Which One to Get? Keychron K2 vs K6 vs K8 Comparison

so the kikron k6 the kikron k2 and the kikron k8 all have very similar features and style however they do vary in size and layout so exactly which one should you get in this video i'm going to help you decide and tell you exactly the differences or the similarities between each ones and which one i would get if i could only pick one let's jump into it hey guys this is betty from switch and click and today we'll be going over the differences and similarities between the k6 the k2 and the k8 i got them all on the table with me but you can't see them because there's space above my head now which all you guys really want to see space above my head so we're not going to do the whole table thing i'll just pick them up if i need to but i do have completely in-depth and very thorough reviews of each keyboard individually a link up playlist here so that you can check it out and then various videos as we move towards the end of this video as well alright so these three all have bluetooth 5.0 they all have the updated case design and they all have the caps lock indicator so very similar between them all so i'm not going to be going through any differences in bluetooth because they're all the same no differences there a lot of their offerings are the same but i do prefer some over the other [Music] all right so first we'll go over what's in the box of each one and the distinguishing differences between them we did get the k6 during kickstarter so i'm not sure if things have changed now but the k6 is the only one out of all three that does not come with a dedicated dust cover this one is part of the k8 i personally don't use these anytime never i just throw them back in the box because if my keyboard is going to get dust it's going to get dust personally i don't use these they are recyclable though so you can pop them in the recycling if you want to or you can put them back in the box like i do but the k8 does have one the k2 does have one and the k6 does not although that was a kickstarter thing maybe they have one now i'm not particularly sure about what their newest changes are i don't think there are any but other than that the only other things that come in the box are pretty much the same they all have a keychron keycap puller it's wire it's really convenient it looks good they all have the same one in each box and they all have the kikron logo on it alongside that they all do come with a braided usbc cable with this right angle connector at the end as well because on all boards the usbc port is on the left side so that's why it's at an angle here and you get the additional mac or windows keycaps it's usually windows because mac comes stock on the board themselves and then if you chose the hot swap version then you'll also get a little metal switch puller as well you're gonna get the quick start guides that look like this in all of them just teaches you how to replace the keycaps pair the bluetooth change the rgb all of that they all come in these plastics leaves with their individual names on them so if you'd like to keep that for safekeeping you have that and they all have a full in-depth manual if you ever need information for how to set it up on linux or even remapping your keys doing backlight things like that so that's very convenient all in there if you need it the only difference really is the dust cover and if you have the hot swap version then you get the hot swap one all right done with the boxes for now we'll push that aside next we're going to go over into case design and to me personally that is the biggest difference between all of them in the back you will see that they all have the same updated kick up feet here they all come with two kick of feet with two angles each and that's updated they're they're all the same but there's slightly varying differences so the k6 has these flat rectangular rubber feet back here and that makes the keyboard a little bit more flat on your desk whereas the k8 and the k2 v2 have these more round oblong kind of rubber feet and they stand just a little bit taller just barely barely taller and the k8 being the biggest one of them all day it does have an extra rubber foot rubber foot so it has five instead of four not a huge difference i know in terms of layouts i guess that's the most significant difference the k6 is a 65 layout they all have arrow keys and they all have some navigational cluster keys so no need to sacrifice that functionality here so the k6 does have arrow keys here some nav keys it has home page up and page down so out of all of them it has the most limiting amount of navigational keys the k2 has arrow keys but it has some more functionality here up top this is a 75 build and it does have the function row on top of what the k6 features so they're very similar except the k2 has a function row on top and just some additional keys on the side so the k2 has a dedicated delete key which the k6 doesn't have and it also has a dedicated end key and a screenshot key which the k6 also doesn't have their layouts however are very similar and they both have that small right shift that you need to be on the lookout for if you're replacing your keycaps the k8 here is a 10 keyless layout and that's why it has a lot of these gaps here it is the biggest one it has a function row on top it has a dedicated nav cluster and a dedicated arrow cluster so it has a completely standard layout if you're interested in changing all your keycaps without needing to worry about special layouts special sizes this is the one to get it's the easiest one to find a compatible keycaps for and it has all that dedicated delete insert all that stuff on the top though you see that you don't have the same keys as in a normal tkl so pause scroll lock screenshot keys you have a key to turn on your cortana or your siri and you have a screenshot key and then you have the lighting key so they all have their lighting keys well you can't remap them at all whether you use carabiner or sharp keys or anything they are dedicated to changing the rgb of your keyboard or the effect if you only chose the white one you can't remap it and that's really one of the downsides about kikron but you know it's part of their brand so keep it there they're working on some kind of software right now i believe they're looking into qmk so that's coming