The Keychron K11 Max | Hacker News Reader

The Keychron K11 Max

taoofmac.com

12 pointsrcarmo8 comments

So is this paid for or not? The author seems to be struggling to say he got a free unit, worth money, meaning paid.

"few weeks after I posted my review of the K7 Max, Keychron reached out to ask if I wanted to try out the K11 Max, a compact Alice layout keyboard–and I ended up saying yes."

try out...

"Note: Keychron sent me an early review unit of the Keychron K11 Max and a travel pouch, and this piece follows my review policy"

sent me... there's a policy...

"I don’t do paid reviews (i.e., no money changes hands, there is no sponsorship, etc.)."

but...

"Keychron K11 Max Supplied by Keychron"

supplied?

So I have to conclude he was bribed with a free unit that he didn't return. So this is an ad not a review.

try out reads as a temporary thing to me

I suppose there will be a generation of computer users who jumped onto the recent mechanical keyboard fad, but as they age and develop more problems, will slowly investigate better layouts and this mildly split keyboard may be a start.

But this user isn't one of them, having mentioned used a Microsoft Natural Keyboard over 20 years ago due to injury. It's odd to see the first conclusion is "this keyboard is more comfortable", which they already knew.

Also RIP Microsoft Natural Keyboards, I still have three laying about and would use any one of them over this layout.

The fact that ` is entered by fn1+Esc is a bit awkward, since ` is very commonly used in writing technical documentations. fn1+Esc seems to be a very stretchy combination, while there are plenty of empty spaces on the keyboard to fit one more key in.

Also common in Go and JavaScript. Any keyboard that does that is a hard pass for me.

I don't like that either. Fortunately that only seems to be on their <=65% Alice layout keyboards. Which is a small form factor I really don't like anyway.

Their >=75% Alice layouts include the tilda and are still pretty compact.

I've been thinking of grabbing their Q14 Pro, which is an Alice layout (full, including the tilda), with the number pad on the left side instead of the right, full aluminum body (super heavy, which I like, but you won't be taking it to and from work everyday), with wired or wireless to 3 devices.

I'm a big fan of their keyboards. I've gotten three of them (all in use), custom switches, custom keycaps, covers and palm rests, etc. There's a slippery slope on the path to achieving keyboard perfection, but it's fun.

That looks like combining the worse parts of both staggered and ortho layouts--just choose one or the other. There will be a motor-memory learning curve that doesn't transfer to any other keyboard.

Well this is blocked by Cloudflare for me, but it looks like I lucked out because it's just an ad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com