How to Choose the Best Keyboard from Keychron

if you're looking for a nice mechanical keyboard chances are that you've heard of keyron when you look at sites like wire cutter or ratings or pretty much anything else on the internet they're

saying just get a keyron but which one do I get there's like hundreds of keyboards on their website alone so in the past 5 years I've looked at a bunch of keyron keyboards ever since they came out with their original K2 and then they

started releasing their Q lineup and their V lineup and if you're wondering all what these letters mean we're going to get into it sit down relax get a clipboard take notes because this is going to be one heck of a video so

keyron is doing a great thing here they're giving you keyboards that are compatible with Mac and windows that usually have wireless connectivity and all these other features like hot

swapability and whatnot but the biggest problem remains which keyboard do you want and which keyboard do you need and how the heck do you pick between all their options so by the end of this

video you're going to know exactly which ones to just never look at again cuz their website's so overwhelming and which ones do you actually consider and maybe buy but also keyron might not be the best keyboard anymore so later on

I'm going to be talking about some other Alternatives that are just as good and might even be more affordable than Kyron so let's get into it so the first question do you want a regular profile

keyboard that's a little bit higher off of your desk or do you want a low profile keyboard that's closer and you may not need a wrist rest so this is the

k17 max and this is the K2 Max Max so the even numbers in the K lineup are going to be your normal profile keyboards the odd numbers in the K lineup are going to be your lower

profile keyboards so you can see the difference in height here pretty significantly different so as far as pricing goes they vary so the prices

that I have on the sticky notes are for this specific keyboard alone but if you go to your their website you'll find that like the K2 max they're going to have versions without RGB they're have

versions without hot swapability and that's going to lower down the price where if you get everything it's going to raise the price and they're usually $10 difference from each tier to the next so that's the first decision that

you've got to make normal profile or low profile low profile has pretty flat key caps they don't curve or go up like how a regular keyboard would these key caps

are exactly all the same so if you want a lowprofile keyboard you've got several series to pick from you've got the kmax series which is this one the K Pro the K and the S so the S I believe is getting

discontinued so just cross that off your list the S doesn't really have anything in it right now anyways it's got like one keyboard just cross that off your list don't even consider it and then the K series is like the very first version

of these keyboards that they came up with 5 years ago so 2019 2020 maybe even 2018 was when the cave series first came out and that's when they started doing

this weird like odd number equals low profile even number equals normal and they kept releasing it back and forth if you ever look at the release lineup for Kyron keyboards you'll find this weird

staggering pattern between the two so K series is really old also getting discontinued they typically don't have like hos swapability or Foams or 2.4 GHz connectivity or any of that we can cross

that off the list too so get rid of the normal K series get rid of the S Series and now the decision is between the K Max and the K Pro so what's the biggest difference between them and it's really

just that the kmax gives you this opportunity to have 2.4 GHz connection so instead of just cable and Bluetooth you can now go to the G which you need the dongle for and the dongle in the box

somewhere and worst thing about some of these keyboards is that they don't have a dongle holder like there's no way to hold your dongle and if you have a billion keyboards like this all with dongles well I don't want to take them

out of the box cuz I'm obviously going to mix them up so that's the biggest difference between the K Pro Series and the K Max series is your going to have 2.4 GHz connectivity that goes up to

1,000 HZ polling rate and that really only matters if you're doing wireless gaming or you type really freaking fast you might want to connect that for a more reliable connection or if you just want to save battery on your keyboard

Bluetooth tends to take more batteries than using the dongle so that's the biggest difference if you're considering low profile you either go for the max or the pro and I would recommend going for

the max cuz if you look at the biggest difference between the prices here the K1 Pros are all on sale right now because I think that what they're going to do is they're going to phase out their Pro Series completely to be

replaced with the max series cuz they're basically the same except for one thing so why not replace them so the K1 Max is $94 if you want white backlight if you want r2b it goes up a bit and if you

want hot swapability it goes up again so you got that $10 difference between the tiers and then you got different switch options but we'll talk about that later cuz thinking about switches is a little complicated right now since they have a

lot of switches so the pro lineup is on sale if you want something a little bit more affordable then that's probably the one to go for but I really do think that they're going to ACD in the future and then the max will be everything and then

maybe in the future again they'll have like a super lineup and a mega lineup and then Super Omega extra Max Pro whatever series that they're going to come out with if you're going low profile go for the Max and you'll be

pretty set with that but of course there are other lowprofile keyboards from other brands that uh we may talk about in the future that is the first decision low profile or normal if you want normal

