The Geekron Q2: A Comprehensive Review

As I sat down to review the Geekron Q2, I couldn't help but notice the compact size of this keyboard. It's a far cry from the bulky keyboards that were once the norm, and it's clear that the designers at Geekron have taken a minimalist approach to their design. The Q2 is a masterclass in simplicity, with a sleek and sturdy build that belies its compact size.

One of the standout features of the Q2 is its tactile response. While some users may find them too loud, I found them to be perfectly suited for my typing needs. However, it's worth noting that if you're particularly sensitive to sound, these switches may not be the best choice for you. Stick to brown or red switches instead, as they offer a more subtle yet still satisfying tactile experience.

Speaking of which, the Q2 comes with a USB Type-C cable, replacing the Aviator cable from its predecessor. I must say that I'm glad to see Geekron has ditched the unnecessary complexity and opted for a more streamlined design. The Q2 connects seamlessly to our MacBook Pro, and the RGB lights fire up like clockwork.

The real fun begins when you start exploring the keyboard's customization options. With the built-in function keys, you can fully control and customize the RGB lighting to your heart's content. Want to toggle the light on and off? Hold down the function key and press the tab button. Want to change the pattern or saturation? Press the function key with Q or A to cycle through different patterns, or use F to adjust the saturation. And if you're feeling fancy, you can even decrease or increase the backlight with function 1's or 1W.

One of the things that really impressed me about the Q2 was its flexibility when it comes to layering and customization. While there isn't a dedicated function row, this is actually a blessing in disguise. You see, the Q2 is highly customizable via so you can toggle between different layers using the function keys. Set up different commands and actions for each layer, and you'll find that this keyboard becomes an extension of your own typing muscle memory.

I also had a chance to experiment with some macro functions, which are a game-changer for those who want to customize their keyboard experience even further. By assigning specific key codes to certain keys, you can create complex macros that perform a variety of tasks at the press of a button. For example, I created a macro that zooms in and out of Final Cut Pro's timeline with just a few keystrokes.

Of course, no review would be complete without mentioning the control knob. Oh, the control knob. It's one of those little details that can make or break a keyboard experience. And let me tell you, I'm thoroughly enamored with this feature. Assigning macros to the control knob is a stroke of genius, and it's clear that Geekron has thought long and hard about how to integrate this feature seamlessly into the Q2.

So what do our readers think? Is the Geekron Q2 worth the $180 price tag? While no keyboard is perfect, I believe that the Q2 offers an incredible amount of value for its price. The compact size, tactile response, and customization options all come together to create a truly unique typing experience. And with a bare-bones version starting at $150, there's something here for every budget.

Ultimately, whether or not you'll consider the Geekron Q2 depends on your individual needs and preferences. But one thing is certain: this keyboard is a game-changer in the world of keyboard design. If you're looking for a compact, customizable, and highly-tactile typing experience, look no further than the Geekron Q2.

