After about 6 years of use, I've sold my trusted Keychron K2, a mechanical 75% keyboard with brown switches (75% means a laptop-like keyboard with no numpad, no separate arrow keys and no Home/End/PgUp/PgDown "islands"). The keyboard works just as fine as the first day I've bought it.
However there are a couple of things I grew tired of after long time:
- no separate Home/End/PgUp/PgDown island forces me to glance at the keyboard, which happens often
- the restricted number of keys forced me to bind some common actions (like screenshotting, record screen videos, etc.) to multiple keys. I regularly forget these bindings, I find them by trial and error and end up with random files in my ~tmp directory, potentially with sensible data
- the custom proprietary firmware was always a hurdle because I had to hack around it for some actions. The new QMK firmware that most keyboards ship now is much more flexible
Trusting that the quality of the Keychron keyboards is still the same I've replaced it with another Keychron, this time a bit more "basic", the Keychron V3 8K QMK Wired. It's a 80% keyboard (a bit less cramped than a 75%, it has separate Home/End/PgUp/PgDown and arrow keys "islands") and without wireless connections. After years using the Keychron K2 I realized I don't need or use these features (or gimmicks): the wireless connections implies a hefty embedded battery and the RGB lights, well, at the beginning were fun but after a week I was already disabling them because too distracting. Thanks to the QMK firmware, configuring the backlight of the new one to be just white is a breeze (more on that later).
§ Buying a Keychron is hard
Now, before I talk about the keyboard, I want to talk about the experience of buying it. Navigating the Keychron website and understanding their offer was honestly the worst part. I've rarely met such a customer-hostile website. They offer a lot or products but if you squint they are mostly variants of the same few components. I don't think it's bad to have fewer products and let the customer choose the variant, I think it's much worse looking at a flat, one-dimensional taxonomy and "promote" all variants to products. Reminds me of Asian restaurants: 20-pages menus but basically just mapping flat all permutations of 5 ingredients.
This feeling is also empirically confirmed when flipping through the slim 2-pages manual of the Keychron V3, which is valid for the "Q HE 8K", "C Pro 8K" and "V 8K" series. Don't ask me what's the difference between these but it seems to me that instead of having these 3 product lines they could just have 1 and distinguish them by the features.
In addition the product naming is really confusing: I spent literally days trying to understand the differences between product "families". Only to discover at the end the only ONE keyboard they offer without wireless connections and size I wanted.
They definitively know their website is confusing, they offer tools to help sifting through their offer but this help is quite limited. There is no glossary to understand what their bespoke lingo means ("OSA" "PBT" keycaps? What is the difference between Cherry, Gateron, Kailh, Panda switches?). The mix of legacy and newer line of products with very similar names is very confusing.
At the time of writing, this is what their product lines look like. It is absolutely unclear which are new, which will be discontinued and what are the distinguishing features of each. The product menu gets in the way because it reacts to the mouse hover and covers everything you're looking at. This is incredibly annoying.
More than once was I tempted to give up and buy the 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard (M Edition), just because of how hostile the Keychron website is.
A note about the shipment (to Germany, in my case): just like last time (years ago) I ordered stuff from China, I was provided a link with the date of shipment, then radio silence for days. I was notified by email the day the package was about to be delivered at destination: no way to plan in advance my availability to receive the package. I didn't signup or subscribe to anything or download whatever mobile App so maybe - who knows - I've cut myself out of any package tracking.
As a side thought, I am still annoyed that I had to order this piece of hardware on the other side of the world and have it fly like 10.000 km to reach my door-step. I have nothing against Chinese keyboard companies but it's baffling that in Europe there is not even one competitor in the same league (quality and price). We will never get rid of this technological dependence. Not to mention to enviromental cost of shipping.
§ Using the Keychron V3
Anyway, once I won the battle against the website and have it randomly delivered to me, here it is:
Configuring the new keyboard is easy with just one big caveat on Linux. Linux does not recognize out ot the box the USB ID of the keyboard, so when I connected to the website https://launcher.keychron.com (to configure the QMK firmware) the WebHID interface of Chromium could not see the device. Luckily I've found a very useful blog post from foosel that solved the problem even before I encountered it. The Keychron QMK configuration website does not work with Firefox because the support for the WebHID API is still experimental.
Now I'll spend some time testing and learning this keyboard.
The brown switches are still the ones I remember and like, though the acoustic foam (that the Keychrons now have) suppresses a bit the "clicky" sound I like. No big deal for me, at least.
The knob (which I didn't find convincing when I was evaluating the various models) is instead actually useful; it binds automatically to the volume control, which is something I use very often.
The shape and material used for the keys are not my favourite, I prefer what the K2 shipped: it had keycaps a bit more "squared" and with a smoother surface that allowed my fingers to slide over the keys more easily. Again, not a deal breaker.
Frankly, I don't care too much about all the technical details of this keyboard, I don't have a lot to say about it, other enthusiasts are better suited for that. I just know Keychrons are good and have a good price.
I wish they still would be sold with a plastic cover, it was very useful to prevent dirt getting stuck in the keyboard. I'll have to figure out something myself.
The keyboards weighs about 1 kg, which for me was surprising, given the lack of any battery. Surely this keyboard won't move anywhere on the table.
§ Parting ways with the old K2
Before selling it, I cleaned the Keychron K2. After all these years it was less dirty than I thought, I always used and stored it with care. That was also the moment I realized I don't really need hot-swappable key switches: this was the first time in 6 years I have ever removed the keycaps.
I sold it at a hackerspace flea market and donated the money to a solidarity organization. It is now in good hands.