though there's a lot of options now there's a lot to consider if you consider the normal keyboards you also have the original lineup the pro lineup and the mac and again I just recommend moving straight to the Mac for every

lineup that you pick it's the easiest decision but you'll find that certain series between the pro and the max have different color options I don't know why they did this because in some of these

keyboards if you wanted a Mac series you're going to get this weird off-white color where the pro series may have actual like white keyboards so that's a

weird decision that they made there too everything gets a little bit confusing so if you want specific sizes in specific colors with specific switches you may have to do some digging now for

the complicated bit if you thought that was complicated it doesn't get easier we're going to talk about the different sizes that they offer so Kyron has their own buying guide but it just makes

things worse it's just like oh my gosh what am I looking at what's going on so let's talk about all the sizes they start all the way from number pad all the way to like full size plus kind of

things I typically have pretty regular sizes here that you'll look at except for this one this one's really weird over here the q9 plus I don't know any normal person that would use a keyboard

like this one so the smallest layout is the q0 the numbers will vary from low profile to normal so these are specific L for the normal keyboards and the

numbers tend to stay the same between each one so if you have like a one after a q or V or a k then it's well I don't

know why they did it like this why do they do it like this that's so confusing we're just going to talk about sizes without looking at the numbers next to it like they tell you the q1 max a 75

they tell you the Q2 Max a 65 and then they see complicated stuff Al so just don't pay attention to the number next to the letter like if it's q1 or Q2 or Q3 that doesn't matter right now when

considering sizes let's look at the the actual size that they describe it as so these percents here those describe the sizes and then these other words like Alice South paaul those also describe

different layouts so we're going to go to their buying guide so 75% is what is on most of this table this is the q1 max it's like the best Edition in their 75%

Q lineup so if you've got a bunch of Foams you've got 2.4 GHz you've got all this stuff but it costs a lot of money so it cost about $29 I think it goes up

to $219 so this is 75% keyboard it's got the function row it's got some nav Keys it's got some arrow keys and it's got numbers it's got everything and it's not really missing out on functionality

other than so it doesn't have the number pad on the right side that's 75% and this is 75% this is 75 this is a fulls sizee keyboard so this is 100% keyboard

if you see 100% next to the name this is going to be what it looks like this one has a knob typically they don't have a knob but keyr is obsessed with knobs you're going to see knob options on like

all their keyboards and then this one is 10 keyless also known as 80% doesn't have the number pad it looks just like a fullsize keyboard but they just chopped off the number pad whereas the 75% they

like smooshed some keys together to make it more Compact and they chopped off the number pad and then you've got 60% which is a full-size keyboard but they chopped off the number pad and and they chopped

off the nav keys and the arrow keys so there's no arrow keys on the 60% if you go a little bit bigger than that to a 65% keyboard now you have arrow keys

back in and a couple nav Keys typically they'll have more but key cr's trying to look real pretty here so we've only got arrow keys and two nav keys but this is a 65% there's no function row on the top

and all this stuff is chopped off so we talked about 60 65 75 full size let's talk about this guy this guy's weird this guy is a 40% keyboard which cuts

off everything usually they don't even have arrow keys so typically it looks something like this and this one they added in arrow keys and they added in a bunch of stuff cuz this is just a weird keyboard so those are some examples the

most common most popular layouts right now are 75% tkl and 65% and if you really want a number pad you can buy that separately cuz they do sell that as

well it's called the qz and then of Kyron being Kyron decides to add a couple weel we other layouts so they also have the 96% layout which is a

fullsize keyboard except they mashed everything together from both sides so you got arrow keys here small shift and then you do have a number pad and then they pretty much mashed this stuff

together and took out a few keys so that's 96% and then there's some special layouts that they have where they decide to do weird funky things they've got

other layouts where they use a 65% base and then either add keys to the left left side or do whatever and to make it a little funky so they're special layouts and you can look at those

because they are not very typical and it just depends on whatever kyron's wanting to do with it so you have to look at those very specifically so there's Alice layouts which would be something like

this so this is a q14 Max this is an ALICE layout keyboard don't even look at this on the left side yet Alice layout keyboard is you got this split in the middle this Gap here this River where

the guy got to jump and run over but it also has has an angle to it so a curvature to the Keys compared to a normal keyboard that's more straight so this is more ergonomic to type on and

you've got two space bars so one could be space one could be backspace it tends to be more comfortable to type on so there's a 65% Alice and a 75% Alice so

the 75% Alice still has the function row and then 65% chops that first row off and like that's a different keyboard it's the same but smaller and then they have this other thing called South paaul

which is like you know when you're in boxing if you're a left-handed boxer they call you like a southpaw boxer so you have a a number pad on the left side that's called a southpaw layup compared

