Keychron continues to do it. It launched 12 other Q-series boards, from a regular old full-size down to an ultracompact, since we reviewed the Keychron Q2 in January. An HHKB is also present. The Q10 is a mechanical keyboard that is 75 percent Alice. It's a great keyboard for the price, with a lot of enthusiast features at mediocre gaming keyboard prices. It is for a person who sees a $200 keyboard and wonders how cheap it is.
Imagine a person split a keyboard in half, rotating each half, and sticking it back together. The TGR Alice, a 60 percent keyboard from Malaysian designer Yutski, inspired a legion of clones, imitators, variant, and spinoffs.
The Q10 isn't quite a split keyboard and isn't quite an ergonomics keyboard. You can't set the angle or tenting. It isn't enough to keep your forearms parallel to each other. The Q10 is small. Since it allows you to keep your wrists at a neutral angle, it is more comfortable than a standard keyboard. It opens up my shoulders a bit more. It looks good.
The Q10 is an absolute steal if you have keycaps and switches. The Q series is Keychron's attempt to make an off-the-shelf mechanical keyboard feel like a high-end custom, if your vision of a high-end keyboard includes phrases like "gasket mount" and "milled aluminum"
The review unit is just under five pounds and has the stock key caps and switches. It is supposed to be on a desk. Most custom keyboards over the past 10 years have been made from milled aluminum. Metal keyboards look nice, heavy keyboards feel high-end, and they don't slide around your desk when you type If you only make 50 or 100 of something for people who don't mind paying hundreds of dollars each, the per-unit cost of aluminum is important. In the past few years, keyboard manufacturers have gotten the scale they need to make plastic cases, just as more established manufacturers have started making milled-aluminum ones.
The switch plate is sandwiched between the top and bottom frames with squishy foam. The assembly will bounce back up if you push hard enough on any key. Silicone bumpers between the top and bottom frames help prevent metal-on-metal contact and reduce vibration. There is foam between the switch plate and PCB. The stabilizers are lightly oiled.
These are some of the ways that enthusiasts mod their keyboards to make them sound better. To make up for the fact that they are milling out of solid aluminum. The tape mod is named after the man who popularized it. The sound profile can be changed with layers of tape on the PCB. It is cheap and easy to use. It has been done to many keyboards. The Q10 has a thin sheet of acoustic tape instead of the layer of acoustic foam other Q-series boards have.
The Q10 feels great with the stock keycaps and Gateron Pro red switches. Light linear switches don't appeal to me. Most of the sound comes from the key caps clicking against the switch plate. There is no sound or sound wave. The space bars are the quietest keys on the keyboard, probably because they are the size of Shift keys. I don't feel much of a bounce from the gasket mount, but it seems to help the sound profile, and it ain't hurting anything.
The PCB-mount stabilizers are ok. The backspace key is louder than I want it to be. They are the first things I would change. They're pretty good.
It took me almost no effort to get used to using an Alice board. The layout is usually standard. The keys are usually about the size you would expect them to be.
There are three 1.25u keys to the left of the first space bar in the bottom row. On the right-hand side, there is another space bar and a single 1u modifiers that acts as the board's function key. You might have to get creative if you're used to it. The Q10, like all of Keychron's Q-series boards, is fully reprogrammable using a popular app in the keyboard community.
The Q10 includes both Mac and Windows compatible keycaps in the box and has a switch toggling between two different sets of layers which you can program independently. If you swap between Mac and Windows frequently, you'll love this feature because it means you can have completely different layout. I don't know what, just me.
The Q10 isn't in the official repository, so I had to download a file from Keychron's website, import it, and set V2 compatibility in the settings menu before I could remap the board.
The Q10 ships with Gateron Pro Red, Blue, and Brown switches, as well as doubleshot PBT key caps, unless you opt for the bare bones version. There are no problems with the key caps. They are thin, and the legends look like they were typeset in a real rush, which is a shame. They have Mac-style legends on the function row.
The bare-bone version of the Q10 is essentially free because it is less expensive than the version with switches and keycaps. It is difficult to find good switches for less than 20 dollars. Even if you have a bunch of keycap sets lying around, they might not have every key you need for an Alice board.
The 1.75u right shift key is common in aftermarket key caps. There is a column of five macro keys along the left-hand side of the screen and the Delete key is a row higher than it should be. There is a second key on each side of the board. The Q10 is still more difficult to cover than a standard 75 percent board, even though some keycap sets are starting to include the second B. On its website, Keychron sells a few compatible keycap sets, along with different switchplates, cables, and other items.
The Q10 has a PCB that is south-facing, so you can use any switches that are compatible with the MX standard. I took the top frame off when I swapped switches because some of the cutouts in the function row were too tight to squeeze a key cap into.
If you want to apply counter-pressure to the hot- swap sockets, you should install switches with the frame off. It's easier to seat switches and not push the sockets off of the PCB. My editor is among a lot of people. It works for them, but I bend less switch pins this way. It's just a statement.
The frames should be taken off before you install the switches.
The Q10 keyboard has a knob on the top left corner instead of the right one, and I like it. I feel like a left-handed person. Both the knob and the macros are easy to program in VIA, and the left macro column is also neat. There are a lot of gaming keyboards, but they are not as common on enthusiast boards.
The Keychron Q10 is something that I like. The front edge is close to 20mm high. Depending on the height of your keycaps and the size of your hands, you may need to rest your wrists on the desk. It's not an issue if you hover like a normal person.
There isn't a wireless option in the Q line. That's okay. The battery life on the boards is usually bad. Easy programmability is more important on a five pound board. There are a lot of good wireless boards. The Q-series is not for that.
The board has a braidedusb-c-to-c cable. It has a keycap, switch, and screwdriver. It is a nice touch that suggests the keyboard is meant to be messed with, because they are decent but not great. The caps are not very thick.
The Q10 is very good at being the thing it is trying to be, a keyboard with a lot of features. The Feker Alice75 is a hundred more expensive and has worse software, but it is the only off-the-shelf option for a heavy Alice keyboard.
You need a five-pound gasket-mount keyboard for it to be a very good keyboard. If you want an Alice board but don't want a five pound keyboard, there are other options. There is a gasket-mounted 65 percent Alice kit on Epomaker's site. The Alice with a knob on the left is only in stock in the sense that you can buy the parts and not just for the switches. It is a great option if you like to build your own keyboards, but it is not the same as the Q10's vibe.
The V8 is a plastic version of the Q8 and there is a pre-launch page for the V10 The aluminum case and gasket mount are gone, but the other enthusiast features of the Q series are retained. If you aren't ready for a five-pound keyboard but are interested in the Q10's layout, that's the one to watch.
NathanEdwards is a photographer for The Verge.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
