The first module batch has been shipped

Hi there, and welcome to this monthly UHK status update!

TL;DR: The first 400 modules have been shipped from our facility, and we’ll be continuously shipping the remaining module pre-orders. We’ve approved the latest PBT keycap set our supplier sent to us, and UHK 60 v2 production is expected to start in early June. We will try to provide estimates regarding pending orders in our next update.

Please make sure to update your shipping address if you have moved to another location since your order.

Also, please open the web address that you can find in the module boxes to be able to use the modules and make the most out of them. Don’t forget to update to Agent 1.5.12 and firmware 8.10.9 or any later version available.

Production progress

After all this time, we’ve finally shipped the first module batch, containing 400 modules. These are some of the modules.

We’ve ended up providing a red ball, a black ball, and a steel ball for the trackball modules because we’re unsure which one you’ll like best, and your feedback is much welcome.

We can’t wait to see your posts and hear your experiences regarding the modules. The following is the first we’ve received.

You may be wondering why you haven’t gotten your module order even though you ordered earlier than Domi. The reason is that so far, we’ve only shipped non-Crowd Supply module orders because Crowd Supply’s order database is not synchronized with ours yet. In a couple of days, however, it will be synchronized, at which point we’ll start shipping Crowd Supply module orders, too.

We’ll be continuously shipping the remaining module pre-orders in the coming months. We’ll provide an estimate regarding module shipping, but it’s too early as it was challenging to start module mass production, so the assembly speed of the first module batch is not representative.

As stated in our previous newsletter, the UHK 60 v2 is currently blocked by the lack of PBT keycaps and plastic parts. Our keycap supplier expects to start shipping the keycaps in early June, by which time the plastic parts should be ready, too, and UHK 60 v2 production will begin. From that point forward, we’ll continuously ship UHK 60 v2 orders, possibly until the end of the year, which begs some explanation.

The current and future state of delivery

Under normal circumstances, we ship orders in a matter of days, as we did from 2019 May to 2020 October.

As you can probably tell, the current circumstances are everything but normal for several reasons, some of which I’m about to explain.

  1. We’re releasing five different products (four modules and the UHK 60 v2). Every product has its own set of manufacturing challenges, and ramping up production is quite challenging even for a single product.
  2. We have quite a backlog, especially of modules that we need to fulfill. At the same time, the demand for our products has significantly increased recently.
  3. Our on-site, on-demand manufacturing operation is excellent when it comes to a steady stream of orders but not ideal for combating large backlogs. As a result, it takes more time to catch up than if we had an OEM in China.
  4. The electronics supply chain is a wreck due to Covid. We had to purchase several thousand ICs for the modules and the UHK 60 v2 for about ten times the price we usually pay, and we were told we’re lucky we could even get the parts.

We sympathize with every one of our customers whose order is delayed, and we’re doing our best to catch up.

If you need an ergonomic keyboard quickly due to health issues, the UHK is not the right choice now. (Unless you pick up the handful of UHK 60 v1’s left on stock.) But if you’re not in a hurry, it’s still worth purchasing because we’ll raise the price of our products after we catch up with pre-orders, and we deliver on a first-come, first-served basis.

On the upside, after shipping the current module and UHK 60 v2 pre-orders, we expect to ship most orders in 24 hours on workdays, faster than ever before.

Thanks for your understanding, and your continued patience is much appreciated.

Your tweets

Please keep spreading the word on the modules and the UHK in general. The following tweets put smiles on our faces.

We’ll be keeping you updated on all things UHK and plan to publish the following update at the end of May.

The comments are closed, but our forum is available for public discussion.

41 Comments

  1. Pascal 2021-04-30 at 16:28

    Thanks for the update

  2. Shane 2021-04-30 at 17:37

    Will the UHK v2's be shipped according to when the orders were placed i.e. people who ordered earlier will receive it earlier or will it be randomized? Thank you for your continuous commitment to quality despite all these circumstances!

    • Mária Horváth 2021-05-01 at 12:13

      We ship according to the orders. The earlier the order, the soonest it ships.
      No random shipping, and sorry, but no priority for any new order.

  3. GX 2021-04-30 at 17:58

    > From that point forward, we’ll continuously ship UHK 60 v2 orders, possibly until the end of the year, which begs some explanation.

