I honestly expected it to be pretty rough, but it's rock solid. Both boards connect quickly to each other, and also connect really quickly to the computer (M1 MacBook Pro). If I take the keyboard to a different room it'll drop connection so it's not as strong a connection as like, AirPods, but it's more than strong enough for staying on the desk. Definitely no delay in typing either, haven't had any drops. Only thing of note is that after I haven't used it all night first thing in the morning it takes about 5 seconds to wake up and connect to things, but that's not the end of the world and is only the one time a day, after that it's very fast

I found ZMK easier to use than QMK personally, but I also don't really do anything advanced with it. I just use Karabiner Elements to do 99% of the customization that way it also happens on my MacBook's keyboard and I can be consistent

As for price yeah I think it's totally worth it. Cables on the desk drove me crazy. The nice!views are more of a luxury, but once in awhile I'd hit the combo to go to a different device accidentally and it's really nice to be able to just look down and see which device it's connected to, and also see the battery life without having to go to the Bluetooth settings pane

Yeah ZMK, and quite lacking to be honest, I want to build a little widget of my own but there's not much (any?) documentation unfortunately

The nice!views are maybe 2mm under the height of the keycaps beside it. If you put an acrylic protective cover it'd probably be pretty even. Everything is hotswap yeah, even the battery is just a JST connector

Ooo, thank you so much!