to a number pad on the right side so this is just regular this is a southpaw Edition so that's what that means and then they have their 40% which we looked at and that should be all the sizes

there's one more a special 75% there's a split keyboard which instead of being combined like this but split you have actually two halves of a keyboard that move independently of each other that's

connected together by a wire so that is a split keyboard this is more of a Ergo layout but that should be all the sizes that they have complicated we're not even getting started yet we've talked

about low profile or normal the normal lineup the pro lineup the Max lineup and now the size so next there's the next I know there's something called a bare

bones versus a fully assembled kit so a barebones keyboard doesn't come with these two parts these switches or key caps and these can be customizable depending on what your preferences are

you can have different switches you can have different looking key caps you're not stuck with these weird keyron key Caps or these weird keyron switches but it has to be hot swapable which let me

explain to you right now like what is hot swappable cuz most of these keyboards come with hot swappable options so if it does not say it's hot swappable on the sales page and that means that these switches are soldered

in and you're stuck with what you get so if you don't like that is it's linear you don't like that it's clicky or you don't like that is tactile then you're stuck with that you can't take those out and you can't change those the something

else and when I mean linear clicky and tactile so clicky you've got these loud switches those are clicky tactile is a switch that has a bump that you feel as

you're pressing you feel a bump then linear switches just go up and down really smoothly and these are typically the switch types that you'll find on these keyron sales Pages for the newer models they phased out a lot of the

clicky ones cuz it seems like no one really wants clicky switches anymore so if you do want a clicky keyboard get a Bare Bones Edition buy your own clicky switches and then buy your own keycaps then put that in together and make your

own keyboard so Bare Bones means it's more customizable but you have to do the building yourself whereas the assembled ones which cost more comes with the switches and keyc caps that you see on

their page so that makes sense I hope so next we are going into switches and key cap so switches get a little complicated because they have leveled up and changed

their switches throughout the years of making their keyboard they had their gather on switches their gather on low profile their Keyon K switches their

Keyon K Pro switches the Gaton Pro it's a mess but the easiest way to determine what you want is to go onto one of these

Pages let's say if we want a Q8 Max I don't know who would but let's say we do let's say we want a Q8 Max and you go to the sales page and you're like okay Bare Bones is empty as you can

see and fully assembled has everything you've got different colors and you go down here to switches so these are gon Jupiter Brown and banana so this is what I mean when they FAS out clickies none

of these are clicky switches Reds tend to be linear Browns tend to be tactile and banana well banana is their own thing banana is like a a super tactile it's like a super bumpy but if you don't

know what any of those words mean or you want more details and you scroll down until you get to this thing that explains their switches so Gaton chuper

switches are three pin pre lubed so we've got linear tactile and tactile so similar to Panda switches pandas were really popular back in the day and

they're like a more tactile more bumpy switch and then they also tend to be a little heavier and if you look at this the banana switch has less travel distance so understanding switch tables

that is for another day but if you're even more Curious and want more information and that's when you go to YouTube and you start typing in sound tests and more specific reviews let's go to the K4 Pro Line so these are the K

Pro switches and I could probably talk about all their switches but I think it's better if you know how to browse these yourself and how to make the decisions yourself so K PR switches red blue brown are the three options

operating force is how heavy it is to click pre- travel is how much you need to move the switch before it sends a signal to your computer that you pressed it and travel distance is the entire

distance of the switch from top to bottom and then the behavior here so You' got linear clicky and tactile and these are preed so everything's preed nowadays back in the day switches were

not preed which means you had this nice pinging sound when you typed really fast but also you had a little scratchiness when you were typing but now everything's pre- lubed if you want to get deeper into the hobby you can learn how to lube switches yourself but

nowadays it's not really necessary and then their sound levels this is more subjective I wouldn't say these are right but they're they're subjective just listen to some typing tests and then suitable for this this is also

pretty objective so I would just pay attention to the behavior the force of the switch and determine if you would like it that way so those are some of their switches they also have low profile switches so we'll go into one of

these pages and they only have linear or tactile so you don't have that many options here's something else that you might want to look at are these versions here so white backlight only has white

lighting RGB has well RGB so it has rainbows and then the RGB plus hot swapable means that you can pull out the switches so if you have one of these switch pullers you can literally pull

out the switches next there's more lineups this is my note sheet you've got the Q lineup the V the K and then some extras that we'll talk about later so

this is the K lineup here and it has their Osa keycaps if I'm being right I might not be right the P lineup it's got

