Keychron K8 Pro Mechanical Keyboard Review

I really like the Cherry MX Clears. I found them to be a step up from the Browns and bottom out less:

https://www.cherry-world.com/mx-clear

Clear


vs Brown:

 

For whatever it's worth (I'm also a keyboard noob, likely far moreso than Marv) I've always felt that the Gateron Browns are somewhat sharper at the tactile position than the Cherry MX Browns which do come off as slightly mushy in direct comparison. Just comparing the two provided charts it seems they ought be closer clones no?

Of course, could just be production variance. I'm only comparing one keyboard's worth of keys to another so it's very much anecdotal at best.

Edit: oh wait I'm just noticing the return travel has less force on the MXes. That could explain it.

 

And here I am as a heretic who mostly prefers his thinkpad keyboard with their scissor switches. If Lenovo would just release a damned backlit version of the keyboard I'd be sold.

 

The switches you’re looking for are Gateron Banana 2.0. I have them in a K7 Max and a K15 Pro. They’re outstanding.

I actually prefer the feel of Keychron’s own banana optical low-profile switches, but they’re incompatible with all Pro and Max models because of incompatibility with QMK/VIA firmware.

In addition, I replaced the keycaps with shine-through ABS. It’s really annoying that the default ones on the Pro and Max lines aren’t shine-through. Defeats the purpose of backlights IMO.

 

Input.club had a nice database full of vintage keyboards.

@driftingbunnies know of any currently maintained database of switches?

 

Whatever happened to their site?

 

If you don't want venture into custom keyboards, I recommend Leopold keybords or HHKB/Realforce if you like topre.

Note that every keyboard will benefit from some mods, first et foremost lubing the stabs.

 

Input Club = Jacob Alexander = HaaTa = kiibohd = Deskthority

https://deskthority.net/wiki/Category:List_of_all_keyboard_switches

https://deskthority.net/wiki/Force

Like Crin's Tool to compare HaTaa and ThereminGoat graphs:
https://www.switchesdb.com/

 

Maybe Total Force is a helpful value for the overall subjective feel?
Like audio graphs, keyboard world are still trying to figure out what corresponds to subjective impressions too...

Jacob worked on a "Total Energy" measurement above actuation feel (but not including bottoming-out force) as that would damage the gauge: https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?t=14614

 

Ugh, the math/physics teacher in me is angry that he is saying force * distance = total force unit
Then later on says it's the same unit as torque. Ok technically correct, but even a high schooler will tell you the resultant unit is Work aka Energy aka Joule.

Sigh, at least he labels it correctly as "total energy" in the graph... but then he butchers it with this abomination of "gf mm" which isn't even right...

Ok ok breath, mebbe this is partially an American thing because y'all have this weird poundforce thing (and non of you use "slugs" which is technically your mass unit but I digress). If he's using grams for "force" which I get for the intuitiveness, the energy calculation should at least multiply g into it to convert to Newtons. And c'mon, since gram is a milli unit and we're also measuring travel as milli unit, the product is naturally going to fall into a "micro" range, and doesn't microjoule μJ just sound so much better than gfmm?

 

Whenever I see overlap with mech guys and audiophiles they all seem to be audio objectivist, which is funny when the most important factor for big keyboard enthusiasts is based on sound

I don’t know why there isn’t more premium keycaps that are shine-through. Especially with backlighting present in all high-end keyboards

 

Fully agree with the first bit, it's rather amusing. As to the part I quoted, from what I can see quite a few folks who build genuinely high-end keyboards (i.e. the "are you kidding me?!"-priced ones) tend to eschew any sort of backlighting. Could be a misread on my part though.

@zerodeefex not sure if you know this channel but this is a recent (i.e. right when you'd mentioned the Baby Kangaroo switches here) find for me. Might be of interest to @purr1n too:

I think it's amusing that they're using an SM57 for sound tests since that's nowhere near going to be representative of how things might sound IRL unless they do quite a bit of work in post, and the frequency spectrum they use is hilariously lacking in nuance IMO, but this person appears to have a generally good idea of how to try and offer more useful impressions of switches than the usual sound tests

 

Are any of you using a keyboard with magnetic Hall Effect switches? The new Keychron Q1 HE is getting rave reviews (several reviewers declaring it to be their new favorite keyboard). At $219 fully assembled, it is one of Keychron's most expensive models but still seems a good value for what it is.

 

Keychron has hall effect now? I know the most cracked Osu gamers used hall effect which seems to have started a gold rush for gamers in general. Akko also started offering hall effect too

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...-5-year-follow-up-and-mods.13481/#post-409045

 

I did end up picking one of these up since it was basically exactly what I wanted, not much to add but feels much higher quality than my old ducky tkl did (surprisingly so since they pretty much cost the same) and I can attest the bluetooth has been rock solid - thanks for posting this

 

How is the sound on those Baby Kangaroos? I wouldn't mind more tactility than my Keychron Pro Browns, but they are about as loud/annoying as I can go since I share an office with my wife. I listened to a couple youtube videos and it is hard to tell since they weren't testing on the Keychron I have.