So last week of writing this part, November 21st, 2022, I got a new keyboard, and today, that exact same day, I finally got it.
The keyboard I got was a Keychron V6 (More specifically, a fully assembled version with the knob and the additional palm rest.) And what I’m going to do is give out my first impressions with it today, and maybe update it over the week or just come back to it in about a week and give my fulkl thoughts, I still don’t know really which I’ll do.
So for about a few months now, I’ve started to get annoyed at my old keyboard’s typing noise. That keyboard has blue switches, I wanted to try and use some other switches, but, this was also the time where I started learning about hotswappable keyboards, which are basically keyboards which can have their switches (the thing that makes the mechanical keyboard’s buttons actually buttons) swapped out easily, my previous keyboard wasn’t that, in fact, most hotswappable keyboards aren’t the type of keyboard I wanted, which was a full-sized keyboard that had a knob or physical thing for volume control.
Like I said, the new keyboard arrived today and I’m currently using it to type out this blog post right now. The reason I wanted to make this a blog post in the first place is that when it comes to keyboards, red switches are kind of a new territory for me. Mainly because I haven’t really ever used them before because I always used blue switches, either that or it was a low-profile switch. Either way, this is more from the perspective from someone who only really used two types of keyboards finally using a different type of keyboard, which is why I thought it was interesting.
My first impressions are actually really nice. For the keyboard itself, it’s nice to have a keyboard that’s just a keyboard, no branding on the keyboard itself (only really exists on the palm rest and cable), everything feels sturdy, the palm rest is made of wood and feels nice to have my palms on, overall, I like the keyboard, and since it’s hotswappable, if I don’t like the switches, well I can jsut (eventually) get new switches and swap them out, I think even if I have to get a new keyboard in the future, it’s definitely going to be hotswappable from now on just because of this feature.
As for the switches, it’s… interesting to say the least. Right now, I think it’s from me not really being used to typing with these switches. It definitely feels a lot lighter to type with these, maybe even a bit too much sometimes, it feels a bit easy to fat-finger a key and for it to register, so I’ve kinda been forcing myself into this pseudo-homerow style of typing, instead of the pecking I usually do. Now, should I learn to properly type? Yes, yes I should.
Another thing is how the space bar specifically sounds different, like not different but still sounding enough like the other keys like the backspace key, I’m talking like, a different sound in general. I don’t really know how I feel about this, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
As for the sound of the other keys, I like them a lot, it’s still noticeable as key typing, but it’s not obnoxiously loud like blue switches, like seriously, sometimes the sound would leak through my microphone, and I feel like one of those assholes who would modify their motorcycle to be extremely loud, but like, unintentionally, it’s the biggest reason why I started using noise reduction on Discord, but I’m still gonna use it because idk it just kinda feels like the nice thing to do idk, I’m weird.
Overall, my first impressions are positive, still a couple of grips, but I’m sure that if I curve my bad habits, I’ll be able to type better and get over the space bar sounding different.
Originally, this post was me actually documenting my 7 day experience with this, but around Day 5, I was just starting to sound like a broken record, so I just kinda removed that stuff and condensed it down to this section.
Overall, my experince of the keyboard has been great. The only real problem I had was that the wooden palm rest was unbalanced on one corner, but I fixed that with a penny being used on that corner to balance it out.
Playing games on it feels a lot smoother compared to blue switches, probably because of how red switches are linear and designed for that kind of stuff. I’ve been using it to program this entire week because of another website redesign which will come either later or at the same time idk. Using Blender feels the same, which is still good.
I actually tried to use vim for a while, but I eventually stopped learning the motions again because I was using vscode and godot a lot, but the fact that my interesti in learning vim motions happened again because of this keyboard at least says something, and honestly since I’m done with the redesign, I might just start learning again.
But yeah, I’ve had a really fun time using this keyboard, I can’t wait to start customizing it since it’s a hotswappable keyboard, that honestly sounds like a fun time, if expensive.