Keychron's K2 HE turns magnets and wood into an affordable mechanical keyboard

The $79 K2 has long been one of Keychron’s bestselling mechanical keyboards. As with all of the company’s K-line boards, it offers a relatively no-frills experience but provides all of the advantages of a mechanical keyboard in an affordable package with a 75% layout (which means you get arrow keys and a row of function keys, but no numpad).

Now Keychron is going a bit upmarket with the K2 by launching a new version, the wireless K2 HE with Gateron double-rail magnetic switches and, optionally, a chassis that combines wood, aluminum and plastic into a package that starts at $130 (or $125 during the Kickstarter). But unless all you care about is the additional gaming features that a hall effect magnetic switch can offer you, you’ll probably want to spring for the extra $10 to get either of the special editions with their light- or dark-colored wooden side panels.

Like with most of its new designs, Keychron is launching the project on Kickstarter. Typically, crowdfunding would come with a few caveats, but at this point, this is more of a marketing mechanism for Keychron than a way to fund a new project. This is still a pre-sale, though, and the first boards are scheduled to ship in October.

If you’re in the market for one of these, the main choice to make is whether you want the standard edition, with its aluminum frame and plastic body, or the white or black special edition with the wood and aluminum frame and plastic body. The dark rosewood on the black special edition gives it a vintage synthesizer vibe, while the lighter color feels more minimalist.

There have been other keyboards out there with wooden accents — and sometimes wooden frames — but very few are available from mainstream brands like Keychron.

I’ve been testing the black version with Gateron’s Nebula switches. I have quite a few more keyboards sitting beneath my desk at the moment, but even though the K2 HE isn’t the most premium board I could be using right now, I haven’t felt the need to switch it out.

There are a couple of things that really help — on top of the versatility of the magnetic switches. The first thing you’ll notice is that while it’s relatively light, the board doesn’t feel cheap. The aluminum frames and wooden accents lend a more premium aesthetic, even though the rest of the board is made from plastic.

That combo also results in a pleasant sound. It’s a bit on the muted side but still pleasantly thocky — though perhaps not quite as marbly or poppy as some would like.

There is also no board ping to be found. Keychron achieves that sound by using a combination of a silicone pad and acoustic foam.

The switches also make a difference here, of course. This is my first time trying out Gateron’s pre-lubed magnetic switches and they work quite well. There’s not a lot of wobble and they operate well in combination with the rest of the board’s materials to shape the sound. There is also zero rattle from the screw-in stabilizers.

Keychron also did a nice job with the web-based software for tweaking the software side of the keyboard. There’s no need to install any additional software. That means you can’t use VIA/QMK to make adjustments either, but I didn’t miss that in day-to-day use.

It just works.

This is also where the advantages of the magnetic switches come into play. By now, there is a set of features you’d expect from a keyboard like this. At its most basic, that means setting the actuation distance from how far down you need to press before the keyboard registers a keystroke. You can set that with 0.1mm precision from 0.2mm, which pretty much triggers it the moment your finger touches the keycap, all the way down to 3.8mm, just before the switch bottoms out.

That’s fun for typists and can help prevent the occasional typo, but magnetic switches really start to shine when it comes to gaming. Here, you can use rapid triggers, for example, which resets the key much faster than a traditional switch and hence allows you to spam keypresses much faster.

Magnetic switches also allow you to create what are essentially macros that trigger different keystrokes at different points during the down press and release. Here, Keychron allows for up to four actions that you can trigger on a single keystroke. The canonical example for how to use this (with just two actions set to a single key) is to switch between walking and running.

Those who are far more creative than me will likely be able to dream up plenty of productivity use cases.

It’s worth noting, however, that there’s no flex here. That feels like a bit of a concession to the gaming audience that may be attracted to the magnetic switches and their customizability. That may make longer typing sessions a little bit more fatiguing, but that’s very much a personal preference. It should also be easy enough to mod the board to bring back some flex.

I’m happy to report that Keychron will use standard Cherry profile keycaps here, which I much prefer over the higher KSA keycaps Keychron often includes by default. The sample I received originally came with a set of OEM profile caps (and that’s what you see in some of the images here), but during my testing, I also switched that out for a basic set of Keychron Cherry keycaps I already owned and while there are higher-quality sets out there, Keychron has always done a perfectly fine job with its keycaps.

One other nice feature that is often missing in modern mechanical keyboards: The K2 HE features two small plastic feet that let you adjust the keyboard’s angle.

There are, of course, LEDs under every key and 22 different ways to make them light up. If that’s your thing, you’re in luck.

At this more affordable price point, you are making a few trade-offs. Unlike some other boards that let you use both magnetic and traditional switches, the PCB that Keychron is using here isn’t set up to support anything but magnetic switches. Thankfully, there’s an ever-increasing number of magnetic switch options out there now, including tactile and clicky ones, but that’s something to be aware of.

Oh, and there’s no knob, if that’s important to you.

Overall, though, this is a very nice package and as so often with Keychron, it’s an easy one to recommend if you want to dip your toes into hall effect magnetic switches.