Exhaustive review! 🥇 I went for the classic V1 shell white, making a silent build (keychron K pro silent switches with lighter springs); while the OSA profile seems good enough, you could prefer the taller KSA profile if you go for the barebone version - they are thicker and with double-shot on the four sides as well.
I got the V5 Max for work about a month ago, decided to use Kailh Midnight Pro Silent Linear switches since I share an office. The feel and muted sound is absolutely incredible, I love it
@@ryanmanso4982 thanks for the reply! I am planning on pulling the trigger soon. I assume you ordered directly from Keychron? I still don't see it on Amazon.
It´s nice to see the Keychron finally got the hint and put a 2.4GHz connection on one of their boards. That kept me from getting a Keychron in the past. Let´s see how many boards they put it on now.
I got mine today . The battery indicator light didn't turn green when charged until full, it drop the percentage to 90% when unplugged. It seems like a software issue. Sometime they display just wrong the percentage, which is confusing. Other than that, the key feel good to type on
Awesome video! I'm upgrading from a hot swappable mechanical keyboard that I've modded with otemu yellows that I lubed and padded with foam. I decided to buy the keychron for the wireless capabilities and the VIA compatibility. Can't wait to try it out. Thank you for the insights and keep it up!
Why cut costs? Why not include high-quality keycaps and stabilizers? After all, they're just pieces of plastic... How expensive could it be for the company to invest a little more to ensure good quality keycaps and stabilizers for their keyboards? As consumers, we often inflate the cost of items like keycaps and stabilizers beyond their actual value...
"Budget" is not budget everywhere. In my country this keyboard costs around 170usd :) The more I watch reviews of Keychron keyboards and their alternatives, such as Akko and Epomaker, the more it becomes apparent to me that Keychron is significantly overrated.
@@sunjames3276 I have the 75% keychron keyboard that does have the 4th key there, forget what this is called but its the print screen key, so usefull too
11:19 this keyboard is... here is something solid you can start with AND LEARN HOW TO MOD to improve it to your liking. Keychron did an excellent job with this product. Last night, in to today I had DECIDED on Akko 5076B Plus, until few minutes ago RU-vid suggested a video about the Keychron V1. Saw that it was wired only, then came across the Max.... and WOW!!
I wish I had waited instead of buying my regular Keychron V2 last year. The V Max series seems to have everything one could want. The ABS plastic body is quite acceptable to me. No need to put a "window" in the base for radio transmission, a là the Q Pro models.
To anyone thinking about buying this board. I got mine in the mail yesterday and I haven't been able to stop using it. It's absolutely incredible for a budget board. Also the reds are crazy smooth. They are reds! REDS! And they feel really, really good and even sound very good. I was a bit worried about the profile but I'm absolutely loving it. It's a lower profile like cherry only more rounded. I hope the texture on them lasts as the surface of the keys feel incredible. Like satin. That said, the USB A 2.4 receiver that came with mine is so tight that it hardly fit in any of the USB sockets I've tried it with. I didn't dare put it directly into my laptop and when pulling it out of my usb splitter the metal part of the receiver dislocated and got stuck halfway in the socket. It was a very easy fix but it did make me worry. I'm going to send them a mail and hope they can send me a replacement since I'm a bit worried this one might damage my ports or break over time because it's so tight it literally pulls it self apart when you're trying to take it out of the socket. I imagine that's just bad luck with QA for me. And of course the stabs aren't the greatest out of the box. But generally that's always the case. Stabs wheter you buy expensive durocks or use the stock ones always need some stabilzing. I'm too lazy to do it now but I imagine a holimod would fix this. I legit expected to have to immediately mod the board, change the switches to some black ink v2's, a nice cherry profile keycap set on top. But I'm absolutely loving the board stock right now. I'm not a big fan of the keycap colors. I wish the blues were more saturated / contrasty. But they feel so good I don't want to change them out yet. This really makes me want ot buy a Q1 pro. But I think I'll wait for the rainy75 to be widely available and the reviews from RTINGS.
i just got mine this morning and ive been itching to use pc again more just cuz this keyboard, it feels and sounds amazing, and as u pointed out, smooth.
