In May of last year, I reviewed the Lofree Flow and concluded that it was one of, if not the very best, low profile keyboard you could buy in sound and feel. That still stands today, nearly a year later, but a new challenger has entered: the Lofree Edge.
Launching to Kickstarter today, this keyboard isn’t just low profile, it’s ultra low-profile. Measuring only 5.4mm, it’s easily the slimmest mechanical keyboard I’ve ever used. But it’s also built to an enthusiast’s standard, complete with gasket mounting, PBT keycaps, smooth POM switches, and a sleek carbon fiber and magnesium construction. This one is neat.
Specifications
Current Price: Starting at $129 (Kickstarter)
Lofree Edge - Disclaimer
If you’ve been reading this site or following my work for a while, you’ve probably noticed that I love mechanical keyboards. I’ve built dozens of them and reviewed hundreds across different websites. In fact, anyone that knows me knows how much I enjoy them because I’m about the only person they know that cycles out their keys every day with something new and usually pretty unique.
Over the years, I’ve made it a point to share exciting keyboards just about everywhere I write. Because of that, I’ve become “the keyboard guy” in some circles and have a reputation for being able to write a lot about them precisely because I enjoy them so much on a personal level.
These are the keyboards I have near my desk that I swap out to. In storage at work, I have 30 - 40, plus another 20 - 30 at home. It's my own personal keyboard archive. No, I don't use them all actively. I have favorites. And yes, I definitely, 100% have way too many mechanical keyboards. But then, this is part of how I make my living. Rationalization, FTW.
I share this because I’ve consulted with the PR team (me personally, not MMORPG) handling this launch and will not be reviewing it. I made it clear that they could not count on any review from MMORPG.com, from myself or anyone else, if I was brought in to consult, even if I wasn’t accepting money from Lofree directly. That would be wrong. I have turned down many such offers over the years and will continue to do so.
At the same time, I had the keyboard in hand more than a week before this and was genuinely extremely impressed at what Lofree has accomplished.There simply isn’t another low profile keyboard like this, which makes it exactly the kind of thing I like to write about and share with others the most.
So, in this article, I’m just going to write about what made it stand out to me and what made me willing to lend my expertise to the PR team in the first place. Even though Lofree didn’t pay me directly, you should know that I was compensated for my time. I received a single stipend and have no vested interest in the success of the Kickstarter. I won’t get or lose any money if the Kickstarter succeeds or fails. I just think it’s a cool keyboard and I kind of love cool keyboards.
Read this with that in mind.
Lofree Edge - What Makes It Special
The first thing to understand is that its predecessor, the Flow, was kind of ground-breaking. We’ve all seen low profile keyboards before. Even in the mechanical keyboard world, they’ve been around for years. And I have to tell you, I usually don’t like them. Over the years, I’ve found a few that I enjoy, but I always go back to my full-size options because of the fuller key presses and better sound, feel, and use experience.
The Flow broke that. It skillfully combined a low-profile design with many of the enthusiast elements that make full-size keyboards so appealing, and packaged it in an especially elegant, Apple-friendly package. It was gasket mounted. It used thick dye-sublimated PBT keycaps. It has custom-tier full POM switches. All of these things combined to make one of the deepest, best sounding, and best feeling low profile keyboards ever made.
The Edge takes many of those same elements and improves upon them. It’s even thinner, measuring only 5.4mm, right down into scissor switch thickness but still offering excellent mechanical keys. It’s still gasket mounted, which is pretty shocking when you see how thin it is. It features new, still-thick PBT keycaps and a clean white backlight.
On top of all of that, it has a newer, gamer-friendly design without going all in on aggressive aesthetics. Instead, the frame is topped in carbon fiber and has wider top and bottom bezels. The keycaps are black with an orange accent on the Enter key and a stylized, somewhat cybernetic font. The bottom case wraps around the edges with its silver finish for contrast. The bottom is milled with dozens of small holes that reveal the Lofree brand name peeking through subtly enough that you might miss it if you don’t stare for long enough. There are also a couple of adjustable tilt feet which the original lacked.
