Keychron has been on a roll over the last year, making the custom keyboard hobby more accessible than ever. Its Q-series has brought full-aluminum, enthusiast-grade keyboards into the mainstream and its V-series dropped prices further by swapping out aluminum for more traditional plastic cases. The company just launched its gaming brand, Lemokey, and with it the L3, its first, tri-mode wireless gaming keyboard. It brings through many of the features of the Q-series with a fresh design, dedicated macro buttons, and fast 2.4GHz wireless.
Worlds collide with gaming and custom keyboards coming together into this one new product, but at $214, is it worth picking up for yourself? It just might be. There’s no arguing with its quality and typing experience, but whether it’s the perfect fit for you will depend on exactly what you need from a gaming keyboard.
Specifications
Current Price: $214 (Lemokey, Kickstarter)
Lemokey L3 - What Is It?
The Lemokey L1 is a unique blend between custom mechanical keyboards and gaming keyboards. It makes a strong first impression for both. If you’re used to gaming keyboards, you’re probably going to be enamored with its heavy aluminum case and enhanced typing experience. If you’re a custom keyboard enthusiast, its design is going to stand out, meshing together industrial aesthetics with something that feels almost sci-fi.
The case is impressive. Made entirely of CNC-milled aluminum, it weighs in at 4.4 pounds, so it won’t slide around on your desk. It comes in silver, black, or navy blue and each is adorned with eye-catching nuances, like raised plates around the key areas with exposed screws, a bold aluminum volume knob, or the large indicator lights above the arrow keys. There’s even a little grille along the bottom right for the wireless antenna, but a single cut-out would have worked fine. It’s overstated, which is the story for the L3 as a whole, really.
While its design is certainly more edgy than Keychron’s Q-series and leans more into “gaming” on that front, the other half of the equation (at least when it comes to design and layout) is the column of dedicated macro keys along the left side. There are four keys, each flat and imprinted with bold X markings, that can be remapped using VIA, its open-source and web-accessible configuration tool.
In fact, the entire keyboard can be remapped and assigned different keys, shortcuts, and macros across multiple layers. You can have entire keysets for individual games if you take the time to program it and each is saved to its onboard storage. If you need to make a change, you can simply load up the VIA website, load the JSON (available for download through the website), and make your changes in your browser. It's neat functionality.
The other big change from Keychron's Q keyboards is that the L3 features 2.4GHz wireless connectivity, as well as Bluetooth 5.1 with three devices, and wired over USB Type-C. The addition of 2.4GHz has been a long time coming and is great to finally see in an enthusiast-level Keychron (Lemokey) keyboard. It also means that you can game wirelessly without sacrificing responsiveness.
There’s battery life to spare, too. The L3 comes with a 4,000mAh battery that Keychron rates for 200 hours over 2.4GHz and 300 hours over Bluetooth. If you use RGB, this is more than halved (just like every other RGB keyboard), so you should plan on having to recharge every week or two.
Internally, the design is the same as seen on the Keychron’s latest Q-series keyboards. It features a soft, gasket-mounted design with layers of sound-dampening foam. Gasket mounting differs from most other gaming keyboards because it rests the circuit board and plate holding the switches on soft foam strips. This isolates the case from the typical vibrations from typing and creates a softer, less fatiguing typing experience with a softer, more rounded sound. It allows the keys to flex under the fingers as you can see in the video below, but note that this is a good type of flex — key flex — versus the bad type of flex — case flex — often remarked upon with traditional keyboards.
The keyboard is also built with an exceptional typing experience in mind. It comes with your choice of switches: Gateron Jupiter Red, Gateron Jupiter Brown, and Gateron Jupiter Banana. Each of these switches is pre-lubed and exceptionally smooth. My sample originally came with red switches, which were very good and offered a light, clacky sound profile. I swapped out to a set of Jupiter Bananas, however, and fell in love. They have a strong tactility and position the bump high in the key press. They’re smooth, sound good, and feel better. The high bump makes you feel like you’re flying if you type fast.
