the keychron q2. Am I going to waste your time? No it's pretty good.
If you're an average gamer just want a keyboard and don't want to do anything to it
then this is probably it i mean listen to this
but what if i told you that we can make it a lot better with only a couple easy steps.
In this video i'm going to take the keychron q2 give it a quick review and then make it a lot
better now you don't need to mod this keyboard but howdy hey i'm Hipyo Tech and i'm going to do it
speaking of howdy hey howdy hey to everyone that hit the subscribe and like button nice.
No like you can still hit it.... Here oh, nice. Howdy hey.
Anyways let me start with the disclosures this keyboard was sent to me by keychron.
I am an affiliate with them meaning that if you purchase it i will make money.
After what i said about the q1 i was a little bit confused that they still wanted to send
this to me, but you know what q2. This board is available for purchase
right now via the link down in the description and wait don't buy it yet just
listen to my review and decide if you want it. It starts at $149 for the bare bones version
and guess what there's $30 shipping guaranteed so any price you see on their website add $30 bucks
to it they're a little bit shady with that. I have the fully assembled with knob
so it would be $210 after shipping but it also comes in an iso version a normal version without
the knob and there's a bunch of different weird variations but we don't really care about that
you can read a product page now Keychron debuted their enthusiast mechanical keyboards with the q1
which is a 75 keyboard that kept the f row however in my previous video in the top right.
We can clearly hear it has some ping issues that's me every time i play Valorant. Now theoretically
they fixed some of this and that this board should not sound as pingy but we're gonna put that to
the test and see whether or not this keyboard is a blacksmith's anvil, or a good keyboard.
Now something that's still for some reason missing on the q1 is the knob that you see
in the top right uh it controls volume can play and pause it's neat i like knobs knobs are good
stop british viewers stop i know what you're doing anyways this board is a double gasket mount and
we'll be taking a look at that soon but as you can see there's no f row and there are
some chunky bezels the design of this keyboard is interesting and i can't quite decide if i like it
it does however have a windows and a mac slider so if you're somebody that goes between two different
work computers that's pretty helpful however it's not wireless oh and uh yeah you can swap the keys
out as well if your windows are mac and rgb epic rgb gamer time let's go this board doesn't come
with shine through keycaps so if that's your type of thing you're gonna have to buy those separately
but it does come with keycaps that aren't too bad and some epic rgb mode that is
programmable via qmk and via via is a brilliant software that lets you customize your keyboard's
layout and lighting and such so 100 good thing good software to set up macros change keys adjust
lighting and whoa look at this flex oh my gosh that's the gasket mount keep that in mind now
let's get to this keyboard's dirty little secret oh wait don't take off a spacebar like that browns
no it's it's fine they're gather on browns they're okay they're not they're not the worst i actually
kind of like browns and screw and stabilizers oh my gosh so this keyboard comes with three
different switch options reds which are linear and relatively light browns which are kind of tactile
and blues which are tactile and clicky as of recording blues have already sold out and i've
lost faith in humanity although if you're an enthusiast you're probably more interested in
this which are hot swap sockets no matter what version of this board you buy you'll be able to
replace the switches very easily by just using a switch puller if only you could replace teeth that
easily dentists are expensive um anyways uh this keyboard uses double shot abs keycaps these have
a relatively sharp sound profile and i'm not that keen on them but we'll talk about that more later
the back of this board is incredibly plain and collects fingerprints like mad speaking of mad
i have some of the products listed down in the bottom left with youtube's new product feature
let me know if that works for you guys it just click on them if you want i guess
it seems really janky but it's a thing now speaking of janky i janked the heck out of
those screws and got them all out now if you're following along at home to make your board better
this part is important if you're doing a bare bones build i'm not sure if these gaskets will
be pre-installed and if they're not make sure you install them very carefully as these gaskets are
really easy to rip but if your board is pre-built it's kind of whatever but these gaskets are poron
they're incredibly squishy and there's one on the bottom side and top side of the pcb it kind
of makes it so it sits into the plate really nicely there's also a layer of foam in between
the plate and pcb this kind of reduces vibrations makes it less pingy and also this layer of foam at
the bottom with this interesting film now this board is still a little bit pingy but nowhere
near as pingy and maybe this film has to do with it i can't remember if this was on the q1 or not
like it just kind of sounds like metal now but what's most impressive about this board is the
