Electronic Materials Office, a London tech company that announced the Altar I back in 2023, finally started shipping it in 2024. It's an all-black, low-profile keyboard built around recycled aluminum — and yeah, the design language doesn't hide where it's coming from. Let's dig into what's actually inside this thing.
An All-Black Shell Made From Recycled Aluminum
So the chassis is a 6061 aluminum unibody — one solid piece — and it's fully recyclable. The keycaps and plastic bits are PBT with 50% recycled content. The whole thing's built with sustainability in mind, so you're looking at durability over throwing parts away every season.
Black is it. That's the only color. No second option, no metal accents breaking things up, and the legends are this incredibly minimal custom typeface, so the keys read almost as quiet marks rather than actual labels.
Kailh Choc V1 Switches, 77 or 78 Keys
Each key sits on a Kailh Choc V1 ultra-slim low-profile switch. You get two layout choices: 77-key US ANSI or 78-key UK ISO. Either way, the legends match your region.
Here's something nice — the keycap height isn't the same everywhere. It sculpts differently from zone to zone, which is one of those details that separates this from those flat, single-height low-profile boards everyone else makes.
Bluetooth for Two Devices, Plus Wired
You can run this thing wireless on Bluetooth with two paired devices, or plug it in over USB-C for wired mode. There's a 200mAh battery inside.
The back edge has all the physical controls — a switch for usb, device 1, or device 2, plus a pairing button and power switch. Everything stays off the actual keycaps.
The ThinkPad Parallel
Founder Andrew Emerson's stated it pretty clearly: that black unibody plus the single warm accent on the dial? Classic ThinkPad business design. The whole "less, but better" thing matches what ThinkPad's always been about — durable, professional, no fuss. That orange knob is honestly the loudest element on the board.
The Altar I's been shipping through 2024. Firmware and ZMK Studio software are still getting updates, and there aren't any other products in the pipeline yet. I usually go for white or silver keyboards myself, but this one actually works in black.
Editor's Notes & Summary
The Altar I is a study in restraint: one material, one color, one accent, two layout options. If you're drawn to the recycled aluminum construction and that ThinkPad-style black-and-orange balance, the design speaks for itself.
10 comments
What’s the price?
It’s not on sale anymore, but you can add it to your wishlist on their official site.
Is there a link?
Replying to SPOTLITE: here comes another one.
It’s really still the TE aesthetic.
It’s not being sold anymore, so there’s no point — around three thousand RMB.
This keyboard is good, but at first glance it all looks rather tacky — completely missing the mechanical feel of a ThinkPad.
There’s no essence here at all — they just did a black-and-red color scheme and called it a tribute. Hilarious.
People in the comments keep going on about the TrackPoint. Never mind that I already quoted the founder’s view in the post to address exactly this and nobody read it — understanding what IBM originally got right from a design standpoint means understanding a whole system, not just the TrackPoint. If you still don’t get it, look up the pure-blood ThinkPad X9, which has no red dot at all.
Without the little red dot, I honestly don’t know where the ThinkPad character is.