Living with Keychron K3

I needed a keyboard, backed by various bullshit excuses. Requirements:

• Portable, small
• Bluetooth, multi-device support
• At least 84 keys; I’ve had enough of life without an F-row and arrow keys
• Good build quality

In the end I settled on the Keychron K3 — which is also the 京造 K3 version. This keyboard stirs up a lot of controversy online: opinions are extremely polarized. Most KOLs give it the usual praise, and looking at it I couldn’t find any obvious problems; the specs are fine too. Sure, it’s low-profile, but I don’t see what’s wrong with low-profile switches. The funny thing is most negative reviews online just call it “garbage” without explaining where the garbage is. The positive reviews, on the other hand, are very detailed. That struck me as bizarre. Is the marketing just too strong, drowning out genuine impressions? Or is this thing really that good?

Before buying I asked around on Reddit, and the answers were pretty consistent:

• The keyboard itself is fine
• The biggest problem is that sleep mode is too aggressive — it goes to sleep after a few minutes, and waking it up is a pain. That’s what a lot of people mean by “garbage”

For me that’s not a problem at all, so I pulled the trigger.

After using it for a while, here are my thoughts:

• I got the blue switches. The low-profile feel is pretty good, and I adapted quickly
• The build looks genuinely nice. A lot of people dislike the “floating keycap” design; I actually love it — at least it’s easy to clean
• Bluetooth pairing is solid, and it works smoothly with my laptop
• It fits right on top of the laptop’s keyboard area
• Portability is no issue. I bought a leather case, and it slips into my bag easily
• Connection stability is great — I haven’t even had the “stuck key” issue I used to get with Bluetooth keyboards
• The aggressive sleep thing: I never leave it idle for more than a few minutes, so it’s fine for me. Even when you do need to wake it, just hold FN

All in all I’m pretty happy with this keyboard. With the Double 11 discount plus installments, I paid under 400 yuan, which is a great deal.