Keychron - Q1 HE QMK Wireless Custom Keyboard

To make this easy - if you stay within Keychron, I really think there are only 2 options. 1) Q1 HE. This is a 75% tri-mode board that satisfies the gamer requirement and would look the nicest in the living room. It’s not just for gaming though. You can have 3 active profiles at a time. Use one profile with 2mm actuation for every day typing and another 1-2 profiles with .5-1mm actuation and rapid trigger / SOCD turned on. Assuming you are not playing games that ban SOCD. SOCD is, for example, I can continue holding the A button while I click the D button and my char will move right, once I take my finger off the D button (while still holding the A button) the character will move left. I use it on PVE games like Destiny, First Descendant, etc. 2) Lemokey P1 Pro with the Keychron red switches. Lemokey is the Keychron “gaming” division. This is another 75% tri-mode board but is your standard mechanical hot swap keyboard. Significantly cheaper than the Keychron Q Max series and IMO, a better board. There are enough YouTube videos saying the same thing as well. This offers a better typing experience but (depending on your perspective) a slightly worse game experience since you cannot modify actuation points, there’s no rapid trigger, etc. If you wanted to though, down the road you could swap in “gaming” switches like an Akko or Cherry silver that have 1.1mm of actuation which just means that the switch needs to travel 1.1 mm to register an input. Which in theory could make a character move faster but you would have a worse typing experience because it would be much more sensitive. That’s really the trade off here. HE boards can provide both good gaming and typing experience because you can setup profiles for each. Also, I just realized Lemokey has a 75% HE board which I would pick in a second over the Keychron Q1 HE just given the price difference and my experience with Lemokey P1 Pro vs Keychron Q1 HE. Finally, if you go the HE route from Keychron, just know that the only switches you can use are those sold by Keychron and Glorious. No other magnetic switches will work (i.e. no Jades, Jade Pro, etc). Personally, I think the Gateron dual rail switches are sub par compared to other offerings but if you have no other frame of reference then you don’t know what you are missing out on. Keychron / Lemokey is great for a first board because (other than the sheer amount of layouts) they make it fairly easy. There are a number of HE boards released within the past year by other manufacturers that might be better for you and or cheaper but Keychrons ecosystem is hard to beat when you are first starting out.

If you go with a Hall Effect board (and it’s a solid choice) just make sure to research what magnetic switches the board you are interested in uses. Keychron/Lemokey, HE boards for example, can only use a specific Gateron dual rail switch along with Glorious switches. For me personally, the stock Gateron dual rails are not very pleasing. A spring swap though brings them to life. I enjoy doing that work but you may not. Wooting and any board that uses the same polarity will have the most switch options available. This includes popular switches like Geon Raw and Gateron Jades. I have owned ad Keychron Q1 HE, Wooting 80, Wooting 60, Keychron K2 HE, Maggard 68 Pro and Nuphy 75 Air. The Wooting is the most premium option. As others have said, the software blows all others out of the water. I was really impressed with the Nuphy. It’s a low profile keyboard so different switches / keycaps than the others but it’s a fun board. The software on all the boards I’ve used lets you set actuation per key, rapid trigger, SOCD, dynamic keystroke and macros (plus more). The Wooting is the most intuitive and best for RGB if you care about that. I could not get dynamic keystroke working on the Nuphy but didn’t try after the first day as I replaced it with a macro for what I wanted. The Nuphy and Keychrons you are limited to 3 profiles. Maggard is 4 and the Wooting is unlimited, but only 4 active profiles (all your other profiles are archived within the online software). There’s a database of other Wooting profiles that you can easily copy/paste a code for yourself to utilize that users profile. Finally, I’m pretty sure Keychron boards have gamepad support and I know Wooting definitely does. This would allow you to set keys as controller functions for things like racing games / GTA driving / etc.