down way down the line hoping to see that real soon alright so those are the basic layout differences now we're going to jump over into case design so the k6 here we do have the aluminum bezels and the aluminum bezels cost about 10 dollars more and i think you can only get it with the rgb version on most boards so they do add some sturdiness it adds more heft to it a just a bolder look overall and i personally like the aluminum bezels a lot because i'm careless i drop my boards i have a lot of them so it's it's a mess it's a mess but this has the aluminum bezels whereas our k2 v2 does not and without it it just it just doesn't look as bold it doesn't look as sturdy as strong but it doesn't look too bad without it either so if you're thinking portability and you want something more lightweight i would go without the aluminum bezels definitely the k8 here a lot of people complained that it looks terrible with the aluminum bezels because it has this sort of recessed look it's very similar to the red dragon k552 if you use that before and what that means is when you put the bezels on there's just space here between the arrow keys and the nav cluster between the function row keys where it's deeper than where the level that the bezels sit at so it does have a floating keycap style design without the bezels and that just means you can see the switches from underneath the keycaps so if you're not into the whole floating keycap look it's probably not your style i've seen that a lot of people like the k8 more without the aluminum bezels and it just looks a little bit cleaner all right so that was a very brief overview of which one looks good with the aluminum bezels and which one looks good without now we're going to go over onto height and this is a pretty big deal for some people they're all very different in terms of height they have a very similar angle though where the front is lower than the back so that's good there's an angle there in terms of the one with the shortest front that would be the k2 the k2 is the shortest on the front but it's also very it's taller on the back than the k6 so the k6 has the shortest back so the angle the k2 is more steep than the angle of the k6 and that's why it's like that the k8 is tallest in both areas it's tallest in the front and it's tallest in the back it just takes the k6 and like steps it up a notch to make it that floating key cap look so with the k8 i recommend that you just pick up a wrist rest and the wrist rest is about the height of the bezels themselves and then after that you can hover if you want but yeah the k8 is the tallest one i forgot to mention this before but the screws that are required to take off the aluminum bezels are slightly different so i recommend you just get something like an ifixit kit with a bunch of different heads that you can trial and error and see if it works just having a one kit that does it all is super convenient rather than finding specific tools for individual holes if you want to take the cases apart they all have different places where the screws are in as well and you can find those more details about where those screws are online on their website i believe it's like a pdf document or something to take apart the cases if there's aluminum bezels you first need to take that off and then you take off the key caps that you need to take off and use a phillips screwdriver to unscrew them and then they'll all just come out with the plate all right so they all have the usbc ports on the left side they all have the same slide toggle between windows and mac and another slide toggle for bluetooth off and cable all right other than that i don't think there's anything more with case design if i missed something please tell me down below there's just a lot to go through and talk about next we're gonna go over switch and board offerings and there's big differences between what they all offer so all of them come with offers for white backlight rgb backlight and then rgb with aluminum bezels so you can't get the aluminum bezels with the white backlight and they all have options for gatoron red blue or brown mechanical switches other than that there's a lot of differences so the k2 the k2 v2 has a hotspot edition they sell it separately from the k2 v2 and it comes with white and gray keycaps rather than light and dark gray here so on the hotswap version the alphas are going to be in white the mods are going to be in gray and of course they still have the orange accent keys so that would be a significant difference there the hotswap versions of all of them do have five pin sockets so you're not going to have to worry about clipping any of your switches they also have well some of them have optical switch offerings and we'll go over that very soon but the k2 v2 hot swap is sold on their website has different key caps they are still abs plastic and the option with the hot swap is either white backlight with no aluminum bezels or rgb with aluminum bezels now if all this is confusing i am going to link to the keyboards on kikron on like their individual product pages so you can just have them sideways side by side and take a look so the k6 here has options for the lk optical switches and these are hot swappable between lk optical switches however they do say that it's very tight on the plate and they don't recommend you attempting to take them out it's not really recommended anyways because there's not a lot of optical switches to switch to and from however they do sell lk optical switches on their website if you are looking to replace them just be really careful with that because i don't want you ruining your board the k6 also comes with mechanical hot swap as well and they're gataron options the k8 also comes with mechanical hot swappable options with cataron but they also offer the optical switches are in their keychrone optical so they're not lk optical and they are only hot swappable with other keychron optical switches and that's also available on their website as well if you're looking to do that they don't say anything about them being on tight on the board so don't have to worry about that alongside this kikron also sells switch testers of all their variety of switch offerings they sell gatoron switch testers lk optical switch testers keycron optical switch testers and then they're new low profile switch testers as well