We all know OnePlus, they make phones, earbuds, and now keyboards?
Keyboard 81 Pro specifically, they teamed up with Keychron to make this.
Ooh, I love this, never settle. Sometimes you should settle, but you know what?
Not with keyboards, that's what you shouldn't settle for. Connect Bluetooth, remapping keys, backlight,
connect cable, adjusting whatever, switchable keycaps for OS.
This does have Linux, Mac, Windows support,
Android support, oh, and then we got a little user manual as well, if the card wasn't good enough for you.
My only complaint from just looking at the specs is that it's wireless, but it doesn't do 2.4 gigahertz,
it's just Bluetooth and USB-C.
Keyboards in here, I can keep that a little secret for all of us right now.
I'm gonna open these other boxes. This guy comes in two colors,
there's a dark gray and a light gray. The light gray is the one that's supposed to come
with their MarbleMallow keycaps, which is a first.
I've never tried them before in my life, and I'm very intrigued.
It's supposed to be like a softer plastic, one that's specifically used in cables and bracelets,
which seems odd. These don't feel like, well, this feels like PBT,
this one not so much. Why is the D the only one that feels different?
Maybe I'm crazy. Listen, I haven't felt a lot of Ds, but this does feel a little different.
Yeah, okay, okay. Also coming with a bunch of what looks like foam gaskets,
this is gasket mounted, double gasket mounted. If one's not good enough for you, they got two.
And they come with extras, which is always a plus. A one plus, ah, that's a terrible joke.
Oh, I actually really like their key cap and switch puller that they're including
because it's got these cool covers for it. Ooh, cable.
And for anyone who wants to take apart their keyboard
and modify it and do whatever they want to it, they come with a little Allen key, which is great.
The cable is notably in their one plus red that they use for everything.
Yeah, it doesn't seem that bad, but yeah, it's about two meters probably. USB-C on one side, USB-A on the other.
Oh, we got some screws. This is actually a huge deal to me.
I have bought a lot of expensive custom keyboards and you'd be surprised by how many of them
don't come with extra hardware. All right, now for the big reveal, the actual keyboard.
Ooh, it's pretty hefty. The whole thing is CNC aluminum.
I actually really like whatever they've done here on this edge for the knob and the, what's, I mean,
they've got the arrow keys on here, it's traditional. Oh, page up, page down.
And home, probably. Yeah, these just feel like PBT, that's a bummer.
One kind of disappointing thing off the bat here is that they're supposed to have
this really cool new marble mallow keycap that I've never tried before.
The D key that came with this might be the material because it does feel different than PBT, but I'm not sure.
And the way that you can tell that this isn't marble mallow, aside from the obvious PBT feel here,
is that these are dark gray keycaps. This comes in two color schemes,
but the color scheme only is reflecting on the keycaps themselves.
So if you get the light gray, then the alphanumeric and center keycaps
would all be light gray. Instead, we've got the dark gray version,
where it's dark gray on the alphanumerics and light gray on the outside.
That doesn't mean the keyboard's bad. I'm actually still pretty excited about it.
It's just, that was a really cool feature that I was hoping to experience today,
but it doesn't look like that's gonna happen. I really love this knob.
Not only does the tactile feel actually feel great, but I love the clear, like kind of fake crystal
or fake glass appearance it's got. It's just plastic, but it looks pretty good.
And then we've got the typical traditional one plus logo
in one plus red on the escape key and on the enter key.
This is hotswap, which is great. I just don't like it if anyone's not hotswap these days
because there's not much point for it, especially in the more like mass marketed keyboards.
It's a red switch, but it's definitely tactile. So I'm gonna take it out.
Oh, which makes sense. I'm pretty sure the linear switches.
So that's the other thing that's kind of a weird design choice that they've made.
The color is also tied to the switches as well.
If you get the light gray, you get linears. And if you get the dark gray, you get these tactiles.
So it's kind of tough if you like linears,
but you don't want the new marble mallow key caps
as cool as they may be. Tough break, you're stuck choosing one. Same thing if you like tactiles,
but you really wanted the marble mallow key caps, like I do, I can't get that right now.
So unfortunately we're stuck with these guys. They feel okay.
They sound all right, it could sound better. I'm not sure if they're pre-lubed,
but they don't sound or feel too bad. So it wouldn't surprise me if there's a really small
light application of factory pre-lube on these. We've got south facing RGB on our keyboard.
There's per key illumination for anyone who cares about that. Another thing that I even neglected to mention
is that it's got this cool bar on the back. And this is for adjusting your typing angle,
but it's also meant to let you stand the keyboard up.
The logo on the back, if you were to take your keyboard and flip it over,
that's upside down. But as soon as you stand it up like this,
how's that? I think it's kind of a weird way to display your keyboard.
Most of the time I would actually prefer the bar to be on the bottom, and then I would like put it up like this.
I'm not against the bar. I think it's a pretty cool way to have adjustable typing angles,
especially it's pretty stiff. So I don't think unless you like really sit here
and crank it and wear it out, it's not gonna just wear out on you and suddenly your keyboard's gonna like droop.