Couple things to note here. When the GMMK 3 Pro HE was released I had a bunch of Best Buy credit so I bought the board and literally returned it within 2 hours. It was that bad for the price and the SW was hot garbage by any standard. I haven’t followed it since so I don’t know if anything changed. 1) The Glorious HE board will only take the Glorious HE switches and the Gateron Dual Rails that Keychron/Lemokey uses in their HE. Wooting and Luminkey use the Gateron Jades + alternatives. Really need to pay attention to what type of switch a certain HE board takes. 2). As others have mentioned, there are much better alternatives. I don’t know what the price is now on the GMMK 3 Pro HE, but if it’s still north of $300 USD, you could return that and buy literally any other HE board which will be cheaper and better. Wooting 80 for example. The Keychron K2 HE is not a bad board at all and has the compact 75% layout which is different. I have the Keychron Q1 HE and I have 2 Lemokey non-HE boards that I really like and would have no problems with a Lemokey HE (which is Keychrons gaming division). Luminkey Magger 68 Pro is another board I have that is fantastic. 3) One of the reasons, IMO that Keychron and Wooting are better than anyone else is the SW. The SW matters for HE. If Wooting is a 10/10 for Software, Keychron would be 9/10 and Luminkey an 8.5/10. Glorious honestly would be a 1/10 for SW. In the past year the HE scene exploded with a ton of options. IMO if you are willing to drop coin on whatever GMMK 3 costs now, just go get a Wooting/Keycrhon/Lemokey and be done with it.

If you're feeling adventurous... Keychron q12 southpaw has been a game changer. I don't have to take my hand off my mouse EVER. Jumped on the left feels off at first but once you get used to it it's amazing. Keyboards at work are weird now

understanding you a bit better, honestly wouldn’t touch the primarily gaming brands, i’ve had quite a few logitechs in my time and nothing compares to the keychron q1 i’ve had for like six months and i’ll never look at big brand “gaming keyboards” again. a Keychron Q3 Max specifically has the same % keyboard as your steelseries and it’s a large sum cheaper considering you can customise things like switch types. hope this helps

Keychron Q1 HE has ISO, hall effect and is in white BUT it's not compatible with something like Gateron Jade Pros (which is bad. Compatibility is a good thing to have) If we throw hall effect aside, [Varmilo Minilo 75](https://varmilo.com/products/minilo75) has both ISO, white theming (no white case tho sorry) and arrow keys. If we throw ISO AND hall effect aside, Lucky65 v2 with whatever keycaps/switches. P.S. your requirements in a keyboard aren't pathetic lol it's a product you'll use so it's only right you have it the way you want

I personally use Keychron Q1 for my gaming needs. Did simple mods to make the sound slightly better. RGB off.

Maya X + Keychron Q1 HE + Artist Hayate Otsu

I have both the Keychron Q1 HE QMK Wireless (a little out of your budget but I got mine for over 50% off last year during the holidays so YMMV) and Wooting 60HE. You can get a stock Wooting for about $200 and should be good to go. Hall effect switches are great for gaming + both keyboards have RGB.

Keychron q11 is what I use. I wanted f keys as well.

I just got the keychron q1he 75 for about $200. It’s not perfectly quiet but it’s a lighter “creamy” sounding in my opinion. Plus it has a lot of nice features and good build quality. I know it’s a bit higher than budget tho, so if you don’t want to spend the extra $50 you could try getting new switches instead and maybe dampening pads

I ended up getting keychron q1he 75 for about $200! I’m happy with the purchase, it’s a quieter calmer keyboard clicking and I like the features it has. For me I like the rapid trigger a lot and the knob is actually so nice for when I use my soundbar for single player games!

It's complicated, the Q1 HE is a premium keyboard for gaming, but the typing feel and sounds are not very good compared to normal mechanical keyboards for not even half the price... Besides, these are hardly hot swappable and are limited to a strict selection of linear switches that are sold by Keychron... I'd rather buy the Q1 Max IMO. it's cheaper, sounds better, feels better, has more customizability, and although it's not anything special for gaming, a Hall Effect keyboard won't make you any better than a mechanical one... It's just more of a "convenience" rather than a necessity.