I used a $28 mechanical keyboard for a month—maybe you should, too

When I inform folks I favor utilizing mechanical keyboards, I typically hear that they are too costly. Even folks in tech circles have advised me they cannot discover a high quality mechanical keyboard for a first rate value. Is $28 first rate sufficient for you?

That’s how a lot the Keychron C3 Pro goes for on Amazon proper now. It’s a sale value that might change, however the keyboard was nonetheless solely $35 when it launched in September. Since September 21, I’ve been utilizing the finances clacker as my main keyboard, and it has saved up with my busy workload—writing about 17 articles for Ars Technica and extra emails than I care to recount. Expensive mechanical keyboards typically include all types of perks value obsessing over, however the C3 Pro proves that typically, low-cost is sweet sufficient. Mechanical keyboards do not have to be a luxurious peripheral.

Meet the C3 Pro

Keychron’s C3 Pro is a tenkeyless (TKL) mechanical keyboard, so there is no numpad. If you can get previous that, you’re left with an reasonably priced keyboard providing a typing expertise that is superior to any membrane or mechanical keyboard on this value vary.

Unsurprisingly, although, there is no wi-fi performance. Another massive caveat: This is an Amazon unique. If you do not wish to store on Amazon for any myriad of causes, you cannot get this keyboard, not even from Keychron’s personal web site.

A candy sound

The C3 Pro is not the one low-cost mechanical keyboard round. You’ll discover loads of them scattered throughout websites like Amazon from unknown manufacturers like “Dierya” and “YUNZII.” But the C3 Pro is from Keychron, which makes positive, high-end mechanical keyboards we have examined earlier than.

Beyond title recognition, the C3 Pro stands out by listening to its sound profile in a manner that I have not seen from a finances mechanical keyboard earlier than. There are even $100-plus mechanical keyboards that put seemingly no effort into eliminating pinging or keycap rattling the way in which that the C3 Pro does.

That’s to not say I by no means skilled any pinging with the C3 Pro throughout my month of use. I’d often hear a metallic sound if I hit some keys on the top-left nook very onerous. But that solely occurred hardly ever—and far much less so than on the Razer BlackWidow V3 Pro, which fits for $180.

I examined the C3 Pro with Keychron’s Red linear switches (4 ± 0.4mm whole journey / 2 ± 0.4 mm pretravel / 45 ± 10 gf to actuate). Pressing a key created a very mild, plastic clack sound, with a comparable, barely higher-pitched sound occurring as the important thing reset. Larger buttons, just like the spacebar, had a deeper, extra thock-like sound when pressed. Sounds sometimes felt remoted to keypresses, and I did not must endure a budget rattling noises that always accompany finances mechanical keyboards and even some pricier prebuilts.

The sound profile will be attributed to foam beneath the keyboard’s high plate, in addition to foam between the keyboard’s PCB and backside case. The keyboard additionally has 16 poron gaskets, which Paul Tan, Keychron’s COO, advised me “may enhance the typing sound.”

Keychron selected poron gaskets, Tan stated, as a result of poron is softer than silicone. The softness of the gaskets provides the keyboard some flex, however I needed to kind very forcefully to note. Again, although, that is a sub-$40 mechanical keyboard we’re speaking about right here.

Linear switches are my least favourite kind of swap, however the C3 Pro made up for that considerably with very easy switches that rapidly reset. It was simple to hop from one key to the subsequent for speedy typing. The switches arrive pre-lubricated, so that they felt easy and simple as a substitute of scratchy and resistant.