In conclusion, I'd like to say that I'm thoroughly impressed with the Geekron Q2. It's a testament to what can be achieved when designers prioritize simplicity, customization, and user experience. Whether you're a keyboard enthusiast or just looking for a reliable typing companion, the Q2 is definitely worth considering. So if you'll excuse me, I'm off to put this baby through its paces – and I invite you to join me in the comments below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enevery year i try out a handful of keyboards for my mac but this one is one of my favorites hands down this is the kikron q2 featuring a 65 layout with a fully customizable control knob which can do some pretty cool stuff and of course totally customizable keycaps and key switches here's how it sounds so let's take a look at the kikron q2 right now thanks for watching nine to five mac be sure to thumbs up click the subscribe button and then enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any upcoming videos so like i said this is the kikron q2 a 65 layout super compact keyboard fully mechanical fully customizable works with windows and mac all aluminum with sound absorbing foam screw in stabilizers to stabilize those extra large keys like the space bar replaceable keycaps of course usb cable spare parts along with a keycap remover a key switch remover screwdriver and allen wrench so you can really literally take apart this entire keyboard and switch out parts of course you can switch out the switches switch out the keycaps it's basically just a smaller q1 with the control knob built in and that control knob like i said earlier can be customized with macros as well i'm going to show you how to set that up there's your windows mac switch you also have a usb type-c port in the upper left-hand corner 6.5 degree built-in angle and there is that textured control knob i'm going to show you something really cool about this in a second here's how much the magic keyboard weighs less than a pound here's the larger kikron q1 that's getting close to 4 pounds 3.85 pounds but notice the q2 it's almost the same weight as the cube one so this thing is heavy it is definitely not going to move around on your desktop it's going to stay firmly planted on the desk and even with its 65 layout size probably not going to be something you want to travel with given its weight but i love the fact that it's all metal of course you have those removable keycaps you get the stabilizers there on those larger keys such as the enter key let me show you how to remove the key switches now so we're just going to go in there grab that switch out just like that you see the pins you want to make sure you put those back in in the right direction so you don't bend the pins and my fully assembled ki kron q2 comes with gatoron g pro switches these are red switches of course which have a linear response so when you press it it literally just goes straight down there is no click there is no bump it is just a linear press some people might like that some people may not there's no stabilizers there that screw in and that is a nice feature to keep that space bar and keep the enter key or return key stable so we're going to remove all of these red switches because i want to swap them out for more tactile blue switches you can see i have removed literally every single switch on this keyboard and it is just bare bones and this is what it looks like when you purchase the bare bones version you can hear that steel plate and notice the south facing rgb which faces the typist and the gateron g pro switches allow the light to shine through okay so now it's time to go ahead and replace the key switches these red ones the linear ones with the super tactile clicky gatoron g pro blue switches so of course you don't have to use blue switches you can use red or brown switches honestly i just wanted to try something different i think ultimately for typing the blue switches are the best because they provide the best tactile response but they are super loud when you type so that's something to consider as well because if you like it really quiet these are not the switches for you i can tell you that i'll let you hear what they sound like here in just a second but first we need to go ahead and reinstall the key caps let's go ahead and do that now and here is the end result looks exactly the same right but it sounds a lot different and it definitely feels a lot different when you type here's what it sounds like so if you're super sensitive to sound yeah like i said these are not going to be the switches for you stick to brown or red instead so here is the usb type c cable notice kikron got rid of the aviator cable and that's actually a good thing in my opinion because that was just needlessly complex so now that we're connected to our mac you can see the rgb lights fire up and they look good right and you can fully control and customize the rgb lighting using the built-in function keys so if i hold function one and press the tab button that toggles the rgb light on and off pretty simple right so you can also customize the pattern for the rgb light so if you hold the function key and press either q or a you can cycle through the various patterns available and there are quite a few of them you can decrease the backlight with function 1s or increase the backlight with function1w you can change the backlight hue by using function1e or function1d to go in either direction you can decrease or increase the saturation as well using function 1 r or f and you can adjust the speed of the backlight as well when you've selected an animated pattern so i'm slowing it down just like that now you'll notice that there is no dedicated function row but that isn't as detrimental as it may seem on the surface because this keyboard is highly customizable with via so you can toggle between the various layers using the function keys so you can set up different commands and different actions based on the layers that you're currently in so you can see layer number two is dedicated to the mac you see all the mac central centric keys there and you also see the pre-configured rgb controls but you can take this a whole step further by setting up macros so i can create my own macros to perform certain functions for instance i'm going to create a macro that will zoom in and out of the timeline of final cut pro so all you do is type in the key codes that correspond to the keys that you want to press so in this case i want to use command plus in command minus so here i have command minus and that zooms out right and then on macro number one i create command plus and then i use shift z which basically fits the timeline into view in final cut pro so i have all three of those macros set up now i just need to assign them to a particular key i'm actually going to assign it to yes you guessed it the control knob which has three functions you can turn it left you can turn it right and you can press in on it so i have assigned those three macros to the control knob so when i turn it left it will zoom out when i turn it right it will zoom in and when i press on it it will fit the timeline into view and that's just the tip of the iceberg there's so many other ways you can customize your keyboard you can customize the various layers you can customize your lighting if you want to so you can assign various lighting controls to various keys and here is that macro that i created using the control knob notice turns to the left zooms out turns to the right zooms in and then i click on it and it will shift z which will fit the timeline into view when i press it like that of course one of the popular use cases for the control knob is obviously to control the volume and then click to mute that's set up by default but i like customizing it to do some other cool things so ladies and gentlemen what do you guys think this is the geekron q2 it's an improvement over the q1 in my opinion i love the compact size i love the standard usb cable i love the control knob i do wish it had bluetooth though no bluetooth is a bummer but bluetooth also has its downsides reliability being one of them battery life being another sometimes it's just simpler to have a cable plug it in and it just works now the fully assembled q2 with the knob will set you back 180 bucks so not cheap but there's also a bare bones