    So the v2 pre-orders are lined up to the end of the year? As a relatively late pre-orderer from March, shall I expect it for a christmas gift?

    • Mária Horváth 2021-05-01 at 12:15

      We want to ship all orders as soon as possible, but we can not tell you a shipping date yet.
      We will try to provide estimates regarding pending orders in our next update.

      • raymond mintz 2021-05-18 at 19:43

        why does it take 30 days to post update on orders?

        • Mária Horváth 2021-05-19 at 15:52

          We need to consult more people about ETA, and since we have a lot of work anyway, it slows down production, therefore we plan to continue the monthly updates.

  4. Jacob 2021-04-30 at 20:22

    Thank you for the continued efforts and not compromising standards.

  5. Tomasz Wilczynski 2021-04-30 at 20:37

    „ If you need an ergonomic keyboard quickly due to health issues, the UHK is not the right choice now” - this information should have been given to us last year. Since then, my hand pain got waaay worse while I was waiting for UHK. Every time you promissed „next month” so I just kept waiting instead of buying something else. After reading this post, I bought from the competition right away, and I will have the keyboard on tuesday.

    I still want my UHK though. This is not a rage quit, I am writing this because you need to improve your estimation skills, and above all, communication. Maria could surely write minor updates in between the big posts from Laszlo. And when you see people frustrated so much as they were lately, you cannot reply „well we have a different perspective - production over communication”. I cannot and will not buy that writing five sentences every now and then would slow down the production process in any way. This perspective of yours hurts you and your reputation more than anyone else.

    • Brad 2021-05-07 at 19:02

      I've seen your comments on a few posts on the UHK blog and you've always been more than understanding with the delays -- that you're also feeling very frustrated should hopefully be a wake up call to the UHK team.

      I canceled my order after the previous update promising manufacturing to begin at the end of April, because it seemed inevitable to me that they would announce another delay. And here we are. (To their credit, they refunded me immediately with no complaints.)

      I simply don't understand why they ever announced a ship date in January, when it's clear they were nowhere close to finalizing the manufacturing details required to be confident in that date.

      There's also been an obvious lack of forwardness about the delays. Instead of sending customers updates by default as they should, they require buyers to subscribe to this entire blog. And they don't make it easy to find the relevant updates -- just look at the titles of the past few blog posts, each of which announced delays:

      "The first module batch has been shipped"
      "Module production is underway"
      "Module testing result and manufacturing progress"

      Sure, they mention the delay in a TL;DR at the top... and then spend most of the post praising their own progress. One particular paragraph from the last update rubbed me the wrong way:

      "Most of you are very patient regarding such delays and primarily concerned about the quality of the final product which we highly appreciate, and we resonate with your mindset. Others are less patient which is understandable. We have dozens of suppliers, and even if one of them introduces a delay, the whole project gets delayed. These delays are often unexpected, and they’re among the top reasons why shipping hardware is so much harder than shipping software. We’ll do our best to push forward. We’re making sure that the wait worths it, and we’ll be keeping you updated."

      This isn't an issue of patience. UHK took payments for orders and promised a pretty clear ship date. Some delays are understandable, but we're now half a year out from the original ship date. I don't doubt the manufacturing challenges are legitimate, but that's on UHK for promising based on best-case scenarios rather than the realities of their current manufacturing progress.

      I understand that the original UHK was a crowdsourced product, which come with a different set of expectations. However, there was no indication that the UHK V2 was anything other than a product available for pre-order, shipping in early 2021.

      The implication that customers that want to receive their orders within half a year of the promised ship date are unconcerned about product quality is totally unfair. I was convinced that the product would be quality because you were already selling a keyboard of comparable quality with stellar reviews. But none of that matters if I can't actually use the product (while notably, UHK continues to holds all customers funds without delivering a product). Updates don't matter if their contents are consistently inaccurate, as they have been.

      I don't doubt the final product will be great, whenever it does release. But I personally don't want to do business with a company that is either dishonest, or makes promises to customers based on idealized best-case scenarios that they cannot realistically fulfill.

      Hopefully UHK can grow as a company, learn to communicate more proactively and honestly, and drop the defensiveness over being called out on their missteps.

