Keyboard upgrade and related experiences

OC by @catlover@sh.itjust.works

Hi everyone! I'd like to share the successor of my old keyboards.

My mechanical keyboard journey began by getting a CMStrom Quickfire TK for one of my birthdays. It has brown switches, which I liked very much. However I didn't really try any other switches, I simply decided by online sources, that how a brown switch should feel, and I thought I need that force feedback when pressing a key. It turned out great, I loved it. I'm not even sure how many years I used it for, but its very possible that its close to 10 years. I had absolutely no issues with it, but since the hungarian key layout it an ISO layout I had some issues with the ANSI layout.

After a while I decided its time for an upgrade, and one of my friends suggested Keychron. I decided on the Keychron K2, which was a really good upgrade in my experience. I immediately knew that the 75% layout was for me. Again brown keys, now ISO layout with a pleasant surprise that Keychron manufactured HU keycaps. This keyboard wasn't used for that many years, only like 2-3. At one point the 'q' key broke, and started chattering, I guess that because it was a key I used a lot, and the K2 not being a very high end keyboard. Still was strange, because my CMStorm lasted 10 years, and still works perfectly. The K2 has hot swappable switches, I solved this by changing it to something that I rarely use.

While looking for replacement switches, I encountered a keyboard on the Keychron site, that caught my attention multiple times in the past, but I didn't want to buy a new keyboard till the old one was working. However the old one had this issue I mentioned, so I could technically consider it "broken", and also my birthday was coming, so I decided to order a Q1 Max.

Of course I ordered it with brown keys again, since I wasn't sure how I could try new ones for free. I'm not a keyboard tinkerer, I ordered the Q1 Max pre-built. When it arrived I immediately felt that it was a huge upgrade compared to the K2. The keys feel nice, the keycaps are awesome. Not that the keycaps mattered, because I replaced them with a custom printed one from yuzukeycaps. The checkerboard patter is something I found on team liquid forums related to Star Craft topics many years ago, and I liked how unique and cool they looked. If you search for "tl forum checkerboard keyboard" you can find images of them:

However after a few days of using it I realized something was wrong, and noticed that many keys type double. This made me very concerned, and after checking online about this issue I found a ton of reddit threads about this exact same issue, and that Keychron keyboards became unreliable over time. At this point I deeply regret ordering a Keychron, and trusting on the brand after my K2 experience. Every time I tried searching for solution I found even more user experiences with faulty keyboards that broke in the first weeks of using them.

I contacted support. Of course the days that I can get a refund has passed. They said to upgrade the firmware of my keyboard, which I did from 1.0 to 1.1, which introduced debounce timers. Fortunately 30ms debounce seems to have fixed this issue, but I'm still deeply concerned that something will break in the near future, especially after reading feedback of Keychron keyboards on reddit. When I decided on this high-end keyboard I was planning that I will use this till it truly breaks, and will last way more times than my old CMStorm. The Q1 Max still has to earn my trust, and I still need to give it a soul by using it for years. Has a lot to prove till I respect it like my CMStorm.

If you got this far, I'm curious about your experience about Keychron keyboards, especially if you have a Q1 Max. Or anything related to the post. I feel like this debounce is there to hide some manufacturing issues, despite reading something about this that its not a quality issue, but a switch characteristics.

Have a nice day!