Keychron Q1 - An INCREDIBLE $150 Keyboard!!

all right so the key cron q1 this is a really interesting board at first i just wrote it off as another german k-pop ripoff i had a very bad first impression with the keyboard i really didn't like it but as i spent more time with the keyboard and try different things out i gradually started to like it a lot more so let's take a look the keychron q1 comes in a pretty nice box we have a switch and keycap puller both of which are pretty standard stuff they did surprise me though with this really nice coiled cable the coil is extremely elastic it holds its shape really well and the braiding feels amazing the aviator is also a great inclusion and it's a really nice touch it's definitely not as high quality as other premium cables like this one from space cables but it's still really good the board also comes with some extra keycaps gasket strips and switches the switches are called the gateron phantoms and they come in three models browns blues and reds they are three pin switches with a minimal amount of housing wobble and they do come factory lubed my personal favorite are the phantom reds they actually sound and feel pretty decent and of course we also have the q1 itself this is the fully assembled version so the keyboard comes with the keycap switches and stabilizers already installed but there is a bare bones option if you want to without any of the components the overall build quality of the keyboard is pretty good it has a decent weight to it the aluminium is anodized pretty well and the machining is great the edges are nicely floated the corners are rounded off and the board has a polished smooth look to it the back of the board is also cleaner than my browsing history it's just super minimal and i really like it the usb port is also located on the top left of the keyboard along with the switch to convert between a mac and windows layouts and i think that this is a great feature it just makes it more accessible to both mac and windows users without compromising on the main aspects of a custom keyboard it's a win-win the board uses an exploded 75 layout because you know got to follow the hype train and it's pretty much identical to gmk pro i think we all saw that from a mile away but instead of the knob the q1 has a badge and three switches instead of four on the top right column oh wait the q1 will be getting a knob in the future so it's basically nice approach the badge has my logo on it but you can actually get your own custom badge made on their website it costs 30 us dollars so it is fairly pricey but you can put anything you want on it i know kikron thought this is a good idea and i mean it is but you give the internet freedom to do anything and i mean they're gonna put i mean yeah all jokes aside that is some top-notch customizability and i am all for it the nice part is that you can actually remove the badge from the top housing and it opens up so that you can use an additional switch on the top right the keycaps that come with the board are also not that great the printing is slightly inconsistent it feels cheap and overall it's just not very high quality i would advise you not to get them and get some other budget keycaps if possible the top and bottom housing are held together by eight large gold allen screws and honestly these are some great screws i never thought i'd say that but they're really good to the point where i actually had to mention it they're large girthy and thick and are much more durable than my relationship with my ex-wife on real notes dismantling the keyboard is a very annoying process you have to unscrew eight main screws on the bottom housing then another six on the piece b and after that you have to carefully take out the ribbon connecting it to the dotted board and then you finally remove the two remaining screws on the daughter board only then can we take out the pcb and modify the keyboard the bottom housing also has a very thin piece of foam stuck onto it but it's so thin that i'm pretty sure it's just a napkin one of the employees left when they were working on the keyboard it makes almost no difference in terms of acoustics but you know it's still there so good job you earned a bronze medal all jokes aside kikron will be adding thicker pieces of foam into the q1 and i think that's a really good idea the q1 also has a custom aluminium plate and a 75 hotspot pcb there will be more plates coming soon but for now there's only an aluminium plate the pcb uses a five pin south facing configuration which avoids keycap interference at the cost of slightly dimmer rgb and the five pin design means that you don't have to clip any legs to use 5-pin switches the one i have uses an ansi layout but there will also be iso layouts available as well as soldered pcbs in the future the pcb also comes fully equipped with qmk and via which is really nice you can easily adjust the keybinds and rgb on the software and it's just super convenient the kikron q1 uses gateron screw and pcb stabs which come pre-clips and are factory lubed the factory lubing is slightly inconsistent like my upload schedule but it's not bad but they still don't sound that great either so i definitely recommend modding them in comparison to the gm mmk pro i would say that the factory lubing on the gate on stabs are slightly better the stock gateron stabs are definitely noticeably better than the stock goat stabs all right so the kikron q1 is gasket mounted because marketing yeah but to be fair i have to give credit to the q1 because they have taken a much