      • Ronald McCollam 2021-05-10 at 18:17

        Agreed. I ordered my UHK and two addons in March 2020. At that time, the addons were scheduled to ship in July.

        After that was a series of "short" delays, longer and longer between updates, and finally no indication of any movement, only to realize that during the time I expected to receive the rest of my order, UHK was working on something else entirely and the modules had been relegated to shipping after an entirely new keyboard design was complete. Now I'll be surprised if the addons are only one year later than promised, 18 months after I paid for them.

        The thing is, I understand that there are delays. It's hard to make a good product and sometimes things slip. But constant "we'll have an update in the next week" followed by 4-5 weeks of silence, then "working on it, we'll have an update in a week" followed by more silence is worse than just getting the bad news up front.

        This is easily the best keyboard I have ever owned and I love it. But I've told friends *not* to buy one, because I don't trust that they will receive a product or honesty in updates when there are delays. It makes me sad to have to say "this is great but you shouldn't give them your money" :(

      • Laur Aliste 2021-05-11 at 12:21

        > I simply don't understand why they ever announced a ship date in January, when it's clear they were nowhere close to finalizing the manufacturing details required to be confident in that date.

        Been wondering the same. My speculation is either over-optimistic deadlines, or trying to secure more orders. Latter isn't that wrong either; they're a business in the end, and their refund policy and system appears to be working flawlessly, so worst case scenario the order can always be cancelled.

        What _has_ turned into bit of a joke in my opinion, is this monthly postponing. You postpone couple of times - fine. But at one point you need to get more realistic, or at least try to under-promise, and hopefully over-deliver.

        To be clear, I do agree with UHK not compromising on quality, and can only imagine company of this size not having much leverage on the manufacturing/supplier market. It's just the communication that could be improved:
        - don't promise monthly updates if they're not monthly;
        - don't give deadlines you're not likely to meet (talking about seeing the trend after first couple of postpones)

        Quite sure the average UHK customer would rather not be coddled and served sugar-coated info; just tell it as it is, and let us decide if we're okay with the wait or not.

        > I was convinced that the product would be quality because you were already selling a keyboard of comparable quality with stellar reviews.
        That's a good point. IIRC there was no clear indication which development phase v2 was in at he time it was made available for purchasing.

    • Sidney 2021-05-07 at 22:16

      I fully agree with this. While I'm not at all upset about delays whatsoever, I would wish there was better communication of it. Dealing with things transparently is much better than delaying it until the last possible second, even if there is no good news to be had. Clearly there is progress being done, you guys aren't just sitting around. Why not write that, while overall still on track, your supplier for X is still delayed? Leave the Twitter shout outs out, don't post pictures, just give us a sentence or two.

      I'm also still very much looking forward to my UHK, and I'm totally okay trading waiting time for a quality product. But some communication in the meantime doesn't sound like it'd be too much to ask for.

  6. Tomasz Wilczynski 2021-04-30 at 20:42

    I have a question. I ordered uhk v2 with two modules and the palm rests in December 2020. Is it possible to modify that order by adding one more module? Or do I need to place another order, which will land in the end of the waiting list, and I will get it much later?

    • Mária Horváth 2021-05-01 at 12:19

      In case you have an existing order, you can add any item as a new order, our system will handle it automatically with the existing order together.
      Our webshop automatically adds a shipping charge to every order, but later we will reimburse the second shipping charge. 
      https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/knowledgebase?q=add

  7. J 2021-04-30 at 21:11

    My trackpoint module arrived yesterday.

    It is great so far. Well worth the wait!

    • fabiocatalao 2021-05-03 at 14:12

      Have you received an update when it was sent to you?

      Can you please tell me roughly your order number?

    • Thomas De 2021-05-04 at 11:27

      Do you have a blog or page that you would post a review of this? :D

  8. Stephan 2021-05-01 at 06:47

    Thank your posting another update 😀

    As I understood, getting the V2 might not happen any time soon.
    So getting the V1 is the best option if you want to start.

    I tried ordering one with red switches - but if I click order, I get to a site, just saying "empty basket"

    What would be the best way to order?