but none of these boards are low profile here so we're not going to talk about that so if you're interested in deciding i don't know which switch to get then definitely give those switch testers a try before buying a whole board full of them or you can pick a switch that you think you'll like pick the hot swap option and then switch your switches later down the road all right on to keycaps so the keycaps are also a little bit different as well even though they all offer the two-tone light gray dark gray orange accent on either the escape or the light key and they give you the windows additional keycaps there are definitely some differences here in terms of the legends so in terms of legends the k6 actually has the smallest and least bold font so the rgb lighting on them really doesn't stand out much and it can even be a little bit difficult to see at night the rgb or the shine through of the keycaps of the k2 is the best the rgb is also the brightest the font is the most bold and it's also slightly larger than on the k6 alongside this the mac functions on the very top are a little bit bigger and it's also shined through as well so you can see all those things at night the ka is sort of a middle ground the rgb isn't bad and the mac functions they do light up as well but they're slightly smaller and the font here is not as bold and not as visible especially late at night however it does have that floating keycap thing so all the rgb is going to bleed out from the switches that you can see but in terms of keycaps i'm going to say the k2 v2 is definitely got to be my favorite the rgb shines are strongest the legends are super visible and my favorite part actually is the page up page down but both rows light up it looks really clean it looks really nice the k8 doesn't really write to page up page down like how the k2 does and the k6 well the legends are just too small for me don't know if that's my old eyes or whatever but it's just not as bright and the k6 as well has all these little sub legends on top because it has no function row those sub legends are pretty small and they don't shine through so it's just not going to work out with me especially with a board that needs you to memorize some of those some of those features so all the keycaps are double shot their abs their shine through they're relatively thin if you do want to change them out i do recommend it that would improve the feel and oil resistance tremendously they are matte and they all feel very smooth to the touch they do get a little oily over time if you use them a lot and they're all oem profile the legends overall very clean and professional looking i know they've made very slight changes between version to version but k2 definitely takes the winning slot in this category it probably takes the winning slot in many of the categories and one thing i would like to say is that they all have indicators for caps lock the k2 and the k6 both glow red on their caps lock key when you use them the ka has its own individual caps lock indicator because it's tkl those indicators sit above the arrow cluster and they light up when you activate them so the stabilizers are all pre-lubed from the factory they all sound fairly different all right so which one should you get personally i'm going to say whatever one you get go get the hot swap version there's just too many options that you can do with hot swap you can mod your stabilizers lube them clip them do all that good stuff you can lube your switches make them feel better you can change them out down the line if you suddenly decide oh i don't like textile switches or i don't like clicky it's not for me anymore i'm i'm better than that now so get the hot swept but in terms of sizes it all just depends on what you need personally i would go for either the k2 or the k6 and i find myself not ever using the function row so really i would go for the k6 however the downside of the k6 is that there's no dedicated delete key which i find i use absolutely too often to give up so i do use sharp keys a windows program to remap home to delete and that makes it more usable for me personally i also do other remappings but that's probably not what you're interested in but if you do use the function row then the k2 is fantastic there's a hot swap option the legends are the best the rgb is the brightest it has dedicated delete key it's just an overall really good pick the ka is just not really my thing tkl right now to me is just sort of a bland area and the whole floating keycap thing is not my style either and the height is a little bit too high for my liking even though i hover anyway so it's not a big deal but it is a little bit high and a lot of people are concerned about that the k6 is keycaps do hinder it a bit but obviously a lot of you i know you are gonna replace your keycaps anyway so that may not be a huge consideration that you need to think about before making a purchase so that's it for the video basically i hope this was helpful for you i know there was a lot to talk about there's really slight differences and the subtle differences may make a huge difference to you in the end i would go for a hot swap version if i needed function row i would go for k2 if i didn't which i don't i would go for the k6 and personally i replace keycaps anyways so either one the k6 and the k2 do have different layout things you need to consider before changing out your keycaps so make sure you really keep an eye on the small right shift in the three mods on the right side of the board and the k8 is a standard layout but tkl is just a little boring for me but i hope this was helpful i know it's sort of long in-depth reviews are right here thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Switch and Click

Views: 169,915

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Keywords: keychron, mechanical keyboard, keychron k2, keychron k6, keychron k8, keychron k2 vs k6 vs k8, keychron k6 vs k2 vs k8, keychron k6 vs k2, keychron k6 vs k8, keychron k2 vs k8, keychron k8 vs k6, keychron k2 vs k6, keychron k8 vs k2, keychron k8 vs k2 vs k6, keychron comparison, best keychron keyboard, keychron comparisons, keychron k2 vs k8 vs k6, switch and click, keychron mechanical keyboard comparison, switch and click keychron, keychron switch and click

Id: cyLWrbBhvo8

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020