Aula WIN68HE Review – Affordable Rapid Trigger

Disclaimer – this keyboard was sent to me by Aulagear to review. This doesn’t influence my review in any way and all the thoughts here are my own and unbiased. They didn’t pay me. Just gave me the keyboard to review.

If you would like to see this entire review with visuals and a voiceover, you can watch the review here.

Mechanical Keyboards have come a long way in recent years. They’ve become affordable and you can get some really nice keyboards without hurting your wallet too much.

But recently, hall effect keyboards have been all the buzz. And we’re starting to see some very affordable ones now. So today, I will be reviewing one of these budget hall effect keyboards, the Aula WIN68HE, to see if these keyboards are a better alternative for you than the budget mechanical keyboards that have been dominating the keyboard space till recently.

The Aula WIN68HE comes in a box within a box.

Inside, you get:
1) A user manual.
2) A quick action guide with shortcuts on the back.
3) A plastic dust cover.
4) The keyboard, in a protective plastic sheath.
5) A USB-A to USB-C cable.
6) A keycap and switch wire puller.
7) A strap.
8) 2 spare switches.

Now, the first thing I noticed is the build quality. It’s an ABS plastic case which doesn’t feel particularly premium. The finish is nice but the plastic itself definitely reflects the cost of the keyboard. But despite this, there’s no flex to the keyboard. It’s sturdy and looks durable.

The strap is just a visual piece and doesn’t serve any function. The mounting mechanism for the strap was very finicky to put on and it took me quite a while to get it lined up and set in. But once it was in, it looked fine and didn’t seem fragile at all.

Silly little bit showcasing the strap

Coming to features, this little board has all the essentials of a hall effect keyboard.

• Hall Effect magnetic switches with a lot of software adjustable features, and a precision up to 0.02mm, which goes up to 0.01mm in BEAST mode (only available to MAX version of the keyboard. But 0.02mm is plenty of precision already so whatever)
• Hot-swappable sockets, you can easily swap in other magnetic switches that you like instead of the stock wing chun switches
• Wired connection which allows it to have an 8000hz polling rate. The tradeoff is that you can’t use this board wirelessly. Which is fine at a price like this in my opinion.
• Tray mounting system, which gives this a stiff feel. It might honestly be a good thing because we’re talking precision in the hundredths here. Gasket bounce might affect its accuracy.
• South-facing RGB – it’s bright and customizable, what more to say.
• Doubleshot PBT Keycaps – Decent quality and thickness

For gaming, the Hall Effect switches are a big plus. You can set ultra-light actuation for rapid keypresses, or even set dual-stage actions—press lightly to walk, deeper to sprint. It’s like pseudo-analog controls on a keyboard. The adjustable actuation distance means you can choose how far you want to push a key in for it to register as an input. Now this is a degree of customisation that we never had with traditional mechanical keyboards, where you have to get past a certain point in the key stroke to count as an input.

Another great thing with these hall effect keyboards is that you can set it so that your input stops as soon as you lift your finger a little bit, without coming back to the point of actuation. This also gives you a slight competitive edge in fast paced games or tac shooters where a millisecond can be the difference between life and death.

Hall effect keyboards are also _very_ good for certain rhythm games like osu. It allows you to rapidly press keys because of the actuation point and the rapid trigger.

Gameplay demonstration

Of course, it being a 60% or 68% keyboard means you get a lot of space on your desk for mouse movement.

The Wing Chun magnetic switches in the Aula Win68HE are linear switches. The tray mount makes the bottom out feel quite stiff, but since the switch springs aren’t super heavy, they don’t cause much fatigue when typing. The switches come factory lubed and overall they’re nice to type on. The stabilizers are good. They’re not the best I’ve ever used but there’s no ticking or rattling which is very good.

The sound is… okay. Not great, not bad—just okay. It’s a little hollow, especially in the spacebar area.

Here’s what it sounds like :

The software isn’t perfect—but it gets the job done. You can use the Aula Cloud Driver or WinTools to adjust RGB, remap keys, and set actuation points for the Hall Effect switches.

It’s not as refined as QMK/VIA or Wootility, but it’s still pretty dang granular. Check out the full software exploration and explanation here (It’s too long and detailed to include within the scope of this review post)

One minor downside to the software is that it doesn’t have native English, and the English language setting is just translated from Chinese so there are some oddities in the translation. Nothing that’s not understandable though.

So here’s the big question: should you buy the Aula Win68HE?

If you’re looking for:

• A budget-friendly entry into the Hall Effect scene with most of the standard hall effect features
• that has a solid typing feel
• and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg?

Then yes, this is a good choice.

It’s not perfect. And if you don’t benefit from the hall effect features, because you don’t play competitive titles or you’re looking for a keyboard to just type on, then I recommend going for a regular mechanical keyboard like the Aula F65 or other options. You’ll get a significantly better experience there minus the hall effect features.