Keychron S1 QMK Custom Mechanical Keyboard

I love this keyboard. It is a heavy, solid low-profile king! I originally got it to just try out low-profile vs normal profile, but now I don't event want to touch my other keyboards.

There are some things I don't like about it:
* the raised feet are flat and not angled. When you put on the raised feet, they do not sit flat on the ground, they rest on the edges of the squares. This just doesn't make sense to me. The raised feet should be cut at an angle so the feet sit flat. They even come with a spare set of front feet which are still flat
* the keyboard is hard to pick up and move around. this is because of two reasons: the sides are flat with no way to get your fingers underneath, and the keyboard is just straight up really heavy! Heavy is a good thing, it adds to the premium feel, but I wish it were just a little bit easier to pick up without it slipping and my fingers catching on the keycaps.
* the layout, I don't like not having space between certain groups of keys like the F keys and the arrow cluster. I find it increases my error rate.

With that said, I did buy the K1 Pro TKL because I thought it would be a better version of this keyboard. On paper, it fixes every one of my problems above, but it just isn't the same. The S1 has so much better of a typing feel that I just can't see the K1 Pro as anything other than a toy. So I guess I'll just be here waiting for more S keyboards. Hopefully Keychron can figure out low-profile knobs too.

Also Keychron, I don't care for backlights, but I really care for hotswap. Please stop making me buy the RGB version just to get hotswap.

The keyboard itself is really good! I bought the one with blue switches hot-swappable RGB LED and I'm in love with it! Honestly I can feel the premium difference when comparing to my Keychron K3 V2 (non-pro model). I knew that the keycaps wouldn't allow the LED lights to go through, so i think that the LEDs are kind of useless in this context. When you are looking to the keyboard in a environment with low light, the LED makes it harder to see the characters on the keyboard, and that's why I have been using it with the LEDs off. Unless you want to switch the keycaps for another one that allows the LED light to go through, I would stick with the no-LED version.

After about a month of everyday use - this is the best keyboard I ever owned. Compared to my previous K3 the S1 feels much more solid, it's heavier and sturdier. It sounds and feels great. I would have rated 5-stars if it wasn't for an annoying assembly/quality issue I had to deal with (described below).

The above opinion is unfortunately after some tinkering and initial disappointment. After receiving the keyboard and plugging it in for a test run I noticed that the left Shift key feels a little spongy, much different than the rest. The Enter and Backspace key, which are of similar size and use the same stabilizer mechanism felt completely different. I pulled off the keycaps to compare - the Shift key's stabilizers were completely flooded with lubricant. I wiped the excess off and also swapped the switch itself with some other key, just to rule that out. I hoped thought it would smooth out over time with use.
Unfortunately, things got worse - after a few weeks of use, the Shift key started to "stick" if bottomed out, really annoying, especially since this is one of the most used keys. I finally decided to completely take the keyboard apart and deal with it for good. After disassembling the keyboard I found out that the stabilizer would come into contact with a rubber standoff, which also had lubricant all over it. This was the cause of stickiness. Cleaning everything up, and reapplying a small dose of lubricant was all that was needed to get the Shift key to feel great.

Forgetting all that - like I already stated - I'm super happy with the keyboard. It just shouldn't be necessary for me to take 2 hours out of my day to take apart, clean, and reassemble a new product to get it to work the way it should have worked right out of the box, just because someone was a bit overzealous.

Got it today, hands on my first mechanical keyboard and feels so good. And a lot of difference in day-to-day way of typing.

I rate this keyboard 5/5. It is built solid, sturdy, heavy. It's weight plus the rubber feet keeps it stable. I think the S1 is much better than the K3 in both sound and tactile feel (both using red switches) which I previously owned which I gave to my wife who loves it very much. The sound is not annoying, very much reminiscent of old mechanical keyboards. I would definitely recommend this keyboard to my friends/colleagues.