version starting at 150 bucks so what are your thoughts on the q2 would you consider it let me know down below in the comment section thumbs up if you appreciated this video and subscribe for more videos like this this is jeff with nine to five macevery year i try out a handful of keyboards for my mac but this one is one of my favorites hands down this is the kikron q2 featuring a 65 layout with a fully customizable control knob which can do some pretty cool stuff and of course totally customizable keycaps and key switches here's how it sounds so let's take a look at the kikron q2 right now thanks for watching nine to five mac be sure to thumbs up click the subscribe button and then enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any upcoming videos so like i said this is the kikron q2 a 65 layout super compact keyboard fully mechanical fully customizable works with windows and mac all aluminum with sound absorbing foam screw in stabilizers to stabilize those extra large keys like the space bar replaceable keycaps of course usb cable spare parts along with a keycap remover a key switch remover screwdriver and allen wrench so you can really literally take apart this entire keyboard and switch out parts of course you can switch out the switches switch out the keycaps it's basically just a smaller q1 with the control knob built in and that control knob like i said earlier can be customized with macros as well i'm going to show you how to set that up there's your windows mac switch you also have a usb type-c port in the upper left-hand corner 6.5 degree built-in angle and there is that textured control knob i'm going to show you something really cool about this in a second here's how much the magic keyboard weighs less than a pound here's the larger kikron q1 that's getting close to 4 pounds 3.85 pounds but notice the q2 it's almost the same weight as the cube one so this thing is heavy it is definitely not going to move around on your desktop it's going to stay firmly planted on the desk and even with its 65 layout size probably not going to be something you want to travel with given its weight but i love the fact that it's all metal of course you have those removable keycaps you get the stabilizers there on those larger keys such as the enter key let me show you how to remove the key switches now so we're just going to go in there grab that switch out just like that you see the pins you want to make sure you put those back in in the right direction so you don't bend the pins and my fully assembled ki kron q2 comes with gatoron g pro switches these are red switches of course which have a linear response so when you press it it literally just goes straight down there is no click there is no bump it is just a linear press some people might like that some people may not there's no stabilizers there that screw in and that is a nice feature to keep that space bar and keep the enter key or return key stable so we're going to remove all of these red switches because i want to swap them out for more tactile blue switches you can see i have removed literally every single switch on this keyboard and it is just bare bones and this is what it looks like when you purchase the bare bones version you can hear that steel plate and notice the south facing rgb which faces the typist and the gateron g pro switches allow the light to shine through okay so now it's time to go ahead and replace the key switches these red ones the linear ones with the super tactile clicky gatoron g pro blue switches so of course you don't have to use blue switches you can use red or brown switches honestly i just wanted to try something different i think ultimately for typing the blue switches are the best because they provide the best tactile response but they are super loud when you type so that's something to consider as well because if you like it really quiet these are not the switches for you i can tell you that i'll let you hear what they sound like here in just a second but first we need to go ahead and reinstall the key caps let's go ahead and do that now and here is the end result looks exactly the same right but it sounds a lot different and it definitely feels a lot different when you type here's what it sounds like so if you're super sensitive to sound yeah like i said these are not going to be the switches for you stick to brown or red instead so here is the usb type c cable notice kikron got rid of the aviator cable and that's actually a good thing in my opinion because that was just needlessly complex so now that we're connected to our mac you can see the rgb lights fire up and they look good right and you can fully control and customize the rgb lighting using the built-in function keys so if i hold function one and press the tab button that toggles the rgb light on and off pretty simple right so you can also customize the pattern for the rgb light so if you hold the function key and press either q or a you can cycle through the various patterns available and there are quite a few of them you can decrease the backlight with function 1s or increase the backlight with function1w you can change the backlight hue by using function1e or function1d to go in either direction you can decrease or increase the saturation as well using function 1 r or f and you can adjust the speed of the backlight as well when you've selected an animated pattern so i'm slowing it down just like that now you'll notice that there is no dedicated function row but that isn't as detrimental as it may seem on the surface because this keyboard is highly customizable with via so you can toggle between the various layers using the function keys so you can set up different commands and different actions based on the layers that you're currently in so you can see layer number two is dedicated to the mac you see all the mac central centric keys there and you also see the pre-configured rgb controls but you can take this a whole step further by setting up macros so i can create my own macros to perform certain functions for instance i'm going to create a macro that will zoom in and out of the timeline of final cut pro so all you do is type in the key codes that correspond to the keys that you want to press so in this case i want to use command plus in command minus so here i have command minus and that zooms out right and then on macro number one i create command plus and then i use shift z which basically fits the timeline into view in final cut pro so i have all three of those macros set up now i just need to assign them to a particular key i'm actually going to assign it to yes you guessed it the control knob which has three functions you can turn it left you can turn it right and you can press in on it so i have assigned those three macros to the control knob so when i turn it left it will zoom out when i turn it right it will zoom in and when i press on it it will fit the timeline into view and that's just the tip of the iceberg there's so many other ways you can customize your keyboard you can customize the various layers you can customize your lighting if you want to so you can assign various lighting controls to various keys and here is that macro that i created using the control knob notice turns to the left zooms out turns to the right zooms in and then i click on it and it will shift z which will fit the timeline into view when i press it like that of course one of the popular use cases for the control knob is obviously to control the volume and then click to mute that's set up by default but i like customizing it to do some other cool things so ladies and gentlemen what do you guys think this is the geekron q2 it's an improvement over the q1 in my opinion i love the compact size i love the standard usb cable i love the control knob i do wish it had bluetooth though no bluetooth is a bummer but bluetooth also has its downsides reliability being one of them battery life being another sometimes it's just simpler to have a cable plug it in and it just works now the fully assembled q2 with the knob will set you back 180 bucks so not cheap but there's also a bare bones version starting at 150 bucks so what are your thoughts on the q2 would you consider it let me know down below in the comment section thumbs up if you appreciated this video and subscribe for more videos like this this is jeff with nine to five mac\n"