Drop Signature Series Islay Night hands-on: A $349, arrow-free keyboard - Ars Technica

The Drop Signature Series Islay Night keyboard is arguably the most unique option among the seven added to the series last week because it's a "60 percent keyboard"—no function row, no numpad, and no arrow keys.

But if you're willing to splurge on a tiny keyboard, the Islay Night is a premium way to take part in hot mechanical keyboard trends like hybrid switches and diffused RGB without having to do any building.

Named after the Scottish island Islay, this keyboard is on a bit of an island itself. If it's not obvious by now, you're not paying for key count with the Islay Night.

But 60 percent keyboards take the "small keyboard" thing to a different level by dropping all navigation keys, including the arrow keys.

You can still enter arrow keys by holding the diamond key on the right side, which serves as Fn, and [, ;, ', or /.

But in no way will this ever become as simple as having dedicated arrow keys.

You also get access to F1-12 and the other navigation keys by holding down the diamond/Fn.

The keyboard's layout is based on the Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) layout, which was made specifically for coding.

I find arrow keys pretty important for navigating across and editing long documents.

The whole keyboard is reprogrammable, but you have to work with it.

Drop's Islay Night is built inside the Drop + Tokyo Keyboard Tokyo60 case, a union of two pieces of CNC-milled aluminum pieces angled at 5 degrees.