How can I swap out a broken keyboard on my laptop?
How can I swap out a broken keyboard on my laptop?
Hey everyone, I need to swap out the keyboards on these two laptops: Asus Zenbook UX331F and Asus X550JX-DM257T. What's the best way to go about this? Are there any tutorials online? Is it easy? How likely am I to break the laptop if I do it wrong? I'm looking for some good places to buy new keyboards online. Ideally, I want a UK layout or a US layout instead of my current ones. Thanks!
Both laptops don't use screws to hold the keyboard in place. You can't really solder it or glue it on easily without buying the whole thing already attached. If you want someone else to fix this for you, that's an option too. As for the keyboard itself, you're lucky because there are so many other Asus laptops with similar keyboards online. Just search Google for "Asus X550JX tangentbord" or whatever words mean keyboard in your country. One of the first results I see is: https://www.amazon.se/X550JX-DM191T... And you should watch out for something specific there too.
You can see lots of videos online showing how to change keyboards. Just search for "Asus Zenbook UX331F keyboard replacement" on Google. It's pretty simple, you just choose your own parts. The best spots to get them are at eBay. I changed one on a lenovo laptop and it was actually not that hard to do.
Most laptops are actually very simple to take apart. Only a few of them are really hard to open. However, I usually start by watching YouTube videos first, because those explain everything and even the tricky ones come out easily. You won't make mistakes if you watch along with a good tutorial.
Hi, here are three different videos showing how to swap out a laptop keyboard. The last one probably has the best advice. Of course, some technical details vary between brands and models, but they all follow the same steps. If you haven't taken apart these laptops before, you might need to watch some videos on disassembling them first, then more videos on how to replace the keyboard. My tip is this: carefully remove the heads of the plastic pins using a soldering gun, then use the soldering gun again to stick it back in (just like in the third video). Alternatively, you can use hot glue or "hot silicone" to attach the new keyboard, but I'm not sure how strong that will be. It's really hard to attach a new keyboard without any gap between the keyboard and the laptop cover. A difference of just 1 millimeter makes typing super uncomfortable! Since your fingers press down about 2mm deep on each key, adding a 1mm gap would make it feel bad. You could also look for an old laptop with a built-in keyboard attached to the lid instead of having you do it yourself. That's more expensive but saves time. Please share what happened after you replaced your keyboards!
You can look for keyboards on Amazon, eBay, or AliExpress. They might all be made in China. Some Asus keyboards have different parts for the UK and the US. In the US version, the Enter key uses only one row, but the UK version needs two rows. So you need to make sure your keyboard has the same Enter key layout as your laptop. Check these pictures to see an example. The picture on top is the UK version.
Thanks for all the help from Mettall! Oh wow, I really hope I don't have to solder or use hot glue. That seems so tricky!
Thanks so much for your kind words and help! I've added a link below with the current photo of my Asus X550JX-DM257T keyboard. I tried using "Insert image" but hit an error, so here is the picture directly. It's a Scandinavian/Nordic layout, not the standard English QWERTY one. I want to switch it from this style to either UK or US English, whichever fits best with my existing laptop cover. That way, I can save money by skipping buying a new combo keyboard and cover separately. Will I need to do any soldering like in another post? Are there links on how to order the right keyboard for this specific model here in Europe?