Okay so here's the thing.
When you learn how to use a program like Adobe Premiere, sooner or later it comes a moment
when you decide you want to make your workflow faster.
For many editors, that's the moment you decide you want to learn *all* of the shortcuts.
Soon after that, you also realize that's not going to happen.
If you, like me, are frustrated from trying to remember pages of shortcuts, this 1byone
single-handed programmable keyboard could be worth considering.
First off, let me introduce the keyboard.
It's worth mentioning that it's designed with gaming in mind, but nevertheless it serves
our purposes quite well.
It feels really solid on the whole, with a metal plate holding it together on the bottom
and some hard plastic on top.
It offers 29 fully customizable keys, including a space bar on the bottom-left.
I find the positioning of the space bar just perfect if you use it on the left hand side,
but it becomes plainly awkward on the right, so, sorry lefties.
The other 28 buttons are powered by Khail Blue mechanical switches, which are an absolute
pleasure to use.
They're extremely responsive and easy to press, and the anti-ghosting guarantees maximum performance
even in intense scenarios.
Right below the keys you'll also find a palm rest, with a rubber coating that offers a
nice grip.
The keyboard offers 6 different customized lighting modes with various eye-catching effects,
including the possibility to pick a color for each button.
If you're looking for something less distracting, you can also pick just one color or turn the
lighting off completely.
The sides are backlit as well, and in this case you can choose between on, breathing
light, or completely turn it off, but you have no choice as for the color.
Overall I really dig how the keyboard is built and designed, so let's get to why you should
use it in the first place.
As already mentioned, the keyboard is fully programmable via the included software.
As a little side note, I wasn't able to correctly install it until I copied the file to my PC
as the title contained some Chinese characters that apparently
Windows couldn't handle correctly.
Oddities aside, the program works like a charm once you install it.
You get three independent modes for the keyboard, meaning that you can register three different
layouts to use for different applications.
For each key you can assign a different single key, a macro, or a predefined action like
Save or Undo.
The macro creator is really intuitive to use, making macros easy to add, edit and delete.
The included software also allows you to customize the lighting for each button, which is by
the way also possible via the keyboard itself.
Finally, you also get the option to Import and Export the configuration, so that you
can for example try out different layouts and save them for later.
Something that I would have liked to see is the possibility to change the lighting
together with the modes,
so that you're visually reminded of what each button does according to the layout,
which would make using it that much easier.
So okay, once the software is also out of the way, let's get to the actual editing experience.
When it comes to programs like Premiere, you can either: A - try to learn a whole lot of
shortcuts, or B - give up and navigate to everything via mouse, which is a huge waste
of time.
What you can do with a programmable keyboard like this is something in the middle: you
program the keys to replace the most used shortcuts, and you memorize just a few of
the least used ones.
This has of course it pros and cons: the obvious pro for me is that -for the most part- I can
edit with just my mouse on the right and the single-handed keyboard on the left, and I
find it a really efficient way to do it.
The problem is that if I need something that I didn't program the keyboard to do, I need
to either navigate to it via the mouse, or switch to the full keyboard, and both of these
slow the whole process down.
Of course the usefulness of such a solution also depends on the program you're using.
For example, when I'm editing in Resolve or Lightroom I need just a few shortcuts, so a solution
like this is perfect and I never have to lift my fingers off the keyboard.
After a few days of practice, I got to know how to use all of the three layouts available,
and I use one for Photoshop and Lightroom, one for Premiere, and the third for Resolve.
My personal usage is of course going to be different from yours, but in case you're interested
in getting started quickly you'll find my configuration file in the description.
Okay so, long story short, should you, as an editor, consider buying it?
As for the device itself, this is a really nice keyboard, with great usability and build
quality, and if you already know you need a programmable extension for your existing one,
then this a great option.
If on the other hand you're just looking for something that can speed up your photo or
video editing, then I wouldn't go as far as to call this a necessity, but I can tell you that
is has helped a lot my editing process and I don't think I'm going back anytime soon.