Thoughts on the Keychron Q8 (Alice layout)

The recently released Keychron Q8 was on my radar for awhile. As most mechanical keyboard enthusiasts, I also suffer from never acquiring the endgame. This one is definitely nowhere close to endgame but it was a nice little stint to try out.

I wanted to try the Alice layout (the two spacebars, slightly angled layout) since I first learned about it so this keyboard was the perfect one to try out.

I got the Gateron Red switches which feel pretty good but not as great as the Kailh Speed Silvers.

The knob on this keyboard is way taller than the rest of the keycaps which feels “off”. The RGB is there but with the stock keycaps, it’s hard to see past at most angles.

Spec wise, this board has most of the things you’d want today. USB-C, hot-swap switches, QMK support, and RGB. The VIA support really helps get the keys and layout as you’d want it, I personally had to move the ESC key mapping down to the left control key, Caps Lock to Control. The tilde key missing really messed with me so I just turned the default ESC key to tilde.

Overall, this keyboard is a great mid-range board to have. I call it mid-range because most entry level mech boards don’t have QMK support, hot-swap, RGB, and are not made using aluminum. But it’s far from being perfect. The keyboard still has a tinny sound that comes from either the switches not being lubed along with not enough padding or just the internals having too much space between them.

All images from Keychron’s website.