Keychron Q6 QMK Custom Mechanical Keyboard

I owned keyboards from different companies before this one, but as soon as you build/buy q6 it’s just over. I know that I’m sticking to this one for a really long time.

I spent a fair bit of time shopping around to find a Canadian distributor of mechanical keyboards who would have stock on this side of the Pacific, and I thought I had found that here. It was only when I got the shipping confirmation that I realized "Keychron Canada" is a Web site operated directly by the Chinese manufacturer and they have no Canadian presence other than the Web site. The product ships from Guangzhou. I feel this was not properly disclosed to me. The fine print of the Web site does mention international shipping, but does not make clear from where; I feel that it borders on misleading. If I had known the product was being dropshipped from overseas, then first of all I wouldn't have bought it, and second, I would have expected a price consistent with Chinese dropshipping. I was inclined to pay the premium retail prices of this site only because I thought that I was paying a middleman to have stock and service based in Canada.

Moments after placing the order I got a text message from my credit card company warning me about the questionable-looking foreign transaction and asking me to confirm it.

"Priority Mail" shipping turned out to mean shipping by UBI, a sketchy-looking specialist courier who are described as Australia-based but have their Web site almost entirely in the Chinese language; after doing the import formalities they forwarded to Canada Post for the final delivery. Tracking through Canada Post worked only after the package arrived in Canada.

As for the actual keyboard: the most notable thing about it is its EXTREME ABSURD WEIGHT. It weighs 2.45kg but if you think you know how much that is, you're wrong. It is VERY MUCH HEAVIER than you imagine. Although it looks heavily built, it is heavier than it looks. After a few weeks of using it I am still surprised every day by how shockingly heavy this keyboard is. I cannot comfortably pick it up with one hand. In the default configuration of the supplied rubber feet I could not move it around on the desk - it might as well have been bolted in place - and I didn't realize until getting it how often I actually want to do that. I have modified the feet with masking tape to reduce friction and can now just barely slide it around. The weight is not necessarily good or bad; it's probably better than an unusually light keyboard, but it is also quite surprising.

The keyboard is a significant upgrade from what I was using before, which was a no-name keyboard I bought from a dollar store for $3.25. The Gateron Red switches have a good feel. I was pleased to have a 100% layout.

There are many small annoyances with this keyboard. It lacks LEDs for Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock. The place where they would be expected is filled by four extra keys with strange symbols on them - which I was able to remap in my desktop environment to do useful things, but I would rather have the standard LEDs. Caps Lock state is indicated (at least in default configuration) by turning on the backlight around that key, but it's barely visible in a lit room and not a good substitute, and nothing like that seems to happen for Num Lock and Scroll Lock.

After a couple weeks of use the right shift key became flaky, often missing keystrokes; a disaster in typing text, where I'd be typing along fine and then realize that for a sentence or two all the capital letters were missing. Apparently fixed by swapping the keyswitches around, but not confidence-inspiring.

The "software" for configuring the keyboard first of all is a third-party product (Keychron just gives you a link to it) and second is not really software. It is a Web site, and it only works in Chromium-based browsers. The "source code" for this software on Github is source code for an Electron wrapper that just opens your Chromium-based browser and points it at the Web site. I don't have a Chromium-based browser and I cannot use this at all. Fortunately, the default configuration was good enough for my purposes; but this is not what I expect for a hardware product that after customization and shipping cost over $300.

This keyboard is taller (keys higher off the desktop surface) than I am used to, and it is not possible to adjust its nearly-flat angle. It doesn't have the flip-out legs I usually expect on keyboards, and I guess it can't, because they would break off from the OVERWHELMING WEIGHT of the keyboard.

The preinstalled keycap sets were mostly out of stock, and all featured garish contrasting ESC and Enter keys. Just to get non-eye-catching ESC and Enter keys I had to buy a full set of replacement caps. Interestingly, a whole preconfigured keyboard plus a complete replacement-cap set was still cheaper than a "bare bones" keyboard and the parts needed to make it usable. The 219-key replacement set includes some strange duplication (such as two exactly identical "G" keys, and more identical PgUp and PgDn keys than any layout could use) and I wish th...

Bought the Q3 for work and liked it so much I replaced my home with a Q6

Keychron Q6 QMK Custom Mechanical Keyboard

Great keyboard, switches are super satisfying and the whole thing is really heavy. Very good quality.