better approach than the gmmk pro the gmok pro's gasket mount was notoriously stiff and it made for a very stiff typing experience the q1 on the other hand is a trampoline the kikron q1 has eight really thick pieces of foam on the sides of the plate and it makes the typing experience really bouncy and flexible on top of that they've also given a lot of room for the plate to travel vertically which makes it feel really bouncy however because of how much space there is the board has become a ping monster it's a punkster i should copyright that brb the tofu is still the undefeated pongster but the q1 is definitely a close second oh my god all right let's talk about how to make this board sound and feel as good as possible so the first step is of course to get rid of the phantom browns they're trash and after i removed all the phantom browns i was actually about to throw them all away but then i remembered you know someone might actually want these phantom browns if i threw them away they would be an actual waste i remember that there's someone in this world who loves browns more than anyone ever could hey glasses yo so i got some phantom browns and i was just wondering if you wanted them enough is enough homage you have called me 17 times in the last two days and every single time you said hey glasses do you want some brown swatches no i don't i don't want your brown switches i can't all right guess not so the first thing i wanted to tackle are the stabilizers i'm going to start off by cleaning the stabilizers with some warm water and soap to clear out all the factory lube and after the stabilizer stems have dried i'm going to use the holy mod it's a really helpful mod for radley stabilizers and i highly recommend you check out my tutorial if you haven't already so once we're done with the holy mod we're going to lube the stabilizers with some crytox 205 g0 the holy mod will make the stabilizers sound and feel mushy at first but it will go away as you break them in so for the switches i'm going to be using alpaca v2s these are linear switches with a 62 gram weight spring with 205 g0 on the housings and stem and gpl 105 on the springs they are much smoother than the stock phantom reds and i think it will really help to improve the sound of the board the next part i want to focus on is the case itself one of the main selling points of the keycon q1 is the typing experience it's bouncy and the monoflex it has is really nice but as a result the sound signature is really pingy and it sounds extremely hollow so let's try to fix that so the first thing i tried was some thin packing foam that i had lying around it's not the thickest or densest foam but it will still be a lot better than the piece of tissue paper that came with the q1 and it was definitely an improvement but there was still a lot of pinging and it still sounded pretty hollow so after that i tried using some sorbothane sorbethane is a very dense and thick foam and it is really good at getting rid of pinging and resonance in a board it was almost too effective the space bar still had that nice pop but the rest of the board just sounded dead and the flex was completely gone i basically remade the gmk pro with a kikron q1 so after that i tried out the tape mod i put like three to four layers of masking tape below the pcb and by itself it did make a bit of a difference but it was still a little bit hollow so after that i added the black tissue paper from kikron which did help a tiny amount and after that i replaced the black tissue paper with some of the thin packing foam and it made a huge difference as of now this is probably my favorite configuration on the kikron q1 it has a poppy sound signature but at the same time it also sounds deep and rich and thawky deep thunk thunk the spaceball sounds pretty nice and it also maintained a good amount of flex from the gasket mount it still has a little bit of pinging and resonance on the arrow keys and on the right column but that can be easily fixed with some more tape and foam the keycon q1 is not original by any means but it's a pretty good board now i really like the gmk pro but the q1 is just a better choice overall the bare bones kit is 20 so it's cheaper the typing experience is a lot more flexible and bouncy and it's also a lot more customizable you have the custom badge and you can choose a rotary knob or just have a switch on the top right there's just a lot more options that key crown provides in terms of the overall sound i would say that the q1 and gmk pro are equally as good and it just really depends on how much effort you're willing to put into your board both of them can sound really good if you mod them correctly so yeah the q1 is really good just don't use it stock you have to mod it or else it'll sound pretty bad alright thank you guys for watching i hope you enjoyed if you did please do consider subscribing check out my twitter instagram discord and big thank you to all the youtube members i'll see you guys in the next video peace [Music] you

Channel: Hamaji Neo

Views: 404,543

Keywords: Hamaji Neo, Custom Keyboard, Hamaji Neo Custom Keyboard, Custom Keyboard Build, Budget Custom Keyboard, Hotswap Custom Keyboard, Keychron Q1 Review, GMMK Pro, Keychron Q1 VS GMMK Pro, GMMK Pro Review, Keychron Q1 Build, Keychron, Keyboard Keyboard, Budget Keyboard, Keychron Keyboard, Q1 VS GMMK Pro, custom keyboard build, GMMK Pro VS Q1, Keychron Review, Mechanical Keyboard, Glarses, Gateron Phantom, Gateron Phantom Switches

Id: hvuBENuZwWk

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021