The ultra-thin portable low-axis mechanical keyboard that exploded overseas - Keychron K3 Pro

Hi, the keyboard we are going to look at today is slightly different from the past. This is a low-axis mechanical keyboard that focuses on ultra-thin and portable.

It comes from a slightly different brand you may have heard of: Keychron.

Although this is a domestic keyboard brand, Keychron is quite popular among overseas players. Some time ago, The Verge, an authoritative overseas technology media, rated Keychron's keyboard as the best mechanical keyboard of 2022. It can be seen that keychron's influence among foreign players. (Original link)

Today's keyboard comes from an upgraded version of Keychron's popular K3 model, the K3 Pro.

K3 was a very popular keyboard on the Internet before. If you often watch YouTube, you will find that many bloggers on the Internet are using K3.

K3 Pro的主要升级是键盘手感提升&键帽材质升级，如果你只是想要一把方便且便携的小键盘，那现在降价后的K3也是一个不错的选择。

Thinness is the most eye-catching part of this keyboard. The newly upgraded Jiadalong 2.0 short shaft and the one-piece stamped and injected aluminum top cover not only ensure the strength but also reduce the overall thickness of the keyboard.

The thickest part of this keyboard is only 21.5mm at the top, which is almost the length from between your thumbs to the first knuckle. Considering the compression space of the shaft body, this keyboard needs at most in the bag. 17.5mm is enough.

Nowadays, many flagship mobile phones are 11-13mm with a mobile phone case, and 17.5mm is really too thin for a keyboard.

In addition to being thin enough, another factor that affects portability is size.

The size of the K3 Pro is more intuitive for you to look at the picture yourself. This is a comparison with the size of the Samsung S10.

I feel that its volume is like a 15-inch notebook keyboard. It has the same compact layout as a notebook, but it feels mechanical.

You can easily put K3 Pro in your bag, just like stuffing a book in your bag.

The hand feel is the most surprising thing. This time, the K3 Pro’s hand feel is much improved compared to the K3.

The version I got is the Jiadalong 2.0 short red switch, and I can feel a little different when I first get started.

Compared with other short shafts, it has a longer stroke, and it does not have the feeling of hitting a steel plate due to the short stroke of the previous short shaft.

In terms of feel, the K3pro is very similar to those mechanical keyboards with normal switches. I tried to replace it with a set of full-height keycaps. After changing it, the feel is more like a normal mechanical keyboard.

Its feel performance is beyond my expectation. This time the shaft body and factory run are really not in vain. The feel is much better than K3. The two-color injection molded PBT keycap that was also upgraded this time also solved the problem of the previous K3 keycap’s poor finger oil resistance.

There are two schemes for the big keys, space, shift, and enter. The slightly longer big keys use satellite shafts and are filled with a lot of emulsified oil. Some shorter ones such as Caps use a balance bar, which is also the same. Lubricant is filled.

In terms of feel, I can't feel the difference between the two, and it can be said to be exactly the same in terms of feel.

Under the extreme thickness, what is sacrificed is the internal padding. There are not many noise reduction measures inside this keyboard.

Although there is no cavity sound when you tap it, if you listen carefully to the large keys such as space and enter, there will be a little steel wire sound of the satellite axis. If you care about it, you need to adjust it yourself.

Software driver is the strength of keychron keyboard all the time.

The driver function of this keyboard is much more powerful than that of ordinary keyboards. It supports the QMKVIA key change commonly found on custom keyboards.

By changing the VIA key, you can customize and edit any key on the keyboard, and you can even bind the computer power button to the keyboard, so that you can turn the computer on and off by pressing the keyboard.

Naturally, the light effect can also be customized, but the operation method is more in-depth than changing the key, so I won’t expand it in detail here.

With the support of QMKVIA firmware, you can completely customize your own custom-made mechanical keyboard. The specific gameplay depends entirely on your imagination. How powerful the imagination is, how powerful the driver is.

Finally, looking at the disassembly, the ultra-thin keyboard design does not have too many layers inside the keyboard, and there are not many noise reduction measures.

The only noise reduction measure is the foam and spring on the keyboard PCB, which are used to fill the keyboard gap and reduce the cavity sound.

There are RGB lamp beads on the upper lamp position on the PCB, but the luminous effect is not excellent because of the PBT keycap, so I haven't turned on the lamp these days.

The wireless IC is integrated on a separate small board and has an independent antenna design, which is very similar to the wireless design of keyboards from major manufacturers, and is much better than the wireless design of most domestic keyboards.

The wireless IC comes from Cypress Semiconductor, model: CYW20730A1KFBGT, which is a low-power Bluetooth 5.1 solution.

However, as far as my actual experience is concerned, the wireless wake-up of this keyboard does not achieve the senseless wake-up of the big manufacturers, so there is still a gap between the wireless of those big manufacturers.

The one on the far right is an STM32L4 MCU from STMicroelectronics as the keyboard master, ARM Cortex-M4, with 128Kb ROM.

The PCB workmanship and IC materials of the whole keyboard are very good, but the silkscreen fonts on some chips are too small, I really can't see clearly, and I can't find the supplier.

The axle seat comes from Jiadalong, and the two-legged axle seat only supports Jiadalong's low-axis hot-swapping.

The battery is covered by a black shielding sticker, and the capacity and supplier cannot be seen for the time being. The official website says that this is a 1550Mah battery, and it can last up to 100 hours in Bluetooth mode.

Because the power of the VIA driver is temporarily invisible, I don't know how much power it has left after using it for the past few days.

In addition to the battery, there is a metal plate for counterweight on the bottom case. If this metal plate is not added, the weight of the keyboard will slip on the desktop.

On the PCB board, you can see the product model, keychron and QMK LOGO.

The most regrettable point on the whole keyboard is the lack of support for 2.4G connections.

This keyboard only supports wired Bluetooth connection, but from the three-stage switch of the keyboard, it is not difficult to find that Keychron may have considered 2.4G mode when designing.

The normal three-mode keyboard three-stage switch is Bluetooth 2.4G wired, while the keychron is Bluetooth off wired. The closed position in the middle is a bit redundant in terms of product design.

Considering that keychron will launch an upgraded model on the same layout, just like the V1 and V2 versions of Q1, I hope that there will be a K3 Pro V2 that supports 2.4G in the future.

Of course, this is also my guess, because I prefer to use 2.4G wireless with 1000Hz return rate instead of Bluetooth when I use this keyboard to play games.

If you need to go out to work with the keyboard or always run around with the keyboard on your back, then this ultra-thin low-axis keyboard will make your life much more convenient.

This is the best low-axis keyboard I have ever used. The only disadvantage is that it does not support 2.4G wireless. I hope that there will be an upgraded version for sale in the future.

I'm Yui Yuzai Yui Hirasawa, see you in the next article.

The author declares that there is interest in this article, please respect the author and the content shared, communicate friendly, and make rational decisions~