Too many keyboards and mice Part 22: Aluminum shell 75 plus VIA key change, perhaps the best form of office keyboard: Keychron K2 Pro

There are a lot of mechanical keyboards on hand, and I usually try different keyboards with different handles, configurations, and sizes at home. But the keyboard in the company is very fixed, and usually it will not be changed for a few months. The main reason is that the relatively serious environment of work has very high requirements for input efficiency, especially accuracy. Naturally, the choice is more balanced and practical.

The keyboard I bought this time is the latest K2 Pro of the K series keyboard from Keychron, which I chose for the company:

The Keychron brand is not particularly well-known in China, but it is quite popular in overseas markets and YouTube. The product is between customized and mass-produced keyboards. series, even the entry-level K series keyboards still retain quite a customized style, while the K Pro series also adds QMK support to the K series, and the K2 Pro is the latest product of the K series. At the beginning, it was aimed at the office crowd, and we made targeted considerations in terms of arrangement, function and configuration. Let us talk about the performance of this keyboard and what attracted me to it while unpacking it.

The pure black package with the blueprint of the laser keyboard is very geek.

The internal accessories are good, and the quick guide card is highly praised. The shortcut keys for lighting control of K2 Pro are relatively unpopular, and it is hard to remember without this card.

What's interesting is that he also sent a hexagon socket and a Phillips screwdriver. There are still many details of this customized style later, let's talk about it when we meet

The arrangement of K2 Pro is currently the hottest 75% arrangement on the market. Anyone who has used it knows that this arrangement achieves the most compact size while retaining all the buttons outside the digital area as much as possible, and the arrangement of commonly used buttons is quite smooth. It is not easy to touch by mistake, so the fire is not unreasonable.

The layout of a large number of shortcut keys on the keyboard can also greatly improve the efficiency, and even the screenshots are given an independent button. But maybe it is better to sacrifice the lighting control or the screenshot button here, and make the del 2U.

The color scheme of K2 Pro or the classic color scheme of keychron is also completely in line with my aesthetics, because all the keyboards of keychron are basically in this color scheme, so it feels very unique and persistent.

Because it is positioned for office, K2 Pro provides Bluetooth and wired dual-mode, and the win/mac switch is placed on the side, which can be blindly pressed, which is more convenient than placing it on the back or on the top. As a compromise, the data cable interface is also placed on the side, and the L-head cable must be used, otherwise a long section will be more in the way.

Positioning the office, naturally the two legs cannot be absent, and I still like to adjust the angle to a larger angle when working with code words.

The frame design of K2 Pro is a bit special. K2 Pro has two versions of plastic and aluminum shells. However, the aluminum shell of K2 Pro is not all aluminum shells, but four aluminum frames are added to the plastic shell. After a few hexagon sockets, the aluminum frame can be pulled out, and you can see that the aluminum frame fits on the inner plastic frame like a sleeve.

The precision and thickness of the metal parts are all okay, although it can’t compare with the all-aluminum shell in terms of the weight of the hands and the overall rigidity (it’s even more incomparable with the aluminum lump produced by the whole CNC). But to apply a common saying, "everything you touch is a cold material". If you don't pick up the keyboard, it will be no different from aluminum lumps. Both the look and the texture are quite good, and It also saves a lot of cost.

It is paired with its own K-Pro red switch. There is not much information about this kind of switch. The entire V series uses Keychron’s self-developed switch body. There are indeed no small surprises in actual use. Generally speaking, it is similar to domestically produced switches. The main red shaft of a big factory is similar. It is lubricated at the factory so that its percussion is extremely smooth and smooth, and the stability of the entire stroke is excellent. Red, BOX red feels better. Compared with the real mid-to-high-end shaft body, the spring rebound feel is relatively obvious, but it is no problem for office use. Even if you are not satisfied, it is not difficult to replace the shaft with the hot-swappable design.

The keyboard uses high-cost PCB satellite shafts and a lot of grease, which makes the K2 Pro's large keys feel good, unlike mass-produced keyboards. Even the large keys such as the left shift have almost no stickiness. With the addition of sound-absorbing cotton and silicone bottom cotton, and the reinforcement of the keyboard by the aluminum shell, there is almost no cavity sound and steel wire sound in K2 Pro, and the tapping feedback is clean and neat. Unified, it feels very good when inputting at high speed.

K2 Pro is paired with a set of OSA-standard PBT two-color ball caps. OSA uses the OEM height more flatteringly. The surface is the matte matte surface of the traditional PBT slightly astringent touch. Although this set of ball caps is not amazing, the quality is definitely acceptable. of.

Finally, Keychron’s main series keyboards all use qmk firmware, which also supports VIA to change keys. Although VIA is not so powerful and flexible, it is more convenient and easy to use. For office keyboards, use VIA’s layer function, and then use macros. You can use two keys to combine a lot of ways to improve efficiency. For example, when the right hand presses the quotation mark key, the letter area of ​​the left hand becomes a number area to realize the keypad function. When the semicolon is pressed, it corresponds to various shortcut keys in vs code, and there are many ways to play.

The K2 Pro keyboard is not outstanding in the current inward-rolling keyboard market, but it has a practical arrangement, a K-Pro switch body with a good texture and good performance, a good hardware foundation, and the key change brought by QMK/VIA The gameplay is quite suitable as an office keyboard.