    All the best, keep up the good work :)

    • Mária Horváth 2021-05-01 at 12:32

      Thanks for the feedback! You can purchase it already in our webshop.

  9. c.da 2021-05-01 at 08:43

    Very exciting, I'm glad to see you've already shipped 400 modules.

    Can't wait to get mine. Looking forward to the shipping estimations, once you've got more representative production numbers!

  10. Sameer Rahmani 2021-05-01 at 14:11

    Hey folks,
    thanks for the update, but honestly i can't say that I'm happy, I don't expect to get my order in 2021. The two month delay pattern is kinda annoying and I wish you didn't give an estimate to begin with, no matter what level of quality your keyboard might have, this delay pattern has left its bitter taste. I've ordered at early January and I though according to the website I'll get it by the end of January, but boy I was wrong.

    They updates are useful to some degree, but I'd like to ask you to be honest about the estimates. If you don't think that you can deliver the pre-orders by 2021 say so, the 2 month delay pattern is truly annoying and prevent us from some planning we need to do.

    • Andrey 2021-05-05 at 04:05

      Providing an honest estimate is not in their interests if they know that they won't be able to ship v2 any time soon. People would start requesting refunds, you see.

      • Mária Horváth 2021-05-06 at 12:25

        Being dishonest is not our interest.
        We try to post accurate estimates, but then those estimates turn out to be inaccurate.

  11. Abuzhan Aidaraliyev 2021-05-03 at 08:38

    I have placed an order on April 9th, but I might be out travelling from July until October. Can you provide at least rough estimate if there is a possibility of me getting UHK before July? Or should I better cancel and refund my order?

    • Mária Horváth 2021-05-03 at 13:55

      A rough estimate could be at the end of the year. You can modify the shipping address at any time.
      When the ordered items are assembled and ready to ship, we always send a notification email. You will see from this email when the package is ready to go, so you will still have time to change the shipping address, no worries!

      • David 2021-05-05 at 21:27

        Why can't the update contain this information?
        Ordered in April 21, delivery end Q4 21
        Ordered in Dec 39, delivery start Q4 21

        You obviously know it and it's what we what to know.

        Please

        • Mária Horváth 2021-05-06 at 12:35

          We don't know exactly yet, we plan to give ETA in the next update.

  12. Andrew 2021-05-03 at 13:26

    You mention sending 3 different trackballs with all of the first orders for the trackball module. However, you also mention that Crowd Supply orders will not be shipped first. Since those Crowd Supply orders were actually placed first (by many years :D ), will those orders receive the selection of trackballs as well?

    • Mária Horváth 2021-05-05 at 11:26

      We plan to ship all 3 types of balls for the trackballs for all preorders currently.
      Later, we will send only the type(s) of ball(s) which is/are really needed.

  13. Robert Hay 2021-05-03 at 14:43

    Is there any estimate for the module shipment? I could not understand if there is a huge backlog and supply issues for modules too or modules will be shipped in a more speedy manner?

    • Mária Horváth 2021-05-05 at 12:44

      We plan to ship every module order in the coming months, and we'll include more information in our next newsletter.

  14. Andrew Rogers 2021-05-03 at 15:23

    (Apologies for the repost, since my comment seems to have disappeared) You mention shipping 3 different trackballs with the first orders of the trackball modules. You also mentioned Crowd Supply orders will not be fulfilled first. Since those orders were actually first (by a few years), will they receive the multiple trackballs as well?

    • Mária Horváth 2021-05-05 at 12:06

      Yes, the current plan is to ship all trackball modules with the 3 different trackballs.
      Kindly note Crowd Supply orders still have a priority in shipping, the first batch is only a temporary solution for shipping the modules.

  15. David 2021-05-11 at 04:53

    Is the UHK 2 and the modules in any way affected by the global chip shortage?

    • Mária Horváth 2021-05-12 at 09:15

      Yes, it affects us also, but only regarding the price. We have all parts we need.

  16. Josh 2021-05-11 at 22:10

    +1 to requests to have shorter monthly updates (even if its just to say that everything is still on track) rather than massive delays announced every 45 days.

  17. Jakub 2021-05-31 at 13:43

    Any idea when we can expect May update? Is everything going according to the April's plan?

Comments are closed.

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