The Keychron Q3 Pro TKL

 

Yes, those are coffee beans

When Keychron offered this keyboard with banana switches for $125 -- normally $150 -- I thought I was getting a deal. I failed to read the fine print. Because it was shipped from China, DHL invoiced me $25 to cover the tariff.

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon story, as any coffee drinker will tell you. Amazon might have this keyboard in stock at a local warehouse in which case you would be spared the tariff. When I shopped, only the linear switches were available.  I prefer tactile feedback, and the banana switches are in the same family as the Gatreon Brown and Nuphy's Wisteria switches.

The Keychron Q3 Pro is a good keyboard with some quirks.  Mechanical, full height with a heavy aluminum base (~3.5 pounds!), it supports three bluetooth connections and one wired connection.

The OEM keycaps are sculpted, feel deep, and have a sharp edge. All that works fine until you press a key on the bottom row. The well defined keycap edge cuts into your thumbs, especially when pressing the spacebar. For a work around, look closely at the photo above. I inverted the spacebar and the two command keys so my thumbs would press them from the "softer" side. This was easy to do as Keychron includes two types of keycap pullers, along with a hex wrench, some screws, and Windows and Mac specific keycaps.

The sound from the keyboard isn't exactly "thocky."  Nor is it "creamy."  It's a mix of "thocky" and metallic. It doesn't bother me, but it could disappoint some enthusiasts.

The full height keyboard took a little getting used to. 

Keychron, NuphyAir, Apple

This photo gives you a good idea of the height and slope, and while I started my programming career on the legendary IBM PC Mechanical Keyboard, I am now fastest and most accurate when typing on the nearly flat Apple Magic Keyboard. 

The Keychron TKL, however, is the ideal size to accommodate a track pad or mouse on either side of the keyboard. In contrast, the long Magic Keyboard with numeric keypad can only accommodate a pointing device on its left side. The number pad on the right simply pushes the trackpad or mouse out of ergonomic reach.

And the short Magic Keyboard with no keypad? It lacks dedicated navigation keys. Worse, the left and right cursor keys are full sized, making them hard to identify by feel. Apple got it right on their laptops where all four cursor keys are half sized. Arranged as an inverted T, they are easy to find by feel, and it's unclear to me why Apple abandoned that design.

Good

Bad

The Nuphy Air75 also has room for either left or right handed cursor control, but that keyboard has quirks of its own, including the occasional dropped key.

Remapping keys is easy through Keychron's own launcher. The popular VIA website for reconfiguring the keyboard recognizes numerous Keychron keyboards, but as I discovered for myself, not the Q3 Pro. Keychron's launcher is just as easy to use and my first change was to remap the knob press from mute/unmute to pause/play. 

It's too soon for me to decide on a favorite keyboard, but I do lean Apple. Requiring less motion, I find Apple's keyboards less fatiguing. Also, the fn shortcut keys are very handy. The Keychron eats all the fn inputs while the Nuphy Air does a bit better and passes most of them along. For gaming, the wired mechanical keyboards excel. They support n-key rollover, are noticeably more responsive than Apple's keyboards, and can take a lot more abuse. 

In the end, I'll probably use the keyboard best suited to the task at hand. 

Happy New Year!