Clavier mécanique personnalisé filaire Keychron Q5 QMK (disposition US ANSI)

Have bought three Q5's and one Q1 (mint colour) to date (all with no knob, one of each colour plus FR4 plates for all of them) for myself and family members. Plan to get one more Q5 with a knob later this month. Keychron is definitely improving the Q series with each iteration thus reducing the amount of modding required to get the sound signature you may want. It seems that for many people this keyboard should be fine as is. I am very happy that Keychron have made the q5 and q6 available as I really needed the number pad on a nice relatively affordable mechanical keyboard with decent flex and modding opportunities. Have custom switches and personalised keycaps sets on each Q5/Q1 as each family member have their own favourite scheme. Have an Akko mod003 which also well built but it has some shortcomings in regards to plate material and lack of a daughterboard for the USB C connection which limits the amount of flex. The Q5's only needed tape mod, a little bit of extra force break mod and that was it. Be careful when opening the case though as the silicon pads that Keychron have used as a force break can fall off (I lost one somehow), they are easy enough to replace or augment though.

no this is not a paid review, I ordered the keyboard a month ago and I have been using it for 2 weeks now. It is by far the best keyboard I have used and I have used many different types. I work at a computer I'm a software engineer and I make so many less errors and have to backspace way less than I ever have with other keyboards. I customized it and moved a few keys around to make it easier to write code for my job. I honestly wouldn't change anything except probably the UX of the app that you have to install to customize the keys. I'm buying another, probably the larger version next.

unlike the q1, the q5 had alot less pinging noise. great job

The Q5 is my first Keychron keyboard (but I have been using and modding mechanical keyboards for a while now), and I am very pleased with the Q5. This 1800 layout is the perfect work keyboard for me since I need a numpad as an engineer but don't use most of the middle cluster keys on a full-size keyboard. I have previously been using the Epomaker GK96s as my work keyboard, but I wanted to upgrade to a metal board with a rotary knob, so this layout was perfect for me. Also, the positioning of the knob on this board is perfect to me because it's position on the Q3 was absolutely horrendous looking (as it wasn't in the corner).

Diving into the board itself, the fact that both case foam and plate foam were included was a nice touch. I love that the PCB is 5-pin hot swappable and supports VIA/QMK. I'm using cherry profile blue-samurai keycaps on my board, so the south-facing LEDs are great and allow me to do so. The stock switches were Gateron G Pro reds (linear gang here), and they were decent. They have a seemingly light layer of factory pre-lube that gets the job done to make them feel and sound slightly better than regular reds, so an average keyboard user would find them very viable. I swapped them out though for Gateron Ink Black V2s that I hand-lubed with Krytox 205g0. Besides the stock switches, the stock stabilizers were merely decent as well. I'd say they're viable enough for most people, especially if you re-lube them yourself to decrease some of their rattle. But I swapped them out for Durock V2 stabilizers that I lubed myself with a holee mod and put on stabilizer pads. This mod in conjunction with my new switches made a huge improvement in the board's sound and typing feel to me, and they were pretty easy to do as this case comes apart very easily in order to get inside the board.

The stock case foam is super thin, so I tried switching it out for a thicker foam that I cut. But, this took away from some of the flexibility of the board's gasket mount, so I switched back to the stock case foam to save that flexible typing feel. I have the Glorious GMMK Pro, which is also gasket mounted, and this Q5's gasket mounting is significantly better and more flexible than the GMMK Pro's (which sucks quite frankly). However, in sound comparison, the Q5 does have slightly more ping to it than the GMMK Pro. Thankfully my switch and stabilizer mods helped the sound profile of the board a lot.

Overall, the Q5 is a great board for it's price (but keep in mind you have to pay $30 shipping which is super annoying and a big knock that Keychron needs to change), but I still highly recommend the Q5. I was originally only going to give the Q5 four stars, but I bumped it up to five because of this board's place in the market. The subtraction of one star was going to be because of the only decent stock stabilizers and the slight ping of the case while typing, but at this price point and the fact that this keyboard is more of an entry-level custom board, I think it does enough to be given 5 stars for what it is. It is very usable stock out-of-the-box, but can also be modded easily to obtain an even better feel and sound.

The Keychron Q-series has been very popular because of the compelling features, quality, and price. The Q5 continues this trend and offers the same general characteristics of the previous Q-series keyboards, such as a fully aluminum case, south-facing LEDs on a 5-pin hot-swappable PCB, VIA and QMK support, and pre-installed stabilizers. The Q5 also has the iconic rotary encoder knob available.

I am enjoying the Q5 and use it at my office for work. It has a clean, simple design that does not attract a lot of attention, usually people just notice how big it is. I put some layers of painter's tape on the lower case, a layer of paper towel between the included case foam and PCB, and switch pads on the PCB, which all together gives a muted, softened sound profile. I am using pre-lubed Glorious Lynx linear switches and a Keychron OSA profile doubleshot PBT keycap set, both of which I had on hand already. The pre-installed stabilizers are decent, they could use some work but are good enough to get me up and running.

I wish the knob layout was designed differently. The Q3 has excellent knob placement and I don't understand why Keychron could not implement the same here. The knob layout looks awkward and unbalanced compared to the non-knob layout. That said, the knob layout has all the keys I need and none I don't, so I decided to tolerate the odd design to get the knob which is very useful to me.

Overall a great keyboard, barebones or assembled, and the price is quite good too.