As a kid, I always dreamt of building my PC. That may sound weird, but look at this blog – there are few markers of sanity. I got really into the PC building community and, among other things, discovered mechanical keyboards. Growing up on cheap, 90s rubber keyboards, I always wanted to try one, but they were expensive at the time. Then, suddenly, they got cheap. Really cheap. Yes – you get an unknown Chinese brand that stopped existing the moment you left the store, but it was still a mechanical keyboard. I got one from my parents as a birthday gift and loved it. I also loved the sound. Most people don’t.
I moved to Germany to study at a university and suddenly had to share an apartment with a roommate. Daily complaints about the constant clicking meant that I had to replace my very clicky Chinese mechanical keyboard with something quieter. I refused to return to rubber domes, so I looked for quiet mechanical keyboards. Also, since I managed to kill at least one mechanical keyboard through overuse (I used to write 1000+ words daily), I wanted a more reliable technology. I’m also a tech hipster, so the perfect alternative was optical keyboards. A bit of Googling resulted in me finding the Keychron K3. These are my very human, subjective experiences with it.
Typing experience
As I’m typing this blog post on this keyboard, it can’t be that bad. I don’t consider myself a good typist – I can get ~80-100wpm depending on the day, but I generally write slower because my brain doesn’t think that fast. However, I must admit I’m slower with the Keychron K3 than with cheaper Chinese mechanical keyboards. Even after almost a year, I can’t get fully used to the keyboard and still make mistakes.
The main issue with the switches is that they have a very low actuation force. Even light nudges will switch them, which makes it annoying if you have even somewhat large fingers. I’d say that typing on the Keychron K3 is ~10% worse for me than on my old mechanical keyboards. In addition, the lighting key and screenshot key are placed too close to the backspace, resulting in many accidental presses of keys that have annoying results. From my personal experience, for some reason, programming is really difficult on this keyboard because of how easy it is to hit adjacent keys, especially when you need special characters. I don’t do much programming these days, but I’d probably pull out my old keyboard if I did. This is also annoying when I put my PC to sleep, and a slight nudge of the keys turns it back on again.
However, the feel of the switches is lovely. I’d describe them as creamy, smooth, and pleasant-sounding. The keycaps on top also have a smooth texture, which makes even resting your fingers on them feel nice. Even though my typing is slower, it is also overall much nicer. My old mechanical keyboards had pretty high actuation forces and key travel, which would make me fatigued in long typing sessions. With the Keychron K3, however, I don’t really feel the typing. I don’t get fatigued, which is nice. The issue with the adjacent keys can easily be fixed by using autocorrect – as I’m using now – and just making as many mistakes as you want to, without issue. On the occasions when I play games, I like the keyboard. It has none of the rollover issues some other keyboards have, and the response times in both wired and wireless modes are unnoticeable. I suck at games much more than the keyboard does.
Build quality, user experience, and price
The keyboard is superb at both. It’s thin and made out of light metal with rubber legs completely immune to sliding. The keyboard has a wired and wireless option and is also usable on all operating systems. I’m actually writing this blog post wirelessly on my Lenovo Tab M11, and there is simply no latency when typing. Typing on a tablet feels good and the setup is more portable than carrying a laptop. The combination of Lenovo Tab M11 (in desktop mode with Google Docs) and Keychron K3 feels way too elegant, streamlined, and problem-free for its price class (~250 euros total). The battery life is good enough that my mixed usage of wired on PC and wireless on anything else has yet to empty the keyboard’s battery. However, I’ve seen online that some people criticize the battery life, so you might want to keep that in mind.
One horrible feature of the keyboard, however, is the backlight. It’s too easy to hit the light button and have the keyboard light up in Christmas tree patterns. Usually, I either turn it off (Fn + light) or keep it at the only-on option. I don’t know why someone would use the fancy lighting options. I don’t understand why they offer a more expensive RGB version (mine is the cheaper white one).
My model comes with the ability to hot-swap switches and is shipped with some replacement keycaps – particularly ones to suit your keys to your desired operating system and to change the colors of some more-used keys. Replacement switches are relatively cheap – much cheaper than a new keyboard.
The shopping and customization on the Keychron website were good, but the shipping took a while (~2 weeks), likely because it came from China. I paid 84 euros for the keyboard and 7 for the shipping, which is an excellent price for the quality and feature set, particularly since this keyboard has unusual switches. The keyboard was well-packed and came with keyboard repair tools as well, which is nice.
However, I have read negative stories online about Keychron support and warranty. I feel confident in repairing any electronic device I have, so I don’t mind that too much, but this could be a dealbreaker for some people.
Overall
I recommend this keyboard to anyone who wants a silent and long-lasting keyboard for a very fair price. The typing experience may not be ideal, but everything else makes up for it.
