Keychron Lemokey L5 HE 8K review: Killer keyboard

Gaming keyboards are built for battles. Membrane vs mechanical. Magnetic vs mechanical switches. Then there’s the form-factor foray: full-size vs tenkeyless (80%), vs 75% and 60%. There’s a whole lot of personal preference at play, which breeds competition among brands.

One of those outlier brands is Keychron. In Australia, it might not as be as much as household name as Logitech or Razer, but the ’board brand has a reputation for making great feature-rich gaming keyboards. Keychron sent me their latest for review—the Lemokey L5 HE 8K—and it’s made quite the impression after dozens of hours of testing.

At the time of review, the Keychron Lemokey L5 HE 8K was part of a Kickstarter campaign. If you manage to snag one during the campaign, you’ll get it for around $328. Afterwards, though, expect to pay closer to $340, which isn’t a massive difference in price if you want to wait for user reviews. Compared to other magnetic-switch gaming keyboards, Keychron has priced it appropriately, with competition from the Corsair K70 ($399 RRP) and Logitech G Pro X Rapid ($329 RRP).

The Keychron Lemokey L5 HE 8K is billed as a gaming keyboard, so you should expect it to offer premium performance. And that’s absolutely the case. I appreciate that the USB-C wired Keychron keyboard comes with an okay-length USB-C to USB-C cable and a pre-attached USB-C to USB-A adaptor.

That’s what I used for the majority of my review, admittedly, connected to the front ports on my desktop PC as it’d struggle to get to the back USB ports with my desk setup. If you want to jump into hands-on testing straight away, the Keychron keyboard follows the plug-and-play trend without forced software installation. The only disclaimer there is you need the web-based software to bump it from its default 1K polling rate and into its full potential as an 8K keyboard.

I’ve had system and compatibility issues with 8K peripherals in the past, but there weren’t any of those dramas with the L5 HE 8K. Still, if that’s an issue for you, there are also 2K and 4K polling rate increments, but if your CPU is new enough, you shouldn’t have any issues.

Most of what makes the L5 HE 8K feel great is the mix of polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) keycaps atop magnetic Hall Effect switches, which have 0.01mm actuation sensitivity. You can tweak actuation distance and key sensitivity via the web-based software, but the default values felt great for me.

In terms of actual gameplay, this gaming keyboard never skips a beat, offering very responsive actuation of inputs. With default settings, it didn’t feel like I was a sneeze away from unintended inputs, either. Practically speaking, it’s great for less competitive games like Avowed, Split Fiction and Trolls vs Vikings: Reborn. But it’s ultimately built for more competitive games. I tested those primarily across hours of Witchfire and Hell Let Loose, impressed at how the L5 HE 8K’s input responsiveness helped mask my middle-aged reflexes.

Most of my days are spent writing, which is where the Keychron Lemokey L5 HE 8K got most of its day-to-day use. The full-metal body means the Keychron keyboard doesn’t easily move around during use, but it also adds comparative heft. I’m talking about the kind of heavy that could be used to off the butler in the library. Lugging it back from the post office was a particularly sweaty endeavour.

It’s a 75% keyboard, which means no numpad and everything outside of the main layout is squished. That may throw you if, like me, you’re jumping across from a full-sized keyboard. My muscle memory was particularly frustrating when my fingers would reach for the Del key, only to tap PgDn instead. The media dial also frustrated me with default settings, but that was an easy fix in the web software, changing click to mute over to play/pause and rotate for volume down or up to skip forward or back with tracks.

My other gripes are trickier to amend. The first is the lack of height control, so you’d better like the fixed angle of the L5 HE 8K. My other issue is the lack of a wrist rest, the presence of which is something I’ve become particularly picky about in recent times. I grabbed the detachable one from my Asus ROG Claymore II keyboard to both support and prop up my wrists. Without a wrist rest, your hands will be working at a bigger angle.

I can’t fault the L5 HE 8K in terms of everyday performance, though. After dozens of hours of use, mostly everyday typing, it hasn’t let me down and I really like the feel, quietness and responsiveness. I still ‘fat finger’ occasionally, but that’s not the fault of the Keychron keyboard. Once I got used to the right-side layout squishing, I also didn’t have any issues with the key placements, though I did find myself lamenting the absent End key.

I’m of two minds about the Keychron Lemokey L5 HE 8K’s web-based software. On one hand, dodging the requirement of more companion software on my increasingly bloated Windows 11 PC is an easy win. On the other, if there’s an internet outage, you can’t tweak anything.

As far as I can tell, changes made in the web-based software are stored on the keyboard, so at least you can set and forget if you know exactly what you want from the get-go. There are three profiles if you want to really go to town, which I advise using if only to shift between everyday use and specific game functions because some of the features don’t necessarily work well with everyday computing.

For instance, you can set multiple commands for a single key based on actuation length, which is a great way to walk in a game with a half-press and sprint with a full. That controller joystick-like logic is taken to an extreme with the Gamepad Analog mode. Here you can set keys to behave like controller inputs, including joystick-like controls that register based on different keystroke pressures.

Competitive players will want to spend some time in the Snap Action tab. Snap Click and Last Key Priority are clever features, particularly for fans of online shooters. Here’s where keys can be configured to reset while pressed simultaneously. Effectively, these are tweaks with shooter fans in mind, particularly those into the ‘A-D-A-D’ strafing dances of Counter-Strike 2, Rainbow Six Siege and Valorant.

The big catch is these features all need to be set up individually. While I appreciate the level of customisation and the actually helpful handholding, I would have preferred a recommended profile that included a taste of these without having to do everything manually.