this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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Mechanical Keyboards

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Recommendations (lemmy.zip)
submitted 2 weeks ago by HumanDent@lemmy.zip to c/mechanicalkeyboards@lemmy.ml
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I've been looking for a new mechanical keyboard, but every brand that I've checked out has some kind of problem with them that kills it for me.

I'm looking for:

  1. Full size
  2. Pre built
  3. Hot-swappable switches
  4. Compatible with third party switches
  5. Backlit
  6. Offline software

The Keychron V6 Ultra 8K seems like it's exactly what I want, but their software is some asinine online only webapp. There is no offline app from what I could find. I would take an electron app over reaching out to a server to utilize my offline hardware.

I've cheched:

  1. Keychron - online only software
  2. Ducky - online only software, not compatible with third party switches
  3. Cherry - Not hot swappable
  4. Topre - Not hot swappable
  5. Chilkey - No full size boards
  6. Wooting - Not compatible with third party switches

I think there's some others I've checked, but there's too many to list/remember.

Does anyone have input or suggestions? This is the first time I've really tried looking through all of the options. Before I just went to Logitech or Corsair and called it a day. At this point, I feel like I'm just gonna stick with a membrane keyboard.

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[โ€“] HumanDent@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ty for the feedback!

My main problems with their software is that it's Chromium based browsers only and they don't provide a local workaround when their service eventually stops, either because they go under, they no longer support the keyboard, or some other stupid reason. Then the board is stuck as-is forever for people who don't know where to look.

I'll look into the other options, though.

[โ€“] hdsrob@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

They are QMK based boards: QMK is open source, and can be modified by anyone. All of their boards are in the QMK repository. It's impossible for their boards to be abandoned.

https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/tree/master/keyboards/keychron

So you can always just pull the source for whatever board from the QMK repository, and modify, build, and flash the board directly from your PC.

In fact you can do that instead of using the web based configuration tool as soon as you get the keyboard if you want.

They keymaps are separate text files in the firmware, and pretty easy to work on even if you don't have any development experience.

The web based configuration tools are a relatively new thing, and just offer a simpler solution for people that don't want to have to compile the source.

The Chromium dependency is annoying, but I have a few things that only work in Chromium, and keep a flavor around for those things.