The backlight is a simple white and honestly isn’t very visible when you’re looking at it from a normal sitting position, which is a bit of a shame. Since the keycaps aren’t backlit, it will be difficult to use in the dark. Lofree fixed the issue of the backlights bleeding through the keycaps, though.
It’s a whole different vibe than the original Flow, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we still see a Flow 2 at some point in the future. It’s so different, in fact, that the comparisons to the Flow don’t do it any favors. They’re similar but also distinctly different products. Yet, if you liked that keyboard and don’t mind the aesthetics of the Edge, you’ll probably love it.
The switches here aren’t hot-swappable but I doubt you would want to. The keyboard uses new Kailh POM 2.0 switches that have carbon fiber imprinted top housings to match the rest of the case. More importantly, they’re matched to the rest of the keyboard in their size and resulting sound and feel. Compared to normal high-profile switches which have a 4.0mm travel distance, these have 2.4mm, which is even shorter than the 2.8mm of the Flow. There;still enough travel that they feel good and like real mechanical switches.
The keyboard is also fully programmable this time around using Lofree’s software package. It’s not VIA, which I would really have preferred to see, but remapping and programming is a possibility which helps its gaming capabilities.
Like last generation, it’s also fully wireless. Using a switch on the back, you can use it in wired mode at 1,000Hz, as fast as most gaming keyboards, or in Bluetooth mode at 125Hz. You can connect up to three devices and switch between them on the fly. The battery isn’t that big, 2,000mAh, but since you’re not running RGB and can even turn off the normal backlight without missing much, you can still count on one to several weeks of use.
Lofree Edge - No Really, What Is It?
The absolute core of this keyboard is its sound and feel. What Lofree accomplished with the Flow is impressive but it’s much more so here. How is there room for a gasket mount?! But it’s there and you can feel and hear it with every keystroke. Lofree even found a way to fit a layer of foam in the bottom of the case to further enhance its sound.
The full POM switches are also critical here. As you get deep into the world of mechanical keyboards, you begin to see that the plastics used in the different parts of the key switch have a direct impact on the sound of typing. It’s the kind of thing most people don’t think about but the very dedicated do — such as the designers that created the Edge.
POM has an extremely low coefficient of friction. Some brands refer to these switches as self-lubricating because they’re so smooth and only get more so the longer they’re used. The sound is particularly creamy, which is perhaps why NovelKeys calls its own POM switches NK_Creams.Combined with the gasket mount and foam and the acoustic tuning is simply best-in-class, right alongside the Flow, but a slightly different, quieter variation of what that keyboard offered.
It’s also one of the most portable mechanical keyboards you can buy. Its slimness allows it to slide into any bag easily and at only 485 grams, you barely feel it in your bag. Just as importantly, it’s not loud like most mechanical keyboards. In fact, it’s quieter than most membrane keyboards and doesn’t resort to silent switches. I suspect its because of the shorter travel on the keys, the isolation of the gaskets and foams, and the holes on the bottom of the case that prevent some of that sound from reflecting back out at you.
The only things I wish it had were 2.4GHz wireless for 1,000Hz wireless gaming and a travel case.
Final Thoughts
Perhaps after hearing about it and how its benefits are pretty nuanced, you might understand why I felt like it might be important for the marketing team to have someone within the hobby to help them understand so they could properly present this keyboard to others for a fair assessment.
The Lofree Edge is at once a big departure from, and natural evolution of, the Flow. Its design is removed enough that some fans aren’t going to like it and will want to wait for a Flow 2 proper. But I personally think it looks very cool and can stand on its own two feet as a product separate from that progeny.
If it looks like something you may be interested in, you can find out more at the Kickstarter which puts early bird pricing at $129, which is very fair for what you’re getting here.
The product described in this article was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes.
