The Best Mechanical Keyboards
Every stroke of the keys on a well-made keyboard should bring a unique joy: Each clack provides your ideal tactile feedback, and each key is styled to match your aesthetic. If you spend most of your day typing, coding, or gaming, a mechanical keyboard can be a comfortable, customizable upgrade over the shallow, drab keyboard that came with your computer. After spending months testing the most promising mechanical keyboards, we like the Varmilo VA87M for its excellent build quality and its compact, minimalist design. It’s available with plenty of switch options and colorful high-quality keycaps to match your preference, too.
The Varmilo VA87M and VA87M Mac are available with a variety of Cherry switches; if you don’t already know what kind of switches you like, we recommend Cherry MX Brown switches because they offer a satisfying tactile bump without making too much noise for a shared space. Our pick comes with a removable Mini-USB cable that’s easy to replace and a wire keycap puller for replacing or cleaning keys. These Varmilo keyboards aren’t fully programmable, but they have clearly labeled media keys, and you can customize a couple of functions.
We recommend tenkeyless keyboards-that is, models without a built-in number pad-because they’re more ergonomic and because most people don’t use a number pad frequently enough to justify the desk space it occupies. If you do need a number pad, you can get a separate numpad, such as the Leopold FC210TP, which you can move out of the way when you’re not using it.
If the Varmilo VA87M is unavailable when you’re shopping, we recommend the Leopold FC750R. It has equally excellent build quality, and its minimalist tenkeyless design is similarly compact. It’s also available with all the most popular switch types. Leopold offers a few different tasteful, high-quality keycap sets, though it doesn’t provide as much variety as Varmilo does and has no backlight options. Like the VA87M, the FC750R has a removable Mini-USB cable and works on both Windows and Mac. But the FC750R’s media controls aren’t labeled on the keycaps (or explained in the manual), so you’ll have to memorize them.
If you do need a built-in number pad, the Leopold FC900R is the best option. It’s nearly identical to our runner-up, the Leopold FC750R, as it offers equally excellent build quality, it’s available with all the most popular switch types, and you can choose from a few different PBT keycap sets. Like the tenkeyless model, this keyboard has a removable Mini-USB cable and works on both Windows and Mac, but-also like the tenkeyless model-it has no labels on its media controls. (We don’t recommend the Varmilo VA108M, the full-size version of our top pick, because its case is significantly different and not as good as that of its tenkeyless sibling.)
Dimensions:
C1: 14.06 by 5.12 by 1.5 inches
C2: 17.15 by 5.12 by 1.57 inches
Connection:
Removable USB-C
If I were getting into mechanical keyboards for the first time today, I’d buy the tenkeyless Keychron C1 or the full-size Keychron C2. Both models offer surprisingly good build quality, provide an enjoyable typing experience, and have an attractive minimalist design-all uncommon features in this price range. Their lower-quality ABS keycaps feel thinner and more brittle to type on and are likely to wear out faster than the thicker PBT keycaps on our top picks, but keycaps are easy to replace if you want to do so. Both models are compatible with Windows and Mac, and they come with replacement keycaps for both operating systems. Another benefit: Swapping out switches on most mechanical keyboards requires equipment, expertise, and time to desolder all the old switches and solder in new ones, but if you want to try new switch types without soldering, Keychron will upgrade the standard circuit board in the C1 or the C2 to a hot-swappable version for $10. With a hot-swappable board, you can simply pull the switches out and snap new ones into place. As of this writing, shipping from Keychron’s website starts at $20, but even with that added cost, the C1 and C2 are better than any similarly priced keyboards. (Certain models are also available from Amazon with Prime shipping.)
If you’re willing to pay more for a prettier keyboard you can tinker with, get the Drop Ctrl. It’s just as well made and enjoyable to type on as our top picks, it has an attractive design, and it offers hot-swappable switches, customizable RGB backlighting, and full programmability. But it’s about half an inch wider than our top picks, so it’s a bit less ergonomic. If you like the Ctrl’s features but want something more compact, consider the Drop Alt instead. The Ctrl is available with a variety of switch options, and you can easily try new switch types if you’re curious.
Unfortunately, availability is an issue with most great mechanical keyboards. Most are made in Taiwan or China and shipped to the United States in batches to be sold by specialty retailers. If our picks aren’t available with the switches or keycaps you want, you can preorder at MechanicalKeyboards.com, keep an eye on that seller’s incoming-shipments page, or set availability alerts on Amazon using a price tracker such as CamelCamelCamel or Keepa. We tested our picks against more readily available options and found that these models were of significantly higher quality and worth the effort to track down, but if you can’t wait that long, the other great options we found during testing may be more readily available.
The research
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I’ve tested hundreds of keyboards, mice, and other accessories for Wirecutter since 2014. Since I began covering mechanical keyboards for Wirecutter, I’ve accumulated 10 mechanical keyboards and a macropad-and I chose the cases, switches, and keycaps and then assembled, soldered, and programmed most of them myself. This is way too many keyboards! I’ve spent thousands of hours typing on all these different keyboards and switches to land on some reasonable recommendations for people who need only one keyboard.
Mechanical keyboards, named for the individual mechanical switch under each key, are more enjoyable to type on, more durable, and more customizable than typical laptop or desktop keyboards, which use membrane, butterfly, or scissor-switch mechanisms. If you spend all day typing, it can be satisfying to customize the size, switches, keycaps, and layout to your exact needs. Our picks in this guide include full-size keyboards as well as keyboards without a number pad. If you’re looking for something even smaller, head over to our guide to compact mechanical keyboards.
In this guide we recommend prebuilt keyboards that you can plug in and use immediately, but there’s a whole world of custom mechanical keyboards. Many of them involve buying a kit or all the components and then soldering and programming the keyboard yourself. That opens up nearly endless size, layout, switch, and programmability options beyond what our picks offer, but such keyboards are less readily available, tend to be more expensive, and require a lot of tinkering.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
The best full-size keyboard: Leopold FC900R
A standalone number pad: Leopold FC210TP
What about a wireless mechanical keyboard?
If you really want a wireless mechanical keyboard in a TKL or larger layout, you’ll have to accept some significant trade-offs. Here’s what we found when we tested the models that met our criteria:
- Mike Fahey, How To Pick The Right Mechanical Keyboard, Kotaku, February 5, 2018
- Anson Wong, Tom Li, The complete guide to mechanical keyboard switches for gaming, PC Gamer, April 6, 2019
- A lesson in Keycaps, Originative Co.
- John Burek and Jeffrey L. Wilson, The Best Mechanical Keyboards for 2021, PCMag, December 4, 2020
- Catherine Galvani, The 7 Best Mechanical Keyboards, Rtings.com, March 12, 2021
- schmich, Programming Media Keys on the Ducky One 2 Skyline, GitHub, April 15, 2018
- Weyman, Removing Cherry MX Keycaps, WASD Support, July 29, 2019
- David, USB Cable Repair, iFixit
About your guide
Kimber Streams is a senior staff writer and has been covering laptops, gaming gear, keyboards, storage, and more for Wirecutter since 2014. In that time they’ve tested hundreds of laptops and thousands of peripherals, and built way too many mechanical keyboards for their personal collection.
Curious about mechanical keyboards but overwhelmed by the options? Here’s what to look for and what makes a good keyboard.
A compact mechanical keyboard takes up less space on a desk than a regular one-but you might need to be prepared to give up some keys in return.
Originally published at https://www.nytimes.com on January 3, 2022.