Like I've gotta press, I'm pressing pretty hard. Oh, geez, actually I almost pinched my fingers there.
But I've gotta press pretty hard to get this bar to like go down.
So I'm not worried about that at all. And then on the rest of the keyboard,
physically we've got a on off switch. And it looks like it might choose as well
between Bluetooth and wired. And then we've got a Mac or Windows and a USB-C port.
Ours comes with this neat little stamped ShortCircuit title here. That's pretty cool.
That's probably just a personal thing for us. Sorry. Other than that, it's got four little rubber feet here,
which probably do the job. Yeah, like they could be better,
but I've definitely had worse rubber feet on a keyboard. And realistically, you're not pushing on it that hard
when you're gaming or typing anyway. And it's pretty hefty. Like this thing, yeah, it's all aluminum.
As for weight, yo, 1.8 kilos.
Yeah, it's definitely pretty hefty, about five pounds or so. It's got a 4,000 milliamp hour battery,
which is respectable in this space, but I want to use wired because I'm a wired kind of guy.
Oh, this is cool. I only just noticed this now. It actually comes with a USB-C to a dongle,
but it's also just a USB-C to C cable. So if you have just a spare USB-C port that you want to use,
feel free to do that. And if you don't, boom, OnePlus has got you covered.
I got to say, I really like the RGB and it makes me appreciate the red keycaps
and the red cable even more. I think that the red and the gray and the metallic kind of look of the aluminum
all goes together really nicely. I'm not a red kind of person.
I'm a more of a blue or green or orange kind of boy.
Wow, 1.29, 100%. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that.
Honestly, they're working with Keychron to make this product and it feels and looks a lot
like a Keychron, which I'm relatively fond of.
They're not perfect out of the box, but I think for the price, you get something pretty reasonable
that you can then upgrade yourself with foams or mods, whatever you want to do.
But yeah, I actually really like the typing experience on this and while it's more of a thick than a thawk,
I actually really like the sound right out of the box. It's like a tick, right?
How's the spacebar? It's not super rattle-y, but it's a little bit hollow
and a little just a tiny bit rattle-y. So you could fix all this up yourself
and especially with it being hot swap, if you don't like the switches, you don't like the keycaps,
you can change basically whatever you want. One other thing I kind of noticed
while just looking at it is I really like the overall construction designs.
I love how the screws aren't in the bottom of the case. So they're not using these super long screws,
like you see on some more premium keyboards. They're using these little short guys
and they're just right in here on the edges. If I were to disassemble this,
it looks like basically the top part of the case just kind of lifts off and you're left with a really thick body.
Instead of it being kind of centered, how some keyboards are basically split in half,
like the top case is just as big as the bottom case. But yeah, it looks very clean
and it doesn't look like you have to get rid of any feet or anything to get in there, which is fantastic.
So I like it. One thing I wasn't sure of while talking about this
and reading their descriptions and whatnot,
they say double gasket, but I don't exactly know what that means.
A lot of gasket systems I've seen that are like burger mount and stuff,
they have gaskets on both side anyway.
Okay, there's a few too many ribbon cables so I don't really want to fully disconnect it.
But as you can see, we've got these really thick gaskets and there's one on either side of the plate,
which appears to just be plastic. It might be polycarb, but I'm not a hundred percent sure.
They are extra thick and there are two of them. So it is technically double gasketed,
but I don't think that's anything that's crazy.
A lot of stuff that's gasket mounted is gonna have gaskets on both sides of the plate.
A lot of the time it even comes with little socks that you put on the edges on like these guys here.
So there's contact on both sides of the plate. It feels pretty good.
And it's definitely gasket mounted with layers of foam and whatnot, like it's good.
I'm not saying it's bad. I just, it's not a big deal calling it double gasket.
I don't know, that's a bit of a stretch here. All right, one moment please as I put it back together.
Luckily that was really easy. One thing that's nice that I didn't mention
that is pretty typical for Keychron is this does support open source firmware.
So it's QMK and it's via compatible. And you can do just about whatever you want with it.
Change the RGB to however you like. Adjust any macros you want or adjust keys to something else.
And now we gotta talk the price, which is something we actually don't have.
They never sent us any details. We can't find it on the website anywhere.
And I'm gonna go ahead and say that I think personally,
if this thing is like on par with Keychron pricing.
So for an all aluminum chassis, you get a cool knob.
I think if this is about $250 coming with keycaps and switches,
I think anything more than that, if you start getting into the $300 territory,
if you wanna pay that much, then start just looking for custom keyboards
that are gonna come out in a year. That's the only kind of problem with that route
is you find something on Met Group Buys that you like. You get in on the pre-order or on the Group Buy
and then you wait. So that's kind of why I recommend Keychron so much
is you can just buy it. Which I'm hoping you can do with this. If you can just buy it and it's like $250, cool.
It's pretty good. Let us know in the comments, like, subscribe,
all that good stuff and see you later.