Good news for mechanical keyboard enthusiasts, review of Keychron entry-level customized keyboard, which is heavier than a brick

If you are a keyboard enthusiast, then I don’t need to say more, you must know the brand Keychron, as a mechanical keyboard internet celebrity brand, it has been making efforts on the Internet, and has been loved by major digital internet celebrity bloggers on Youtube. The best selling point is that the compatibility between WIN and MAC is very good, and of course its extremely high customization has to be said.

As a brand headquartered in Shenzhen, Keychron is making efforts in the overseas market of high-end peripherals. It has been committed to designing beautiful and easy-to-use keyboard peripherals for users around the world. The company is composed of a group of experienced keyboard manufacturers. Peripheral Enthusiast was founded in 2020. Its core members all have rich experience in keyboards. The founder Jia Rong has 15 years of keyboard production and related business experience. The product marketing director and co-founder Xu Rensong is a member of the design and R&D team. All come from industrial design experts from domestic universities and professionals in this field. At present, it has bluetooth dual-mode mechanical keyboard K series and K Pro series, metal customized keyboard Q series, wired mechanical keyboard C series and keycaps, shafts, Hand rest, mouse and other accessories.

Because Keychron is very popular overseas, it has been followed by many keyboard enthusiasts after it turned its attention to China. As a light mechanical keyboard enthusiast, I have been fascinated by their Q series, and finally borrowed Purchased on Double 11, today I will briefly share with you this entry-level all-aluminum alloy customized keyboard.

Attached product link:

The packaging box has upper and lower covers. The main color of the box is pure black, with color-changing fonts. It is particularly cool under the light.

In addition, there is no Chinese description on the outer packaging of domestically sold products, and it should be the overseas version of the packaging that is directly used. It is recommended to optimize it.

The whole packing box is not big, but it is very heavy. After all, it is all aluminum alloy design. After opening the package, there is an instruction manual and a schematic diagram of the installation direction of the shaft body. Below is the keyboard and data cable.

You think that’s all, no, as an entry-level customized mechanical keyboard, the operating tools for later play are of course indispensable.

Family portrait, all accessories include keyboard body, connecting cable, 4 keycaps for different systems of WIN and MAC, spare Poron spacers, screws, feet, manual, key map, key puller, shaft puller, screwdriver and A schematic diagram of the installation direction of the shaft body, etc.

The data connection cable of Keychron Q1 is designed to be very long, and it provides a take-up strap, and an electromagnetic shielding ring. The most important thing is to provide a C-A interface converter, which is more friendly to support different desktops or notebooks.

The Keychron Q1 keyboard with an all-aluminum casing design gave me the first impression that it was very heavy. After a simple weight measurement, it weighed more than 3.5 kilograms. My 14-inch aluminum alloy notebook is only 3.2 kilograms, which is heavier than the notebook I have at hand. .

Of course, as an infrequently moving peripheral product, the benefit of its heavy weight is its stability. When placed on a desk, no matter how intensely you use it, it will not move at all. In addition, because the materials are solid, the keyboard feels solid when you press it, unlike some inferior keyboards, you can obviously feel the sinking of the bottom backplane after pressing hard.

Keychron Q1 has 81 keys. Compared with the normal size keyboard, it cuts off the small numeric keypad area and some function keys on the right. For a user who mostly types and plays games, I personally prefer to choose this compact layout, which saves space.

The Keychron Q1 keyboard as a whole presents a micro-curved ergonomic design with a lower bottom and upper upper keyboard concave, with a lower height of 22mm and an upper height of 33mm. The overall experience is not bad. The only regret is that the bottom 22mm may be a bit high for some users. It may be more considerate if the official can provide a keyboard tray.

Keychron Q1 supports MAC and WIN dual systems, and its switch and type-c connector are designed near the top left side, which is very suitable for users like me who put the case on the left hand side.

The entire back design is also extremely simple, except for the four non-slip black feet and golden screws, there are no other design embellishments, which is very in line with the tonality of customized products. In addition, the texture of its aluminum alloy shell is quite good. The CNC integrated engraving technology and the anodic oxidation sandblasting process on the surface make the entire keyboard present a delicate matte texture.

The Keychron Q1 keycap color is black with light gray, supplemented by orange red embellishment, the overall color matching is relatively restrained and distinctive.

Keychron Q1 keycaps are made of PBT, and the process is two-color injection molding. The workmanship is of good quality, no burrs, the overall touch is delicate, and the hand feels great.

The PBT material has high hardness, high density, strong wear resistance, and good oil-proof effect. If you want to use a set of keycaps for a long time, then Q1 can fully satisfy you.

The switches of the Keychron Q1 keyboard set are all Jiadalong GPro series. There are green switches, red switches, and brown switches to choose from. I chose the green switch for this keyboard. The green switch responds quickly and the typing sound is crisp and clean. It is most suitable when people use it quietly, but of course the noise is a little bit louder in the dead of night.

Customized keyboards are also called DIY keyboards. Users can customize a unique keyboard according to their own preferences. Usually, a keyboard consists of a kit (shell + pcb + positioning board + sound insulation cotton), shaft body, keycap, The keyboard line consists of 4 parts. The overall layout of the Keychron Q1 keyboard is shown in the figure above, and each component can be adjusted and assembled by itself, allowing users to create a unique personalized keyboard.

Of course, it must also be mentioned here that the keychron Q1 is different from ordinary customized keyboards, that is, it adopts a high-cost circuit board suspension design, and the circuit board is suspended by spacers around the circuit board, so as to provide The keyboard provides a better and more flexible typing experience. According to official data, the Q1 can bounce up to 2.5 mm. The huge bounce space brings a more comfortable rebound effect to the keyboard, while the use of the underlying noise-reducing cotton It can largely avoid the noise spread when typing on the keyboard.

At the beginning of Keychron’s establishment, it was aimed at users in the field of customization, so its playability is undeniable. The most obvious point is that the system core can be customized through the QMK / VIA open source system. Each key You can set it yourself according to your own needs, and you can also easily set various shortcut trigger keys you want.

To achieve VIA mapping, we only need to go to the relevant homepage to download the latest VIA software. There are many online tutorials, and interested friends can learn by themselves. We can know from the VIA official website that Keychron Q1 supports various customizations. .

As a mechanical keyboard, no light pollution is unacceptable.

The Keychron Q1 keyboard adopts the GRG lighting effect design of the lower light position, and comes with 13 lighting effect modes. You can switch the lighting effect mode, light and dark switching, speed switching, etc. through shortcut keys. The overall lighting effect atmosphere under the black opaque keycap is quite good. Of course, if you think the keycap is too restrained, you can also replace it with a transparent one to improve the light atmosphere.

In the use of keyboard tapping, the overall feeling of the Keychron Q1 keyboard is that the response is fast enough and the recognition is accurate; second, the sound of the keys is crisp and the rebound is very good, and the tactile feeling is excellent; third, the sound of some keys is not good. Well, especially the space bar, the sound is very empty, I wonder if the sound insulation cotton is used less.

Keychron Q1 is my first customized keyboard. As a beginner, my feelings are as follows:

First, the products are made with enough care, both in craftsmanship and product quality are at a superior level;

Second, the customization is open enough for me to play with it for a long time;

Third, the price is not cheap but acceptable;

Fourth, the non-wireless design may be a pity for some users, and may lose part of the customer base.

Of course, as a custom-made aluminum alloy mechanical keyboard that is as heavy as a brick, Keychron Q1 is still a good choice at this price, this degree of customization, and this quality. Of course, it is also excellent to use it to exercise the unicorn arm.

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