Don’t get into mechanical keyboards

It all started when my mouse broke, which I’ve had for about five years. The new model was fairly inexpensive so I went ahead and bought it, and was pretty happy.

During my research I started looking into “tenkeyless” keyboards which don’t have the numpad and therefore take up less room on a desk. This really appealed to me, and I ended up buying the Keychron K3 mechanical keyboard.

The specs are just what I’m looking for. Low profile keys, detachable USB-C for wired/wireless, can switch between MacOS and Windows for work and gaming, and it has hot-swappable key switches.

It came with optical brown switches which are tactile, so they give a bit of feedback before actuating. I wasn’t entirely happy with them, coming from the MacBook keyboard. So, curious about all the different options, I ordered red (linear), yellow (early tactile), and blue switches (clicky) so I could try all the different styles.

I settled on the yellow switches, as these gave the best typing feel for me. I’m using a brown for the space bar, and blues for some of the modifier and arrow keys as the clicky sound is a nice differentiator to the alphas. An individual switch with a keycap on top actually makes for quite a fun fidget toy.

Since I wanted to use this for work on my MacBook, I also caved in and bought an Apple Magic Trackpad, and now I can finally stop buying these computer accessories. To address the title of this blog post, you can get pretty deep into research and watching YouTube videos on mechanical keyboards, switches, and all sorts. I should stop here before I end up collecting these things and spending even more money! Or maybe I should try the mint switches…