Keychron K3 Pro QMK/VIA Wireless Custom Mechanical Keyboard (2024)

I bought this keyboard to replace my K12, which in my opinion was too tall for portability and people in my college (like 2) says that it looked like a gaming keyboard. Unfortunately, I accidentally broke off the tiny switch that is on the pcb to turn on bluetooth or turn off the keyboard so I decided that it would be a good time to upgrade to this 75% keyboard.

The Good:
- This layout is the most versatile in comparison to a 60% keyboard (obviously). VIA/QMK is not a necessity for me as I mainly used the K12 with my S9 Ultra tablet and will be using this keyboard with the tablet. This is my favorite layout as it is compact and looks really nice. The white PBT low profile keycaps feels really nice and I have no problem hitting 100 WPM average without missing keys. As it is low profile it is very portable.
- Bluetooth/connectivity. Works really well just as the other wireless Keychron keyboards do. No issues connecting. Gaming seems to be a non-issue, as I am not that great at gaming anyways and moving my character is a breeze like on my Q1 and Q3 Pro SE.
- Stabilizers: Very good, no complaints. The spacebar sounds like a spacebar and the other stabs feels great. Nothing much to say.

The Bad:
- Small battery capacity: I do hope that with my use case I will only have to charge this once a month. The K12 has a reasonable 4000 mAh battery due to the size which lasts more than 3 months. Even the NuPhy Air 75 has a 2400-4000 mAh battery. However, this is a small negative and hopefully I won't have any issues in the long term.
- Red switches: While I can perform well on these switches when typing... they feel quite mushy. I do like how it's lubed, however, but it feels similar to Logitech's G915 Tactile and Linear switches. Overall performance is a 7/10 for me.

Overall, I can live with these 2 downsides as I can just turn off the LED's all together. Since I have the hotswap version, I can easily replace these with banana switches or any other switches online.

This is one of the keyboards I will never forget. The tactile feel is amazing and so is the construction. I believe that if Keychron improves its products even more, I will continue to buy them.

In terms of improvements, it is really only necessary on the keys that come from the factory in the alignment of the letters on the keys (caps lock, backspace, enter and tab) but nothing that is ugly or that diminishes the beauty of this keyboard

I love the 75% layout and Keychon nails it here. The material of the keys feels really nice to type and the shape plus the size of the keys makes you feel like you're just zipping along typing on the keyboard. The pop-back from the keys is so responsive. I have the original K3 from the Kickstarter and I didn't expect the Pro to feel so different, but it's fantastic. I'd recommend getting the shine through keys add-on if you want the backlight to really stand out!

I admit was a little at a loss for how to handle the media keys because I had never used VIA before to remap and the documentation is a bit barebones. By default, media keys just do the normal F1/2/etc functions and you have to press the FN key to get the media functions, while I prefer the other way around. However, you can use VIA to swap it around by putting the media functions on the third layer instead (the default Windows layer, shows up as Layer 2 in VIA since the first layer is 0) and then putting the FN functions on the fourth layer (the layer pressing Fn switches to). Also, VIA doesn't have a FN key listed, that was confusing at first. Keychron just uses the FN key as a Layer activator, so if you want to remap it (I also swaped FN with Right Alt), you need to pick one of the MO(0/1/2/3) buttons from the Layers section as the replacement depending on what layer you want it to launch. MO(3) corresponds to activating the fourth layer.

It's definitely a more manual process than just using the old FN lock shortcut on the original K3, but if the change was necessary for proper VIA support, it was worth it — and so is this keyboard!