incredibly pillowy gasket performance like i'm not pressing hard here this is kind of the normal
typing pressure that you'd be applying and this board definitely absorbs a lot of those vibrations
so okay that space bar is incredibly loud and that's been pointed out by
a lot of different people and there is fixes for that that
you can look up personally i kind of like it though but what about the stabilizers
so the stock stabilizers are a little bit rattly but i'd call that like not awful i think if you
were to not mod this keyboard you would probably be happy if you were most people but i'm Hipyo
Tech and i'm gonna mod it first i started off by putting three layers of tape on the pcb
this is the tempest tape mod and i've done a video on it that you can check
out in the top right if you want the full details i wanted to make the board
more poppy and less sharp here's the before and after
the space bar be thonking though but yeah you hear out in the after it's a little bit poppier it goes
or whatever now if you're really lazy you could stop there done done deal board sounds better but
i've got more to show okay all right so here's a bonus meme bonus meme time for some reason
Keychron sent a bunch of christmasy keycaps which you know what i am not mad about i actually really
i these are pretty interesting look at this guy's a little candy cane oh my gosh look at him
now i think this was to show off Keychron's keycap offering because they sell a bunch of dye sub pbt
keycaps and i'll put those in the description and for 40 dollars you know what they're pretty
good Keychron i'll give you that they are thick pbt they have a deeper sound profile
and honestly the printing on these was really decent i'm not mad about this whatsoever but
we're not gonna use those christmasy keycaps right no way anyways let's get back to the build um i
took off all of those keycaps and now i'm gonna be oh there's the switches there they go bye bye
brown see you later and now i've got some switches up my sleeve hee-hee if you're following along
at home with a bare bones board this is where you can start oh yeah by the way screw and stabilizers
they aren't too bad but i won't really talk about that much now my goal here is gonna be get this
board sounding a lot deeper so i had something just perfect for the task i've been asked to
try these switches literally more times than i can count and these are the gatteronbox inc v2s
for those of you that don't know much about switches i'll get into it a little bit but not too
much to improve the sound these have been lubed and filmed and if you want to hear more about the
lubing process i'll maybe do a video about it soon it might be might be due for a refresher
but essentially each one of these switches has been modded with lube and a film now keeps for
all as an affiliate and they sent these out if you want to get them you can use code hipio to save
five percent but like i would have bought them anyways now with these switches lubed and filmed
this is gonna sound so good like i was testing this out before i even put these keycaps on and
i went now these switches are relatively light with only a 60 gram spring and they're linear
which means they go all the way down smooth this means we'll be getting a lot of bottom out sound
because i'm gonna bottom out a lot easier on these than i would on like a 70 gram linear
but what keycaps is hippo gonna use huh my god he actually used the christmas keycaps what is he
doing it's it's january no well y'all i can't be stopped uh this actually looks so cool like what
okay so i mentioned i wanted to go for a deeper sound profile and the stock keycaps that came
with this board just aren't fit for it abs sounds a lot sharper i guess clackier i don't quite know
how to describe it and these thicker pvt keycaps sounded a lot deeper so it was what i was going
for you know now if you do choose to get this board there's more mods you can do to it that
will make it sound even better it's just this is the bare bones that i wanted to do for this video
but as i said before you really kind of don't need to mod this keyboard if you're super lazy
like if you have a friend that wants to get into keyboards send them this keyboard as a gateway
drug because it'll be good but not good not as good as it could be and then they're gonna get
into modding it and the next thing you know they're addicted to keyboards and they're
watching the hippotech youtube channel and my master plan has been complete have them subscribe
too now i'll show you a sound test right after i make this board a little bit cooler with the
sponsor of today's video cablemod is the one-stop shop for any custom cable that you might dream of
okay ignore this packaging i've opened this before i was too excited it normally looks really nice
with cablemod's customizer tool i made a very very sleek custom cable and it's a straight cable
however if you're into coiled cables they have coiled cables pre-configured starting at 39 if
you want to make the perfect cable for your build or just have a little bit of fun then click that
link down in the description to visit cablemod for the prices these cables are very very good
and very competitive you should check them out if you watch the whole sponsor spot then howdy hey
anyways i'll be leaving you with the sound test please watch the whole thing i've got a before
middle and after for you to compare and then do a sound test of your own in the comments anyways
you