I’ve had a cooler master keyboard with cherry mx browns (my first mech) for a few years but looking for a change.
I got a keydous nj80 for 150 bucks and its fantastic.
Very nice selection of pre lubed switches, optional brass or steel weight, all assembled and ready
Keychrons are great. If you want some other brands to look at there is also Akko/Monsgeek. Mikit and Iqunix are decent too with quirky designs if you want something different.
I’m a big fan of Ducky and quite a few of theirs fall into that category. My current daily is a Mecha Mini 2 with silent reds. It’s been a great keyboard for several years now.
I currently have the Ducky One 2 RGB (mechanicalkeyboards.com link) and really like it. I got it because it has programmable macros, which allows me to use the caps lock key as my left control key instead. That was the main reason I got it.
And Varmilo has some beautiful keyboards too!
Looks like they only have blue now, but this is a really comfortable board:
https://novelkeys.com/collections/keyboards/products/nk87-entry-edition-batch-1
I’ll look into this. The fact that it’s USBC would be nice since I have to use micro USB right now haha. Do they include basic keycaps or I’m guessing you have to pick the ones you want separately? Thank you for the suggestion!