@@niemela91 pro tip mate, press fn+n to turn on nkey rollover (by default its at 6). If you use printscreen a lot use via to set home or any key you wish to printscreen (don't think I know anyone that uses the home key lol) If you plan to use it on ps5 too. It only works woth N key rollover turned off, so if it won't work on ps5, FN+N and it should work. Just don't forget to turn it back on. The keyboard has fantastic latency for gaming. It's no halleffect but it's very fast. (If you don't know what NKRO is, basically 6 key roll over allows you to press 6 keys at the same time and the pc will be able to recognize all 6. But no more. With NKRO you can press unlimited buttons at the same time and the PC will recognize every single press, the v1 max is at 6kro at default. Likely because some devices don't support NKRO)
@@niemela91 also to test NKRO you can use VIA's key tester. Press (hold) more than 6 keys at the same time look if it recognizes them all as pressed / held. If it doesn't, it's turned off,fn+n and try again. Wishing you a lot of pleasure with your new board mate. I still love and enjoy using it daily
@@jorgeadrianosaicoskisarkis7378 you can customize the layout as you wish through VIA. I replaced home with printscreen since I never use home but regularly take screen shots. Pro tip, press FN + N to turn on N key rollover. By default it's at 6 key rollover. If you want to use the keyboard on ps5. You need to fn + n again to turn nkro off because ps5 doesn't support it..
How is the wake up and reconnect time when using the 2.4ghz? My wife has a K8 using bluetooth that takes 10-15 seconds to wake up and it frustrates her greatly.
Yes! You can swap the switches for any regular profile 3 or 5 pin switch including baby raccoons. I would expect a slightly deeper sound from those switches vs the stock jupiter switches.
Is the keychron V1 max a decent keyboard for gaming? Im looking for a keyboard that looks good aesthetically, sounds good, isnt too expensive and can also be used for gaming but i cant seem to find any. Can anyone tell me some keyboards that i could possibly buy?
Lemokey P1 is straight up better rn. Basically the same price, full aluminium, super fast response time, better bluetooth. It's basically a Keychron Q1 with worse gaskets.
would you mind taking a moment for someone looking to get into their first propper mechanical? Some needed mods are fine but I am a bit overwhelmed with the idea of building one from the case up. Thanks!
@@JustFadeDan 1. Low profile, or normal profile 2. Hot-swappable or not, 3. Wired/Wireless+2.4GHz, 4. 100%, 96%, 80%, 75%, 60% layout, 5. All aluminium body (CNC) or mixed, 6. South-facing LEDs or north-facing (for shine-through keycaps), 7. How fat is your wallet? :-) It boils down to those considerations! Welcome to the rabbit hole, son.
I have been looking at a lot of Keychron keyboards and this might be the one i buy it looks great. But does it game well?? 75% seems to be a good middle ground. Big plus that it got wired mode to. Not much for wireless. And their keycaps allways seem like top tier. in my opinion anyway
I love the idea of 2x2.4GHz dongles. However, my last step in the rabbit hole is the 80% layout, found in the K1 Max. Kindly find a space in your wallet to review the K1 Max. Of course I will blame you for going for it :-)
I am still on my K2 v2 modded and looking towards V1 Max as an upgrade in months to come - programmable, 2.4Ghz and better build are just about good reasons for USD100, unless I find an alternative maker at the same price with better build/features/acoustics. Budget would be around USD100-150, but that needs to include my preferred XDA key-caps with cyrillic, and some modding stuff. My current K2 v2 mod is: - Gateron G Pro 3 Yellow switches - Tape mode (2 layers) - Durock stabilisers with popular mods - 4mm Practik Base for vibration/sound dampening (orange) - 5mm STP Biplast sound insulator (black) - Poron foam between plate and PCB - 0.5mm switch pads - PBT XDA keycaps 1.5-1.6mm (cheap but good ones, not doubleshot) - 1.5mm O-rings on XDA key-caps Quiet sure this beets even the current stock V1 Max and NyPhy Halo75 v2, when it comes to thockiness and silence, but want a new one. BTW, I noticed that not many, or close to none, options when it comes to cases w/o top cover, like the K2 (not considering the low profile ones)! More plastic/steel/aluminum = more ways to resonate.
BTW, I didn't like the tactile Gateron Jupiter Banana switches that came with V1 Max and switched them to my currently preferred Gateron G Pro 3.0 Yellow linear switches, which I was also using on my K2 v2. Can you recommend me not costly linear silent switches that are more "creamier and silent" compared to G Pro 3.0 yellow?
Agree, it's a big win for the V1 Max and a big letdown for the Q-max line. I felt the same about the K3 Max as well....which is a low profile/portable keyboard likely to be used with a laptop, but it only comes with the USB-A receiver. Pretty strange...
