and I’m willing to bet that it’d be your ultimate keyboard too.

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