So after a lot of deliberation and several sleepless nights, I finally landed on the Keychron K4 with Optical blue switches. The idea was that it would make a great entry-level KB while I piece together or find something(s) nicer down the road. While it's neither perfect nor ideal, So far it's been great.
Below are my thoughts on it thus far.
1. I've heard reviewers complain that Bluetooth it's installed with is 3.0 and not 5.0. While that complaint may be valid, it paired quickly and easily with my MacBook Pro and, once my adapter finally arrived, my PC as well. So far there's negligible input lag.
2. The body, though plastic, is quite solid with minimal flex. It's got good weight to it; it's quite portable but stays in place on the desk. The overall feel to it is it's substantial and quality made.
3. The battery is great; at 4000 mAh it's the largest of all Bluetooth boards I found, so it should last quite a while between charges. This is good, since charging it could be a hassle; more on that in [7].
4. I love the 96(...%? ...key?) form factor; as a student, having the 10-key and navigational home/end/del keys are important (does anybody use pgup and pgdn anymore?). That said, I would love to move them closer to the arrow keys, similar to the KBD75 v2 layout.
On the topic of keys...
5. I have really no complaints about the switches. They may be a bit light, perhaps, and could maybe give a little more tactile and audible feedback. There doesn't seem to be any unintended noise, though; no scratchiness to be found. It's also got n-key rollover, which is pretty great.
6. The keycaps though... As reviewers have mentioned, the Keychron keycaps are very thin and don't feel that great to type on; they're very smooth and slippery. While I appreciate the price point, I would love to see it ship with at least *slightly* higher quality keycaps.
a. I'm open to suggestions for reasonably priced backlit PBT caps, while we're here. ; )
b. Which reminds me... Aside from rubber gaming keycaps, does anybody make arrow keys with a tactile bump or texture to them? Locating the arrows has had less of a learning curve than I'd expected, but it would be nice to have a way to locate them without having to look down.
7. In regard to the USB:
a. The fact that they went with USB-C is nice.
b. Why tf they located the port on the left side of the housing is beyond me, though at least the USB-C end of the cable is 90°.
c. The cable they shipped with it is inexplicably like three feet long, making it nearly useless outside of charging.
8. It's apparently fully programmable, which is also pretty great, though I've no personal experience with this yet. I did read in an LTT blog post, though, that the software they use for remapping is pretty bad, and that the Windows software requires some registry hacks. I only hope that either they release their own in-house remapping or that there's a way to flash it to use more popular mapping apps. Haven't looked into that one yet, though.
Gripes aside, so far it's a great keyboard, and it seems it'll last me a long time. If anyone's looking for an affordable, non-standard layout keyboard, I definitely recommend this one. : )