RGB these keycaps do not let light go through and this is the Mac so it's got a lot of Foams it's got keyron and Mac they basically all do except for their Lio key keyboards and these have keyron

super switches again just go look at their sales page so the biggest difference between like the K series and the Q series is the Q series is more positioned towards custom keyboard

enthusiasts where they might want to build their keyboard they're looking for more Foams more flexibility in the keyboard itself so the the KY lineup's

pretty stiff but the Q has more Flex so you can see it bouncing up and down this is more office appearance this is more custom and then you've got the V lineup

which is much much more budget so if you look at the V4 here $79 the K2 Max here is 112 and then the Q Series tends to be more expensive so that's $1.99 and then

this Q is 200 so the Q Series tends to be around 200 K series tends to be a little bit over 100 and then the V series under 100 typically so it has a all plastic case it's really lightweight

there's no foam or anything this is a normal V Series so it doesn't even have Bluetooth but if you look at the max V series and I think the V series is also

going to be discontinued so just go for the max the V series is much much more budget it's all plastic it's pretty portable and then the K series is Middle

the ground a little bit more sturdy it's got the aluminum here and it's for like office people and then the Q Series such as these ones are more for people that

are into custom keyboards and really modding their keyboards those are the biggest normal keyboard lineups and then there's two or three more lineups to know about we're going to talk about Lio

key and limo key is new and it's the gaming branch of Kyron keyboards so I was looking it up I was like well I've got a limo key here and it looks a lot

like the Q Series right like what I me sure it's got different key caps sure it looks a little different like at the top and in the back here it's got a lot of

differences but it's sort of the same but why is the price so different so this q1 Max $29 this P1 Pro $129 but really not that much of a

difference right it's got the full aluminum case it's got like nice custom key caps it's got a knob it's got 2.4 GHz it's got everything it's a big price

difference right so what is the difference well Lio key is geared towards Gamers they were like hey let's make this a little bit more affordable let's take out a couple of Foams let's

change it up a little bit and make this keyboard which let's do a hot take here personally I think the limo key series will probably be people's goto compared

to keyron especially if you're more budget oriented or you don't want to spend about $200 on a keyboard there's subtle differences but the price differences is so high that like I would

go for a P1 Pro over a q1 Max just because the price difference is really high unless you have a clear reason to buy a q1 Max over a P1 Pro I mean look at this got a nice weight you know what

doesn't have a nice weight the Q Series it's got nothing back here they should just add the weight onto the Q Series but anyways moving on on a Reddit post I was reading this is from Lio key

themselves all right the overall positioning of the P1 versus the q1 is different the q1 max is aimed for office users and the Lio key P1 Pro is aimed for gamers and there's some differences

like the keycap Prof files different this one has Cherry this one has KSA and the limo key doesn't let you toggle between Mac and windows but you could program that yourself into another layer

and then like they have same gasket mounting but the keyron one does have better gasket mounting and it also probably has a better poly carbonate plates as well similar but different I guess how do you know what to buy I

guess it depends on what exactly do you want and how much money do you have and then there's another series it's called the C Series they're just really really budgeted they're full plastic they tend

not to have all the bells and whistles that the other ones do it's so subtle it's really not I wouldn't think about it I would think about the original series I don't know why they spun off

this C Series over here when you could buy a V series or you could buy the K series it doesn't make sense I think they'll like discontinue that in in a couple years and then there's another

one if you go deep into limo key so Lio key has their own website and they have two lineups there they have their P series which is this one right here they have their L Series which is really

expensive and looks like a custom keyboard and I think they spun off their L Series off of the Q Series cuz their pricing is very similar but just has a couple macro keys but it has a lot of

the same features as the q1 so a little bit confusing I think so and their X Series is like budget gaming keyboards pretty much you don't really have many options you just choose your switch you

order it on Amazon it's very affordable I mean it doesn't really have Bluetooth or Wireless it is a keyboard with everything that you buy you plug into

your computer it has via support so let's talk about via why is everyone talking about it via is a piece of browser software so originally it's called qmk a qmk is like a pain in the

booty hole to use to remap your keys and to add macros and to change the lighting and then came out via via it's just really easy to use you go to can iuse via.com I'm going to connect one of

these keyboards I'll connect the q1 AG that we're going to talk about pretty soon so you go to try now authorize a device connect it and it should authorize if not well we can use

something else well that's annoying let's just go to their keyron launcher so via looks very similar to this but it's it's a web browser app that allows you to remap your keys change your

lighting do all these cool things right into your browser so you're not downloading software all this proprietary software that nobody wants this is the H keyboard so we're going to go back to that later H is very important we're going to get to that so

