Most of us spend money on things that are frivolous from time to time. Much of the time behaving like children with a new toy; we play with it for a short time, and then it sits gathering dust. I thought it was probable my new mechanical keyboard would be one of those things, or at least lose its luster, but it turns out it is one of my favorite things.
Some time last year my YouTube feed sucked me into the rabbit hole of mechanical keyboards. It turns out there is a rather large, and seemingly growing, number of people who have keyboards and keyboard paraphernalia as a hobby. I do not fully understand this as these boards are not cheap (I paid just north of $200 for mine), and many of these enthusiasts have half a dozen keyboards and only one computer. At any rate, I started researching mechanical keyboards and, long story short, I ended up buying a Keychron Q6 Pro (pictured above) several months ago.
You can not only swap the keycaps on the Q6 Pro, but the switches themselves as well. The keyboard has RGB LEDs (not individually controllable unfortunately), Bluetooth or cable connections, and supports QMK firmware. It turns out there are a lot of different switches available for mechanical keyboards that vary in how easy or hard they are to actuate, how loud or quiet they are, and a bunch of other stuff. The brown switches I chose are somewhere in the middle. The Bluetooth is nice, but I leave mine plugged in via USB C rather than deal with occasional dropped connections. The QMK firmware allows you to create additional layers for your keys that can be programmed to do something else. For instance, you might have a layer for your Apple computer and one for your Linux computer. In addition, you can use it to set macros which is what I have done.
Keycaps are a rabbit hole unto themselves. There are multiple profiles for mechanical keyboard keycaps. Some of them focus on aesthetics while others focus on ergonomics. The Q6 came with keycaps using the KSA profile, which is Keychron's take on the SA profile. They give more of a more typewriter feel, which can be enjoyable if you are as old as I am. I was very impressed with them, but I was not crazy about the colorway or the fact they were not shine-through. Most keycaps for custom mechanical boards are not shine through, as this does not seem to be of interest to most users in this space. It does beg the question, why do they bother putting LEDs in them to begin with, but they do.
Eventually, I found a set of side-print (legends on the front face of the key rather than the top), shine-through keycaps made by YMDK in colors I liked. These caps were in OEM profile, so I was a little disappointed, having been impressed with the KSA caps. It turns out I can type much faster and more accurately with the OEM profile keycaps, and with less fatigue, so it worked out fantastically in the end. I should note that a lot of gaming keyboards (think Razor and similar) have "north-facing" LEDs, whereas many "custom" boards, including Keychron, have "south-facing" LEDs. Side-printed shine-through legends would not do a lot for a board with north-facing LEDs, but are fantastic with south-facing LEDs.
I most likely lost a lot of you at $200, but let me say this: using a quality mechanical keyboard with switches and keycaps that suit your fingers and preferences is something that has to be experienced to be understood. The biggest problem is that if you buy one, you will despise using every other keyboard that surrounds you. It turns out that all the keyboards we use daily are just terrible. Laptops, cheap mechanical boards, membrane keyboards, you name it. They all suck. I hate to break it to gamers, but a $250 Razor keyboard, while flashy, pales in comparison to a custom keyboard.
If you spend most of your time in front of one computer, and you feel like spending the scratch I highly recommend you give it a shot. Even a lower end, plastic board from a good manufacturer is a better experience than most of what we have access to. Fortunately, my son gave me a Keychron K2 he was no longer using, and I use it with my tablet when I travel.
As always, I reserve the right to be wrong.