Keychron Q10 (Alice Layout) QMK Custom Mechanical Keyboard

Super happy with this purchase

If you are never going to build your own keyboard, but you're kinda picky about keyboards, this is the only game in town as far as I'm concerned. My use case is doing sysadmin work and coding, often with long bouts of typing and interaction. I really need a good keyboard. And a volume knob sealed the deal. I do sometimes game, and my muscle memory for games requires a traditional non-ergonomic keyboard. So I have not gotten rid of my Keychron C1 which sold me on the brand, nor yet found much use for the macro keys. This is a hefty, hurt-an-intruder kind of keyboard. The sound is great, the travel is great. Brown switches. For those of you skeptical on this having RGB - I am very much an RGB nothing kind of builder - there are some schemes that are not distracting. The setting I picked simply glows in proportion to your keypresses, kind of like a reward for a high WPM, but is not rainbow barf. The wired version absolutely should offer a downstream USB C x2 hub, eg for a mouse and/or portable storage and keychron can easily justify the upsell to this keyboard if they offered separately keycaps for, eg, DVORAK. I could easily sell one of these to my DVORAK-using friends. Alt keyboard users are a thing that exists and I feel keychron could lead by simply acknowledging that.

Great keyword with some strange design choices

Some feedback to Keychron after having used Q10 for several months for both coding and typing emails and stuff. - The build quality and the overall feel of the keyboard didn't disappoint. 100% as promised and expected. And being able to reprogram the keys is awesome. - Consider adding a right [Ctrl] under the right [Shift], to the left from the arrow block (for right pinky). There seems to be plenty of room for it. For many coders, it's important to be able to reach [Ctrl] with both left and right hand. My workaround was to repurpose the right [Alt], which is not ideal but is a lesser evil. - Choosing to drop [End] but leave [Ins] was a questionable design decision IMO. I suggest dropping [Ins] instead, moving [Del] where [Ins] currently is, and make the rightmost column [PgUp], [PgDn], [Home], [End]. I did try to shuffle the keycaps around and reprogram the keys, but that wasn't fully successful because of the different keycap sizes. Overall, great keyboard, but taking 1 star off for the few questionable design choices.

You should know what to expect from the reviews, 5 stars

This keyboard is fantastic and Keychron customer service has been amazing. This is my second mechanical keyboard and in every way it is years ahead of the Logitech mechanical that I’d tried. Switching to an Alice layout has been great for my wrist pain and I have no complaints about this keyboard. I did switch out the keycaps for cherry profile and switched to cherry speed silver switches. What should you expect? It is thicker and heavy. Some of you guys like that. I’m a low profile guy but I NEED an Alice layout for wrist pain. I lightened the build by 12 ounces by switching out the center layer and also upgraded the foam. It feels lighter and fantastic. It also sounds great. It’s not perfect for me, but it’s a perfectly built piece of gear. Due to wrist injuries I would prefer a lower and lighter board, and just a half inch of play can make a big difference for me, which is why I just bought the low profile Alice Q11. The Q-10 will be used at home where I type very little and use a ton of macros. Pros: via support, high attack/melee damage, so many options for all the layers, ergonomics, SUPERB build quality, nerd cred, left handed knob (frees up mouse hand) Cons: on the heavy side, may not suit first timers used to laptops and slim low-profile Logitechs, might be a bit of a high bar for a first time mechanical user