via looks similar to this but not exactly but it lets you remap like if I wanted to change this page down here or this page up to uh backspace I could I could do that or if I wanted to change

this knob into something else I could do that and you have all these layers that you can pick from and you can do lighting straight on Via you can make macros right on Via you could test your

keys this is the keyron launcher but via looks very similar to this except for a bunch of keyboards these are the keyron launchers specific to keyron keyboards but super convenient it used to be not

the case where you would have to learn this weird language to program your keyboard now you don't so that's via VIA is very nice you want via you don't want to have to download proprietary software

to remap your keys like that sucks so I guess we're here at the which one do I get you really want to decide what to get answer these five questions so first do you want low profile keyboard or a

normal profile keyboard like do you want this low profile keyboard that's a little more laptop esque closer to what you might be using already or do you want a normal profile keyboard so it's a little bit higher you may want a wrist

rest that's the first question if you want low profile then you go towards their low profile keyboards if you want normal then there's a lot more decisions to be made the next decision is what

size do you want we talked about all the sizes from the number pad to 40% to 65 to 75 to 60 to an ALICE which size do you want and that will help you

determine what to get and then do you want a bill for you fully assembled or do you want it Bare Bones and build it yourself pick out your own parts put it back together you know experience a hobby that way and the next part do you

want an aluminum case or not you want the full aluminum case you want the aluminum support on the side or maybe not maybe you just want like completely plastic case and the other question

which is very very specific do you want haul effect so haul effect is their newest lineup and it has haul effects which is so these are not the original keycaps I replace these keycaps the

original key caps are actually these which look pretty nice it's an off-white color I thought my off-white key caps would fit it a little bit better and I think it does it makes it look really

nice so the AG lineup is just like the q1 max except it's the hall effect switches and what hall effect switches is is now you can change the actuation point to where you want it you can do

things like rabbit suger Dynamic keystroke mod tab if you know the wooting keyboard and you're a gamer then you're going to know what goes into this Hall fet keyboard what I don't understand now is why they didn't put

hall effect into their gamer P1 Pro cuz that would have made a lot more sense what's going on here so hall effect do you want hall effect if so they only have two keyboards on there right now

the q18 this one and their K2 H which is also 75% keyboard but it looks a little bit more officy it's got wooden accents it's a little prettier so those are the

biggest decisions but if I were to you and if I were super new into the mechanical keyboard space and I feel super overwhelmed I have no idea what to choose and I just want a keyboard like

someone pick a keyboard for me that's when I would go with a 75% gasket mounted aluminum keyboard so I would

pick either the P1 Pro or the q1 max pricey I know but the P1 Pro tends to be more affordable and then there is an alternative to all these keyboards if

you want a 75% gask Mount to full aluminum keyboard with via compatibility and that is this one this is the walmir sk75 it's via compatible it's got a nice

weight on the back ooh it's got Wireless it's just sort of a pain in the butt to use compared to the kyrons where you would just flip an on switch the on switch of this one is under caps lock

very annoying but just listen to it and this is something that keyron just hasn't figured out and it's why is their space bar sound so bad right like keyron you have

hundreds and hundreds of keyboards make your space bars better this one could use a little bit of help too but it's got a lot of nice sounds it's got really heavy case I like

it there's a lot of options that I would rather get if I was just going for the 75% with a knob kind of thing and we'll talk about that in the future up coming soon soon I'm collecting keyboards for it right now other than that though I

would go with a P1 Pro and instead of these tactile switches I would go with the linear ones because I just like linear switches personally so that would be

$129 or the q1 Max barebones and then I put my own switches and key caps into it so that is Kyron if you're overwhelmed I am too I just talked about Kyron

keyboards for like an hour straight and I didn't even get to go through weird things like KSA versus Osa let's go through that right now so these are

keycap profiles KSA is more spherical on the top more curvature for your fingers to rest Osa a little bit more flat on the top less vehicle that's really the

biggest differences I prefer Cherry profile it looks so much nicer ooh the key caps that I put on the k1h are cherry profile ooh very nice so

that's just what I would do I do not like kyron's weird you got profile keyboard I don't know why they don't do something better but it's their choice it's their company they can do whatever

the heck they want I hope this helped you figure out what keyron keyboard to buy or not buy and if you're so confused still P1 Pro q1 Max read their sales

Pages Tinker with it have fun so yeah that is keyron even within one keyboard you got a lot of options you can choose

between no RGB RGB Bluetooth 2.4 no 2.4 yeah it's confusing but I hope this video helped you out and if you still have any questions join our Discord server where we can answer your

questions live and if you want to see more videos well watch more videos have fun see you