Of course, the switches are all hot-swappable too. If you’d ever care to try another (one of the best aspects of the hobby), all you need to do is pull the originals out and press in another. This allows you to do two awesome things. First, if a switch ever dies or you accidentally spill a drink on your keyboard (and it doesn’t fry the circuitboard), you can pull out any dead or sticky switches and replace them yourself. Second, if you ever get tired of the sound or feel of your setup, you can buy a new set of switches and make it feel brand new without buying a new keyboard.
Both of these are far cheaper than simply replacing the board. Buying a full replacement set of switches directly from Keychron/Lemokey is only $31 ($0.28 a switch). There are many other great switches to choose from, too. Gateron Black Inks are a classic favorite and are about $0.75 a switch. On the budget end, Akko V3 Cream Yellow Pro are sold in packs of 45 for only $13.99 ($0.31 a switch) and are probably the best budget switches you can buy right now.
The keyboard also features pre-lubed stabilizers and were well done on my sample. Like all production keyboards, this can be a little inconsistent between samples, so you should be prepared to add some lube if you’re you have any rattling or ticking. Mine was perfectly find though and was generously lubed.
The keyboard also features per-key backlighting. There are a number of presets built directly into the keyboard and you can also dial in the exact color you’re looking for using integrated hue and saturation controls. You won’t find the intricate lighting options of iCUE or Synapse here, but it’s easy to get your keyboard looking good.
Lemokey L3 - A Gaming Keyboard?
The big question is how the L3 performs as a gaming keyboard, and overall I would say that it does well. The experience of actually using it is very good, easily near the top of what current gaming keyboards have to offer today. It’s soft, responsive, and feels so good to game on that you may come back for one more round just to use it some more. It genuinely lacks nothing alongside the use experiences of the likes of the ROG Azoth or Razer Blackwidow V4. And on top of that, it has a case that makes the rest of the gaming keyboard competition feel like absolute lightweights.
The 2.4GHz connection is just as good as you would hope it to be. At this point, 2.4GHz really isn’t anything that special. It’s fast and wired-like. That’s all the Lemokey needed to deliver and it does. Using it, you can play without the typical latency associated with wireless over Bluetooth, which makes it a much more worthwhile keyboard for gaming.
The left-side macro cluster is also great. For simple commands, these keys are very useful. I also like that they’re along the left side, allowing for easier access without the need to remove your hand from the mouse. These are well-placed and useful, even outside of gaming. Since you can remap them to anything, it’s the perfect place for media controls or Windows shortcuts.
But while VIA is great for custom mechanical keyboards, it’s not designed to compete with gaming software. Actually using those buttons for macros is a pain because VIA makes macros a pain. You can’t simply press a record button and go. Instead, you can type in a text string. Anything more complicated involves manually typing in bracketed keycodes in a set syntax to make sure they function. That includes for simple tasks, like adding a modifier to a key (ex. Alt+1). It’s possible but cumbersome and certainly not something you’ll be able to do on the fly.
The end result is a keyboard that’s unquestionably good and has some neat qualities to its design, layout, and connectivity but that feels like a middle-ground rather than a true gaming keyboard. Will it work for gaming? Absolutely, the same way any great mechanical keyboard will. But without that software support, it’s just not as feature-rich as a true “gaming keyboard.”
Here’s the catch: do you need those features? If you don’t need advanced macros, then the limitations of VIA probably aren’t going to affect you. If you don’t, then what you have is a cool, aggressive-looking custom keyboard that sounds and feels better than everything this side of the ROG Azoth. That may very well still be worth buying into, especially if you can think of some uses for its programmable column.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, while VIA might put some limits on advanced macros, the Lemokey L3 is still a great keyboard. It offers a refined typing experience with lots of customization potential. The wireless connectivity is excellent, so you can finally cut the cord without worrying about adding latency to your gaming experience. The look won’t be for everyone, and at $214, it’s on the pricier end, but there’s no arguing with how much it has to offer.
The product described in this article was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes.
