Keychron's popular K2 HE wireless gaming keyboard now has a fully walnut wood case, bronze accents, and a steep price
We recently reviewed the Keychron K4 HE, the bigger brother of the ever-popular K2 HE, and praised the wireless gaming keyboard for its excellent customisation and sleek looks — all of which are shared features with the K2 HE. Now, Keychron has updated the K2 HE with a new All-Wood Special Edition variant, which replaces the plastic and aluminium case and rosewood side panels of the original K2 HE and K4 HE Special Edition wireless keyboards with a new case made fully of walnut. The new Keychron K2 HE All-Wood Special Edition comes in at a steep $199.99, which is a $60 price increase over the Special Edition K2 HE found on Amazon.
Much like the recent solid copper Q1 HE, the Keychron K2 HE All-Wood Special Edition is mostly an aesthetic change, but the material swap will likely result in a slightly different sound signature. However, Keychron has not yet released a sound clip of the keyboard's typing sounds, and the plate and internal sound-damping materials remain unchanged, so it seems unlikely that any changes to the sound profile will be particularly profound. The new case material delivers rounder corners and a substantially heavier overall package. The OSA profile keycaps, which we've always praised in our Keychron reviews for their unique aesthetic and comfort, also look to have a slight brown hint to them to match the case's dark brown walnut wood.
Keychron K2 HE All-Wood Special Edition wireless keyboard details
The K2 HE All-Wood Special Edition also has bronze-coloured aluminium accents on the panel that contains the USB-C port and OS and connectivity mode switches — a touch that ties the look together nicely. The wood case does present some concerns, though, which will need to be explored by long-term testing and reviews. For starters, the front height of the K2 HE All-Wood Special Edition has grown to a rather tall 27.89 mm, which is almost a millimetre taller than the original K HE series keyboards that were already on the verge of presenting issues when it comes to comfort. It's also common for wood keyboard cases to warp over time without stabilisation, and Keychron has not mentioned whether this has been mitigated on the K2 HE All-Wood Special Edition. Another potential downside is that you lose the flip-out feet, which leaves the keyboard's typing angle locked at 4°.
Aside from the aesthetic changes, the K2 HE All-Wood Special Edition remains unchanged, and the keyboard features the same tri-mode wireless connectivity, with 1 kHz polling rate over 2.4 GHz and USB-C wired, and the same 4,000 mAh battery capacity, which resulted in around 100 hours of continuous use in our testing of the K4 HE, even with the RGB backlighting enabled. That same RGB backlighting is north-facing, which makes it compatible with shine-through keycaps, in the event that you might want to upgrade the keycaps at some stage. It is also still powered by the same Gateron Double-Rail Magnetic Nebula switches, which means the K2 HE All-Wood keyboard will not be compatible with typical HE switches, like the Wooting Lekker Tikkens we recently reviewed. This is a bit of a miss, especially since keyboards like the Keychron Q1 HE 8K (read our review here) do offer wider switch compatibility.
Fortunately, you do still get features like adjustable actuation, SOCD, Rapid Trigger, analogue input, and support for on-board macros and full keyboard remapping via Keychron Launcher.
Keychron K2 HE All-Wood Special Edition specs
| Form factor | Compact 75% US ANSI |
| Size | 323.13 × 133.13 mm, 23.7 mm front height |
| Typing angle | 4° |
| Case material | Rosewood |
| Weight | 890 g |
| Plate material and mounting style | Aluminium plate, tray mount |
| Connectivity | USB-C wired, 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth 5.1 |
| PCB and switches | Hot-swap PCB compatible with Gateron Double-rail magnetic switches and other south-pole magnetic switches, plate-mount clip-in stabilisers |
| Default switch options | Gateron Double-rail Magnetic Nebula, linear, 40–60 gf |
| Keycaps | Double-shot PBT; non-shine-through OSA profile (Special Edition), shine-through Cherry profile (Standard Edition) |
| Customisation software | Keychron Launcher, QMK |
| Backlight | Per-key north-facing RGB |
| Polling rate | 1,000 Hz via USB-C and 2.4 GHz, 125 Hz via Bluetooth |
| Battery capacity | 4,000 mAh |
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