Keychron Q8 (Alice Layout) QMK Custom Mechanical Keyboard

I've bought a number of mechanical keyboards over the last ~10 years or so and this is my favorite. It sits in the sweet spot for me between a traditional 65% layout like the K6 and something more exotic like the ErgoDox EZ (not quite EZ enough for me) which has a board for each hand and an ortholinear orientation.

The unboxing experience was really, really good. I've used a Keychron K6, and this is a completely different beast. It feels heavy when you pull it out of the box, but in a really good way, like when you pull takeout out of a bag and you think "damn they loaded me up with the good stuff". Colors look great in person--I got the black layout with dark letter keys/light modifier keys. The keys feel great and it is surprisingly quiet. I got browns coming from a Ducky SF One with blues that was a bit too loud. This feels so quiet even for browns I had to doublecheck I didn't accidentally order some other color. I think I could've gotten blues because the board has so much sound dampening in its design.

I haven't tried anything programmable yet--I prefer to be able to just plug and play and this keyboard lets me do that so far. I have a feeling I'll eventually remap del/home to pg up/ pg down, actually nevermind, they do that with fn1 modifier I just realized while writing this. Wow! Everything just kinda works the way you'd think it ought to. Definitely worth the $205 my company paid for it, but TBH I'd buy this out of pocket.

When I bought the keyboard I was sold by having my first split layout solid keyboard. This thing is gorgeous. I mean it and I own all DAS keyboards and a bunch of duckys. Quality will not disappoint (black A with brown switches), at least in the black version. Knob is fantastic for volume control. It's build like a tank. Heavy, solid metal. Fantastic feeling typing on it........... IF you can find the keys. I'm typing this review on this Alice keyboard now.

My main issue, as a software developer, is the split in the middle. My bad, I never considered: shortcuts. I type really quick, and I guess I'm not a pure typist. My finger will often reach across to find the Y and H and G keys. That is really annoying. But consider worse things such as cmd+h or cmd+y and a ton of shortcuts you can't simply do with this layout. Also the lack of tilde... if you're a software developer and use Slack or Jira etc. you'll know the lack of tilde is painful! The split spacebar, however, has never been a problem.

I will not be returning this keyboard because it's my own damn fault. It's an amazing piece of hardware. It feels amazing. And if you type emails all day this might be perfect. But if you heavily use shortcuts all day,... be careful and mind the gap!

I've already put the Q1 v2 on order, same colour scheme (black A), same switches (G brown). I only hope the build feels as solid as this one. A truly magnificent keyboard, with terrible UX, to me anyway. Alice, back to the drawing board.

TLDR: Really amazing MKB and worth the price tag. I can't stop typing on this board hence why this review is lengthy.

I've been on the hunt for an Alice keyboard since I started getting into MKBs and glad that I waited till Keychron announced that they'll be producing the Q8. Since it's new I can't find much reviews on this keyboard.
Unboxing experience was top notch. Package foam was high quality and all the pieces were neatly organized, had some board that did not understand that importance. They didn't skimp on the quality of the tools, I had some bad keycap and switch pullers in the past and the ones included in the board are a step up.

The board was heavier than imagined but that's due to the materials in the keyboard. I don't mind since this keyboard will be stationed at my desk and won't be taking it outside since the Silver case is so nice and would be a shame to have scratched. No flex on the case of this board which really brings a premium feel. BTW there are no height adjustment on the keyboard but I feel that the natural angle of this keyboard is good enough.

Played around with VIA. Lighting effects on the board are delightful and bright. With the LEDs being south facing it really elevated the experience. It took me a minute to realize that the physical Win or Mac Toggle on the board was to sets the board to Layer 0 or Layer 1. If you play around in VIA you'll get a hang of how you'd like to customize the board. For example I changed the default functionality of the knob to be Page Up & Page Down with the down press as Screenshot for productivity reasons.

It would be nice to get a read out of the keycap sizes for the non-standard keys so I can purchase novelty keycap sets. It would also be great to see a tutorial video of breakdown/assembly. Perhaps in the near future youtubers would be doing a video about this board but it would be great if there was one from Keychron on Day 1 so we can get the ins and outs of the board. Would also like to see the difficulty on changing the knob on the board for future modifications.

If you are curious about Alice styled keyboards you should really give this one a try.

I got the fully assembled, non-knob one and I've been on it for maybe an hour at this point and I am absolutely floored at the quality at this price point. This is my first experience with this company and I am completely in awe. The build quality is miles above what I had expected, the performance kilometers beyond my wildest dreams, and the sound. THE SOUND. I hadn't ever used a gasketed keyboard before but I can't believe how great the feel is and THE SOUND! I'm just a babbling idiot at this point because all I want to do is keep typing. Buy this if you're even remotely considering it. If you feel any disappointment AT ALL in comparison to another keyboard, please let me know because I'm skeptical it can get better than this. Great product. Unreal price. Top notch quality.

good