Keychron's new wireless low-profile mechanical keyboard promises ultra-smooth POM switches and a compact layout
Keychron has an expansive catalogue of low-profile mechanical keyboards, and, while they have decent minimalist design, versatile and responsive connectivity options, and good build quality, as we found out in our K15 Max review, the Gateron Low-Profile 2.0 mechanical switches were a bit of a let-down. This point was further driven home when brands like Lofree released the Flow series keyboards with full-POM switches, which proved to be smoother, more consistent, and generally better to use when we reviewed the Flow Lite.
Keychron seems to have seen the light, though, recently announcing the Keychron K9 Max, which now hopes to compete with the POM crowd with Keychron's Milk POM switches, which come as standard in the K9 Max. The K9 Max comes with both non-hot-swap, soldered switches (for $99.99) and in a hot-swap version (for $109.99). For the sake of longevity, the hot-swap version should be the only real contender for your money.
Keychron K9 Max highlights and specifications
The biggest highlight for the Keychron K9 Max is the new Keychron Milk POM switches, which comer in three different flavours — Red (45 gf linear), Brown (50 gf tactile), and Banana (57 gf sharp tactile) — but they're all made of a combination of a POM housing and stem, which should make them feel quite smooth throughout the travel. The total travel is also marginally increased to 3.1 mm, with the linear switch actuating at 1.7 mm while the two tactile options actuate at 1.7 mm. The whole keyboard also only weighs in at 426 g, which makes it a solid contender for an on-the-go keyboard.
The Keychron K9 Max uses the same tried-and-true formula that all of Keychron's low-profile keyboards use, now in a compact 60% layout with 61 keys. This means that it has an ABS plastic case with an integrated aluminium top plate and a floating keycap design. While a bit dated, the design fits in with Keychron's line-up and, more importantly, it doesn't stand out in a professional workplace — Keychron's apparent target market for the K-series low-profile keyboards. The K9 Max has a front height of 7.9 mm — nearly 5 mm lower than the Iqunix Magi65 Pro we recently praised in our review (available on Amazon starting at $139.99)
Reusing the same general formula does benefit the Keychron K9 Max in the sense that it features all the strong points we've come to expect from a Keychron keyboard, including the hardware OS and connectivity toggles, flip-out feet for improved ergonomics, internal sound damping foams, and the comfortable, quality double-shot PBT keycaps in the KSA (Keychron Spherical Angled) profile.
Connectivity on the K9 Max includes 2.4 GHz with 1 kHz polling for low latency, Bluetooth 5.2 with 120 Hz polling, and wired via a detachable USB-C cable. The battery in the K9 Max has a capacity of 1,550 mAh, which Keychron claims will deliver around 73 hours of working battery life with the backlighting off and 42 hours with the backlighting set to the lowest brightness. That backlighting is north-facing RGB, so it should be easy enough to find shine-through keycaps that work well on the K9 Max.
RGB lighting, remapping, and macro creation are all managed in the Keychron Launcher browser-based software, which is another strong suite for Keychron, since it can make the 60% layout a lot more versatile with features like Mod Tap and layer support. Launcher has always been a positive experience for us in prior Keychron reviews, but the Keychron K9 Max is also QMK compatible, if you'd rather use the open-source suite or VIA for customisation and configuration.
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