TL;DR - Nice low-profile Bluetooth board for the price, with a few minor issues; Keychron’s Banana tactile switches deliver on feel (but sound can be improved).

Intro

In July, I backed the Keychron K7 Kickstarter and chose the version with white backlights and Keychron’s low-profile optical Banana tactile switches. The keyboard arrived this week and these are my first impressions.

Packaging

The board and accessories came in a basic paperboard box, protected by a plastic sleeve and foam inserts (good thing too, since DHL kindly bashed in part of the box). While I wish the packaging was fully renewable & recyclable, I did appreciate that it was generally minimal.

Accessories

The board came with a few alternative keycaps, a surprisingly nice USB cable, a decent wire keycap puller, a crappy switch puller, a flimsy dust cover, a manual, and a quick-reference card.

Case

The board looks pretty much like the what was shown in the Kickstarter campaign, no unpleasant surprises. The alu frame looks and feels good; the coating is even with no blemishes. The frame is also the plate. There are screw heads visible between the keycaps; they are black but don’t quite match the plate so they are slightly noticeable.

The frame and bottom case meet evenly around the perimeter of the board. The underside of the board is clean, with nice bumpons. There are two-level flip-down feet, which seem stable and also have bumpons.

The slide switches on the back for connectivity and mode look slightly cheesy because of the orange plastic used, but you can’t see them in normal use.

Keycaps

The keycaps are a proprietary low profile that is uniform across rows. When the feet are not deployed, the caps are angled towards the back edge of the board. This creates a somewhat awkward typing experience for me, at least--my fingers catch on the edges of the row above. The caps seem to be level when the shorter foot position is used and then tilt slightly towards the front edge of the board when the higher foot position is used. Obviously, some compromise had to be made due to the geometries of the board; I personally found I like the shorter foot position the best.

The surface of the caps is slightly velvety, which feels good to my fingers. The homing bumps are noticeable without being overbearing. There’s even a homing bump on the up arrow, which I really appreciate as it helps find the arrow keys on a compact layout without looking down (wish more keycap sets had this option!).

The legends are low contrast when the backlight is off, which helps the board maintain a clean look even though some of the caps are pretty busy with sublegends. There are some issues with the consistency of the legends: the alphas can’t seem to decide whether or not they should be centered, and there is some odd mixing of font sizes between alphas and mods.

The caps have MX stems, and they do in fact fit on normal switches. You could put an artisan on the K7 if you liked; it would just tower over the other caps. However, don’t get excited and think you’re going to put your favorite keycap set on the K7. For whatever reason, Keychron designed the stabilized keys so that the stabilizer stems are not in line with the switch stem, making them incompatible with normal sets (I have to admit, this “so close, yet so far” situation drives me a bit crazy!).

Stabilizers

Speaking of the stabilizers, they are similar to Cherry style stabs. They come with lube on the wires, and I didn’t hear any ticking. I put a bit of Krytox on the sides of the sliders by lifting them up with tweezers. They feel a bit smoother, but I wouldn’t say lubing them is essential.

Switches

Keychron touts their new Banana and Mint low profile switches as being inspired by Holy Pandas. I have to say that the Banana switches feel pretty nice, with zero pre-travel and a moderate, rounded tactile event. I’ve been using them to type this, and it has been a pleasant experience for my fingers. Reminds me a bit of the older MacBook keyboards before Apple ruined them, but with the extra travel and responsiveness of mech switches.

The sound of the switches leaves something to be desired; they make a high-pitched chattering sound that makes me think of a shivering cartoon character’s teeth.

I did some experimentation and found that the switches can, in fact, be lubed. The switches are fairly easy to get out of the board with the provided tool. They are quite easy to open; I was able to pop the clasps with just my fingernail.

In addition to the top and bottom housings, the switch consists of:

• slider that’s a big flat square; it rides on its corners rather than on rails two sides like an MX switch

• short but otherwise normal main spring

• microscopic spring that pushes against an arm protruding from the slider to create the tactility

• plunger that that pushes down to block the light beam when the switch is depressed; it has its own itty bitty spring wrapped around it

I lubed the main spring and the corners of the slider with Krytox 205g0. I also put a dab of Krytox on the microscopic spring for the tactile arm, but I am not sure that this did anything. I didn’t do anything with the plunger; it’s made of a rubbery material and didn’t seem to contribute to sound or feel.

The switches are tricky reassemble. I found it challenging to get the tactile arm and spring in the right positions while also dealing with the main spring and getting everything lined up. I also discovered that the optical plunger can fall out and be hard to find on a messy desktop.

However, the effort was justified: the switches sound much better once lubed. In fact, I don’t remember getting this much improvement in sound with any other switch. If I decide to use this board on the regular, I am definitely lubing all of the switches, even it's kind of frustrating.

Lighting

There is the usual array of lighting modes, ranging from steady to breathing to responsive to seizure-inducing animations. The lighting on the white backlit version isn’t super bright. At highest brightness I’d say it’s pretty good for a dimly lit room. Inconsistencies in the legends are especially noticeable when the backlighting is on, as the shine through on some caps is significantly brighter than others.

Connectivity

The USB-C is in the middle, which I don’t love, but I’ll be using the board wireless most of the time. It was easy to get the Bluetooth to connect to my iPhone and my Mac and I haven't had any trouble switching between them. I did have connectivity drop once or twice, but only when I was messing around with the switches. I can’t comment on battery life as I’ve only used the board for a few hours.

Software

There isn’t any, as the board is not programmable. You’ll have to do any remapping or macros using software on your computer.

Ergonomics

The low height of the board is a mixed bag for me. Despite being quite low slung, it's still too high to use comfortably with my wrists on the desk, even with the legs collapsed. At the same time, it’s too short to use with a normal wrist rest (Keychron sells a thinner wrist rest designed for the K7). Having said that, found the board to be a great height for “floating” my wrists, as I don’t have to lift my arms very high.

Portability

With its slim bezel, the K7 has the smallest footprint of the eight or so 65%'s that I own. It's less than an inch thick at the thickest, so it can easily slip into a bag. Personally, I wish that they had skipped the crappy dust cover and provided a simple cloth sleeve with the board. Either that, or made the dust cover a sturdy snap-on affair. (Keychron sells a leather pouch for the K7; not my style, but perhaps some will like it.)

Comparable boards

This is my first low-profile board, so I don’t have much to compare to. I also backed the NT68 so hopefully in the not-too-distant future I’ll be able to compare them.

Final thoughts

The K7 in this configuration seems like a good value, despite a few limitations and quirks. You get a credible mech experience with Bluetooth for around $70 and the ability to try or mix & match a few different kinds of switches (I think there are five Keychron optical varieties). The board looks grown up enough to use in a workplace, and it's light enough to throw in a bag.