Will Judd reviews three fascinating low profile mechanical keyboards: the Electronic Materials Office Altar 1, the Logitech G515 TKL and iQunix Magi 65 Pro.
Low profile mechanical keyboards are a popular choice for anyone that prefers the short, snappy feel of a great laptop keyboard but wants something a little more capable, durable and customisable. While full-height mechanicals were the first to go mainstream, low-profile alternatives are becoming increasingly common, and there’s an exciting arms race resulting in some truly impressive designs.
Today we’re looking at three such keyboards: a refined gaming-focused board from industry giants Logitech, a fancy typists’ offering from Chinese boutique brand iQunix and a weird, stylish and unmistakenly early Apple keyboard from London one-man-brand Electronic Materials Office.
Despite being nominally part of the same category, these keyboards couldn’t be more different in terms of their intended use cases — and that has lead to fascinating differences in design. Here are reviews of the G515 Lightspeed TKL, Magi65 Pro and Altar 1.
To call the Altar 1 stylish, anachronistic or just odd would be an understatement. The first Electronic Materials Office keyboard is also the first I’ve seen to use low profile keys that are also at different heights.
Most of the keys you’ll type on are flat, but the function keys and modifiers are pushed upwards to make them taller, while the numerals and arrow keys are scooped out to make them shorter. It’s a deeply odd arrangement, but to the designer’s credit it does mean that you can instantly tell where you are on the keyboard — and centring to the home row is easy thanks to extremely prominent tabs on the F and J keys. Kailh Choc Low Profile v1 Red linear switches provide snappy response, though I might have prefered a more tactile or clicky alternative as an option.
The rest of this 75 percent keyboard is no less unusual. Rather than a horizontal roller or a relatively low-profile knob for volume control, you get an extra-tall rotary encoder with a red tip in the upper right — the only splash of colour on the keyboard and the only thing preventing you from sliding this into a backpack. (You do get a reusable recycled cardboard case if you do feel the need to use the Altar 1 on the go.)
USB-C connectivity is included but feels like an afterthought, with a constantly flashing Caps key when your keyboard is connected, with two Bluetooth connections acessible via a switch on the side of the board. There are dedicated pairing and power buttons, but no way to switch from the default Mac-friendly bindings to Windows equivalents. There’s also no way to quickly swap the Function and Control keys, which for my money are the wrong way around (as Fn is in the prized lower left corner), but perhaps Apple fans would disagree.
It’s clear that the entire endeavour is a love letter to old Mac computers, with familiar fonts used across the entire keyboard and the (equally stunning) Electronic Materials Office website. As you’d expect from anyone putting themselves into the Apple echelon, build quality is superb, with a Macbook-style aluminium unibody design, and the keyboard is sure to attract attention placed on a desktop or in a coffee shop.
Inside, a (reportedly sex-toy-sourced) microcontroller delivers perfectly adequate performance for gaming or typing at 1000Hz.