I don't see anything about customization on Epomaker's site for the Hi75, so if it's not VIA compatible or at least uses the Epomaker Driver software for customization, that would be another feature it doesn't have. Everything is about personal preference and whether the features offered or missing are a high priority for you - there are so many choices out there! Edit: looks like Leobog has some software for customization, I found at least one video showing that. I might need to check it out!
As a current Hi75 owner I would say if someone is only buying a good prebuilt, I'd be sticking to Keychron. The Hi75's corner cutting to get to the price point is quite obvious. The alu frame is quite thin and light, the spray coating is mediocre, even the screws are very low quality. I built mine for pretty cheap and they sound and feel super nice, but the downsides are quite evident. And yeah, it's not QMK/VIA compatible, the software is very, very basic and not very well made.
@digmousethetired2056 for someone who's just starting, I would say it will be a very good base to start off with, they can always go for a better one in the future, but for the price, it's hard to beat it
I dont understand keyboard pricing. I'll see mechanical keyboards for 30 dollars called budget. This $100 mechanical is called budget and I've seen $200 keyboards called budget. It's the only tech space where every product on the market is called cheap, lol.
I don't disagree, it can be confusing. This is because keyboards can be referred to as "budget friendly" in a general sense - to me this would be like saying all keyboards $100 or less are "budget friendly", regardless of the type of keyboard or intended target customer base. Someone else may feel that "budget friendly" should mean only keyboards that are $50 or less...at which point we'd mostly be talking about keyboards that offer very few features, or that are very cheaply made (my opinion). But we also use the term "budget friendly" to describe keyboards within specific niches and this is where things can vary broadly. Custom mechanical keyboards that offer small production runs, high quality materials, and are fully customizable often cost $250+ just for the base kit. So a custom kit with a starting price under $200 is more "budget friendly" than average - less than $150 starting price is very budget friendly in the world of custom mechanicals. Gaming keyboards likely have a whole different price to features/quality range. And general everyday use keyboards that offer a "better" typing experience and more features than your typical membrane keyboard fall somewhere in between. I would put the V1 Max in this "general" bucket where you have to expect to pay $80-100 to get all the features and some of the customization options of custom mechanical keyboards, but for a lot less than a custom kit (and also fully assembled). Keyboards are a crazy world!
Small batch kits are a completely seperate category from mass produced keyboards - this isnt a "kit". This is a fully assembled product. This is like calling a Restoration Hardware dining table a budget table when your comparison is to Blacktail Studio hand pouring an epoxy piece to your specifications with 5x the pricetag. Thats a seperate category of product all together.
@@TheTastefulThickness I was not making a direct comparison to the V1 Max, just giving examples of how within the world of all types of keyboards there are different ways to categorize "budget". The comparison for the V1 Max would obviously include other mass-produced, fully assembled keyboards intended for general use cases. That category does include keyboards less than $100, as well as keyboards $200+ and spans from all-plastic keyboards to those made with more "premium" materials. The Keychron Q1 Max, for example, is not in the same category as custom keyboard kits because it can be purchased fully assembled and has no real "niche" features - it's basically a premium V1 Max that costs $200. At half the price, the V1 Max is the "budget" option between the two.
It comes down to the features you get for the price. Take a $30 keyboard with all plastic construction and no hotswap, no tripple mode, just a basic fully assembled $30 keyboard and compare it to another $30 keyboard that has all those missing features. Now the board with the extra features would be considered a budget steal while the other board would be irrelevant and even overpriced. Looking at the V1 Max it does a lot for it's price tag, whether fully assembled or barebones, that a lot of other keyboards don't do around the same price. This in turn makes it a budget option in the comparison to the competition around the keyboard. Now of course you could find cheaper options that work just as well but no doubt they'd be lacking in some areas such as software, pcb led orientation, gasket mounting, so on and so forth. Hell on the high end you could 100% have budget luxury options, even though those options are $200+, but again it's relative to the competition around the keyboard at the price it's sitting at. It's all relative, but I completely understand that it complicates things when you're on the outside looking in.
@asterisk4424 Just tell me which keyboard ISNT budget. What is this mythical product that will actually be called quality by enthusiasts and reviewers. What price bracket and what product is the measuring stick exactly?
