Keychron Q1 HE keyboard review: Who is this for?

Best Prices Today: Keychron Q1 HE keyboard

Keychron is one of my go-to recommendations for keyboards. The company makes a ton of high-end mechanical boards that are both accessible and customizable, at a price well below those of the competition. With its apparent desire to fill every single possible niche, it was inevitable that the company would try its hand at adjustable actuation. So here we are with the Q1 HE.

The Q1 HE is a keyboard with magnetic hall-effect switches, meaning you can adjust the point at which they activate — how hard or soft you need to press the keys. It’s also the first adjustable actuation keyboard on the market with hot-swap switch sockets, something I’ve previously said is essential. That’s an impressive milestone, and the Q1 HE keeps up Keychron’s great build and feature set.

But because of the lack of options for switches, and a lack of one crucial feature for gamers, I’m not sold on this design. The Q1 HE does do what it says on the box, but its advantages over the Q1 Max are slight, and you give up a much wider selection for customization. It only makes sense for a tiny sliver of potential buyers.

Further reading: See our roundup of the best mechanical keyboards to learn about competing products.

Keychron Q1 HE design and features

From the outside the Q1 HE looks more or less like every Keychron Q keyboard, just with a snazzy red accent for the Enter and Escape keys. If you’ve been following the keyboard world for the last couple of years, you know the look: 75 percent layout, high-profile keycaps, big chunky aluminum case, and a volume knob. It ain’t broke, and Keychron ain’t fixing it.

Michael Crider/Foundry

Michael Crider/Foundry

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    </div></figure><p class="imageCredit">Michael Crider/Foundry</p></div>

I’ll spare you the breakdown of all of Keychron’s features, and just say that the HE has everything that the Q Max series (which I’ve already reviewed) does. That includes the above metal case and knob, plus:

• High-profile PBT keycaps
• Hot-swap switch sockets
• RGB lighting
• Multiple internal layers of foam and padding
• Triple-device Bluetooth
• 2.4GHz wireless dongle with 1,000Hz polling mode
• Screw-in stabilizers
• Gasket mount PCB
• Programming with QMK and the Keychron web tool

It’s hitting all the right notes for a high-priced mechanical keyboard. Purists might bemoan Keychron’s gasket quality and stabilizers compared to boutique designs. But we’re talking about a relatively small subset of users who will either build their own keyboard, or pay someone else $400+ to do it. For a high-quality, customizable board you get out of a box, Keychron remains damn hard to beat.

The big differentiator in the HE model is those magnetic switches, allowing for adjustable actuation. For why this is important (and why you might care about it), check out my breakdown of adjustable actuation keyboards. Tl;dr, you can adjust how hard or light you need to press each key, which gives you one more degree of customization, and opens up some interesting options for the most demanding PC gamers.

Michael Crider/Foundry

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    </div></figure><p class="imageCredit">Michael Crider/Foundry</p></div>

Keychron takes this feature one step further than competitors like Razer, Corsair, and Wooting by adding in the option to swap out the switches. Adjustable actuation is complex whether you’re doing it with light or magnets, so previous designs simply omitted this option. On the Q1 HE, like most of Keychron’s premium designs, you can remove the switches in every socket and install alternatives.

But there’s a pretty big caveat here. Due to the way these magnetic switches work, they’re still incompatible with switches that use the standard Cherry MX format and far simpler electrical circuits. So while you can swap them out, you can’t replace them with almost any other switch on the market. At the time of writing the Gateron Nebula purple switches can only be replaced with other Gateron switches conforming to this specific standard, with just two other choices: Dawn yellow and Aurora green. All three choices are linear, pre-lubed switches with the only difference being their spring stiffness. So if you want a clicky or tactile switch in this board, you’re out of luck.