I recently switched from my Keychron K2 to a Keychron K15 Pro mechanical keyboard. It started with @[email protected] asking for recommendations for a new mechanical keyboard and me looking up the Keychron website, and it quickly escalated from there.
Keychron K2
Keychron K15 Pro
The Review
Low Profile
👍 I no longer have to adjust the keyboard and the wrist-support wooden block along with it. It also feels more natural because my arm sits on the desk at the same level as everything else.
😑 The drop in key travel is very noticeable. And as someone who tends to hit the keys a bit, it’s leaving that feeling of tiredness in the joints. I think, I might get used to it as time passes. It’s not like I am hammering on a rubber mat - like a laptop keyboard.
Split Layout
😍 This has been a big relief. As a small person, the armrests of the chairs tend to be a bit further away from the shoulder line. So, the angle of arms to my wrists were always off on a straight keyboard. Adjusting arms caused shoulder pain, adjusting shoulders caused wrist pain. I have been living from one to another for a while now. The new keyboard has brought a relief to my shoulder.
😑 I wish my I could say the same about my wrists, but unfortunately, they still get some pain from time to time. I probably need a full split keyboard for that to be completely resolved.
Macro Keys and QMK+VIA
🤩 Oh! Mama. Do I love them? I have never used Macro keys or Keyboard layers or anything like that. So, I just have 4 of them mapped to my 4 KDE desktops (desktops? 🤔 workspaces?…whatever, you get it) and the 5th one mapped to KRunner (the command bar text-box thingy that appears in the middle). I was sincerely considering one of those keyboard only desktop environments. I liked the idea that I can press a key and be in a specific application. These keys have completely solved that need. Now I just hit a key, and I am on the screen with the application I want.
😑 The keys are on the left end and my muscle memory uses the end of the keyboard as a kind of reference for the Caps Lock key, Tab Key…etc., So, I keep switching desktops accidentally in the middle of doing something. This has been a bit annoying.
The rotary encoder
🎛️ I really like it for smoothly increasing and decreasing volume without looking the keyboard to find the volume keys. If I was doing any video editing, I would probably remap it to something like scrubbing. But I don’t, it just sits there doing the boring function of volume control.
🦄 I wish I could find a way to go back and forth in Git history on a repo with it. That would be cool.
Final thoughts
⌨️ The pipe | key has been acting weird, it works when my finger hits it on the right half and doesn’t when it hits on the left half. I suspect one of those spacer things is faulty. It’s hot swappable, so I should be able to just replace the switch.
Update: Turned out it doesn’t have any support things on the side. Just the key. I pulled it out and put it back, and it is working fine. :)
Overall, I like it a lot. It has improved my life noticeably in the last 1 week it’s been here. I don’t think I will go back to a regular keyboard anytime soon.