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Producer: Keychron
URL: https://www.keychron.com
Value: $219
The crossover between makers and mechanical keyboard lovers is critical. Makers’ innate drive to bend know-how to their will and customise {hardware} to their particular wants makes them prime candidates for the deep ranges of customization afforded by the mechanical keyboard pastime. And plenty of a mech-head has gone “full maker” within the pursuit of their want to customise issues past the realm of creativeness provided by industrial choices. So sometimes we wish to gas that fusion of pursuits, and the Keychron Q1 HE is a model new, distinctive keeb with some attention-grabbing tech of explicit attraction to of us who worth excessive customization.
The Q1 HE will seem acquainted to those that have encountered the Q1 Professional, Keychron’s full-metal 75% (82-key) luxurious mechanical keyboard. However the Q1 HE represents a brand new flagship, with some groundbreaking new options not discovered on the Professional, if wherever. For starters, the HE provides a brand new 2.4GHz reference to 1000Hz polling, along with three Bluetooth 5.1 slots and USB-C wired. The identical 6063 aluminium chassis and double-gasket development supplies a luxurious really feel and sound, and the frequent 4000mAh battery supplies lots of of hours of wi-fi utilization between fees (I charged my very own Q1 Professional solely a handful of instances over the previous 12 months). That runtime will in fact rely in your utilization of the south-facing RGB LEDs and their 22 results!
However the place the HE departs from the Professional, and actually every other keyboard I’ve tried, is with its hot-swappable Corridor impact Gateron Nebula double-rail magnetic switches. Not like conventional mechanical switches, which have a single, fastened actuation level, the HE’s Gateron 2.0 magnetic switches provide 0.1mm sensitivity alongside your complete 4.0mm actuation vary, that means you may customise your actuation level as you want (per key!). And right here’s the place issues get actually loopy: you may outline as much as 4 actuation factors per key, permitting for instance a slight press to be certain to a strolling motion in a recreation, then transition to operating on the subsequent threshold.
Whereas the Q1 HE makes use of open-source QMK firmware and will be configured utilizing VIA, the brand new magnetic switches necessitate a brand new software, Keychron Launcher, which permits all the keymapping, macros, and LED customization you’d anticipate, plus intensive HE-specific performance, reminiscent of setting actuation distance, the aforementioned a number of instructions per key primarily based on that distance, and even the flexibility to emulate analog joystick motion primarily based on key journey.
The Keychron Q1 HE started as a crowdfunding marketing campaign on Kickstarter, and is delivery to backers this month. However in case you missed out, now you can pre-order it from Keychron’s website for $199 barebone with out keycaps and switches, or $219 totally assembled, in an effort to be a part of the Might 2024 batch.
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