It's not the greatest in the dark if you rely on looking at the keyboard occasionally. Shine-through keycaps would help but the RGBs are south-facing so I would avoid shine-through legends that are in the very top or top corner of the keycaps - legends in the center should be decently illuminated.
is the volume knob analog smooth, or it has distinct clicks? Could it be remapped to use in davinci as timeline scrubber? is it smooth to be used as such
Hi! The volume knob does have tactile bumps/steps, it's not a smooth turn. You can, however, use VIA to change the function of the knob from volume control to mouse scroll left & right, which works for scrubbing the timeline in video editors....it's just not a smooth scroll unfortunately. The keycodes to enter in VIA for the knob would be: Clockwise: KC_MS_WH_RIGHT Counterclockwise: KC_MS_WH_LEFT
I just ordered a v3 max after some years of use out of my daskeyboard x50q I wanted to try out something more in the enthusiast space with potential to customize and after doing research in this price point it seems like one of the most feature rich options. Id prefer metal of course but hearing the plastic is of good build quality is reassuring and those new jupiter banana switches still sound amazing coming from the rather dissapointing soind of the gamma zulu switches in the x50q. I'm so excited to get it in!
Yoo, i got a question, what should I choose. The reds or bananas? I'm looking into buying it. I prefer the quieter one. I'm typing a lot. Currently on kalih reds but the keyboard ain't too good
@@luciodifranciscoig red is quieter and has no tactile feeling, the banana is louder than the red and is tactile. Ordered mine with the jupiter bananas, I can update you when it arrives.
@@luciodifrancisco Just got them yesterday and they are amazing out of the box. I've been using logitech 512 Carbon (brown switch) while waiting and wow. The diference between these two are big. So far I like the banana switch more than the brown. I spend the entire day typing, a linear switch makes me get typos everytime, as for the tactiles, not so much. V1 max sounds amazing, just one problem, my space bar ticks or rattles, it's not something that puts down this keyboard tho. The banana switch is kinda noisy, but not so loud, typing in it is like that lego building sound but very quiet. I guess the red linear switch might be quieter. Now it's up to you if you like that tactile response or linear. I think for typing the bananas are superior.
@@HellFireZ hey thanks for letting me know! I like the feeling of the tactile switches, but I'm really not a fun off loud keyboards, so I will probably go with the red linear switches
Hey, SemiPro Tech+Gear, do you know when it will be available again on the official Keychron store? Or does Divinikey have warehouses in Europe, in Poland?@@semiprotech
Excellent and very thorough review! Had my eye on the Lemokey L1 (basically a Q1 Pro with cheery keycaps, 2.4Ghz and macro keys) as soon as it comes out but this looks fun and would be much easier on my budget!
I dub you mr dense. While mass changes resonant frequencies it does not necessarily follow that denser materials lower the frequency of what you are hearing. The malleability, the differential sound absorbtion properties, reflections of hard surfaces (try a foam deskpad that fits between the feet) conduction into the desk, changing the shape /size of resonant cavities (smaller usually means higher frequency). The single factor that changes how a keyboard sounds IMO is what you place it on - but we don't listen out for that. A cheap cloth/rubber gamer mousepad makes a huge difference - just tried it again and it provides a good bit of damping - to the point that a keyboard pad might make a lot of sense to a lot of people. I think modding certainly has it's place - just that the language used is inaccurate. Increased mass would tend to lower a resonant frequency, but at the same time changing a resonant cavity's shape raises the same frequency. Foam works by absorbing sounds and shock and once again, reduces the cavity size. changing the boundary layers in number and of changing densities can very easily produce destructive interference (Noise cancellation) - the whole subject is extremely complex. I've studied speaker construction for many years and a keyboard is very much like a speaker in some aspects - and quite the opposite in others - for instance you want a speaker to produce accurate sound... Simple mods that I'd suggest - mousepad/killmat on the OUTSIDE. paper tape covered microfiber cloth ceran wrapped in the bottom (many boundary layers and a great sound absorbing material. so from the top down you would have 7-8 layers of film, paper tape, microfiber, paper tape, 7-8 layers of film (You could add another layer of tape top and bottom) - you make it stiff enough and you could use a punch to make sure you've made allowances for all the screws. You'll probably find that the least dense material (the microfiber) selectively reduces higher frequencies most... Hence my response to you.
@@Draegon86he's not wrong but also misleading all those keyboards are either groupbuys/kickstarters which takes forever to get or they don't even ship to some countries at all or they have some other issues like no QMK/VIA, north facing led, no gasket mounts etc. (I know because I have been looking at keyboards around this price range for weeks) so yeah v1 max is just the best option.
It is when the wireless has a 1000Hz polling rate good for gaming with 2 wireless receivers. The plastic actually makes it a lot lighter so if you wanted a mechanical to travel with that can also be used for gaming which also has VIA support I don't think you can find anything at this price.
