Keychron K3: was it worth the wait?

The anticipated Keychron K3 raised over 1000% of what they asked for on Kickstarter and I am here to tell you if you should preorder it or not.

Keychron is a pretty well-known mechanical keyboard brand and in my opinion, has made some amazing starter keyboards. I love that they have some hot-swappable keyboards in almost every size you can think of. I was very new to the mech keyboard scene, and I was very excited to back this project since it seemed to fit the needs and I would be one of the first people to be able to use this keyboard. Not only that, since the Kickstarter raised over 1 million dollars, there were some cool things that were added to your purchase. Enough said, let’s get right into why you are reading this.

Keychron specs

• Aluminum Frame
• Hot-swappable option (Only the optical switches are hot-swappable)
• 75% layout
• Mac & Windows mode (Easy change by using a switch on the side of the keyboard)
• Type-C plug (Braided cable if you bought through Kickstarter)
• Optical or Gateron Switches
• RGB or White

Now I got the Optical Red hot-swappable K3, just because I was excited to try another hot-swappable keyboard. I would have loved this keyboard to have Gateron hot-swappable, but nonetheless, I was happy with what I ordered.

How the K3 feels

After around a day of use, I honestly am quite happy with it. The keyboard has a short key-travel and is extremely comfortable to use without a wrist rest. I do make a few typos but it is most likely just me getting used to the keyboard as I don’t usually have the page up and page down keys.

The RGB is actually amazing though. Honestly, it exceeded my expectations and the configuration of how the switches are exposed and light can shine through the keycaps make for some really nice RBG’s. They have a bunch of settings and I love being able to change them at an easy tap of a keycap.

Why I am disappointed

Honestly, I was most disappointed with how Keychron communicated with their backers on Kickstarter. For one they kept pushing back the production dates and I received my keyboard over a month later than I was expecting it. I understand that there are difficulties when making a new product, but Keychron would give us hope in updates, but we would be let down when they put out another one saying they had another complication. I would have rather them be more candid about what to expect. Also, shipping was SOOOOO expensive but that’s beside the point.

I also was not very happy with my switches. I initially got the reds because it would come sooner and honestly I thought it would have some type of thocc that I like. To be fair to Keychron, their typing test video did the reds sounding exactly what you get, but honestly, I thought that was a fluke. Instead, I looked at other optical red switches and tried to gauge it (which is prob not a good thing to do). If you look at the typing test video, most of the linear switches sound the same and honestly I wish I could have gotten the optical browns, but they were expected to be produced later and I did not wanna wait that long lol (but in the end I could have switched since everything was pushed back, but I was too lazy). I might try and lube these switches and see if that makes things better, but the good thing is it is very smooth when typing so I am very happy there.

Should you buy this?

Honestly, no. I am so sad to say this but for me, the key sound is extremely important and it is not at all what I thought I was buying. There are plenty of keyboards out there that are cheaper and have a wider variety of customizations you can make. Due to the nature of this project, there are not many options for customization besides what Keychron offers you. Honestly, Keychron offers a ton of other keyboards that would be better and I would definitely recommend the K2. It’s more of a traditional mechanical keyboard and you can easily customize almost everything, while also keeping the layout size.

I know it may seem like I'm taking a crap on Keychron, but this keyboard also has some awesome things. For one it is super mac friendly and since I use the touch bar a lot, having the dedicated media keys are so nice! Also, the Bluetooth is extremely easy and I have been able to easily switch between laptops with a click of a button. This is also extremely light and I will def be using this to travel.

Again I think you would be better off buying a K2 versus a K3 but all in all, this was a cool experience and I hope to have a review on Youtube of this keyboard soon!