I bought myself a Keychon K2 keyboard yesterday. I had an eye on this one for a while but I was wary of spending money on keyboards (I have spent lots of money on keyboards and headphones in the past and I know it is something I better reign in as I don’t always end up making full use of the things I buy). It’s been out of stock too mostly but I found that in the UK I could get it from their official supplier The Keyboard Company (who has a very slow website for some reason). They only had the brown switch version (which was fine) and I went with the white backlight one.
So far I was using the Apple Magic Keyboard and to be honest I am quite happy with it. I came to it after trying other mechanical keyboards as well as the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard (all of which I was happy with but got bored with after a few months – notice the pattern, hence the reluctance to not spend more money) and the good thing about the Magic Keyboard is that it’s unusual layout is what the Macbook Air too has so this way I don’t have to keep changing layouts in my head when I use different devices. But… I was restless, the Keychron K2 was available, so I bought it! :)
First impressions – I am enjoying it so far (just been a day). It’s too high so I’ve ordered a gel arm rest, but over the course of the day I have gotten used to the height so now I wonder if I should cancel that arm rest (I won’t, I think it’s better in the long term to have an arm rest – my current way of typing can’t be healthy long term). The keys have a nice clickey clack sound to them; not too loud (brown switches) and is fun to type. The keyboard can connect to 3 devices over Bluetooth and you can toggle between them by long pressing Fn+1, 2, or 3… so this way I have it connected to my Mac mini and iMac. It connected fine to the iMac but had trouble connecting to the Mac mini. In fact, today morning when I logged in the keyboard was unresponsive with the Mac mini and I had to resort to the Magic Keyboard to login and then forget this device and reconnect (and that too too 3-4 attempts). Not sure if it’s a Mac mini thing. I know it behaves weirdly with my Bluetooth earphones too sometimes so I am hoping this was a one-off.
Apart from that nothing much to say. All the keys work with macOS, including the media keys. You can switch between Windows and macOS mode with a toggle switch, and out of the box it comes with macOS keys but the Windows key caps are included. They keys seem to be getting dirty fast though – they did so even with the Magic Keyboard (sweaty fingers I guess) but it is especially noticeable on the gray keycaps. I like the tenkeyless design, and initially the page Up, page Down etc. column of buttons on the right was distracting but now I’ve gotten used to them.
It’s about £80. More than the US version here in UK. But is cheaper than the Magic Keyboard and more reasonably priced than most mechanical keyboards.
ps. Definitely a Mac mini issue as my headphones again gave trouble connecting just after I posted the above. Same issue as the K2, it refuses to connect; and even if it does, it disconnects after a while. Bummer.
ps2. Next the iMac started giving issues with this keyboard (Bluetooth). Restarted and it seems to be fine now. Eugh! I remember these headaches previously too with Bluetooth keyboards and macOS. I think that’s one of the reasons I just went with the Apple Magic Keyboard (and I liked using it, so that was a bonus of course). I also realized why the K2 didn’t work on the login screen on either device – because of FileVault. The Magic Keyboard has its perks in that it works on the login screen and even during boot (if you want to go into Recovery Mode for instance).