Lemokey managed to win me over with its P1 HE keyboard, which provides a degree of options and customization that’s unparalleled at $170. Its Corridor-effect switches, wonderful acoustics, and aluminum chassis aren’t frequent to search out in a keyboard underneath $200. These options made the P1 HE my each day driver, and I used to be excited to check out one in every of Lemokey’s upcoming Corridor-effect keyboard, the $210 L5 HE 8K. Lemokey ran a profitable Kickstarter marketing campaign and expects to ship the keyboard to backers in Might. Backers can safe a unit for $199, although its retail value might be $210.
Primarily based on seems alone, it’s simple to mistake the L5 HE for the P1 HE I’ve been utilizing. The L5 HE provides the same 75% structure, and is provided with Corridor-effect switches and a removable USB-C connection — similar to the P1 HE. Nevertheless, the most important distinction within the L5 HE (and the principle motive why its value is increased) is its 8,000 Hz polling charge, which dwarfs the 1,000 Hz polling charge discovered on the P1 HE and plenty of different keyboards.
In idea, the next polling charge permits your inputs to be registered sooner and cuts down on response time — good issues! However once I in contrast the efficiency between the L5 and the P1, I couldn’t discover a transparent distinction. Moreover, the L5 HE and its 8K polling charge can solely be utilized in wired mode, making it the much less superb alternative if you wish to depend on the wi-fi capabilities of the P1 HE.
There are some minor beauty changes, too, however I wouldn’t essentially contemplate them to be enhancements. This features a small RGB mild strip fitted into the L5 HE’s base and a few non-standard keycaps fitted to among the modifier keys.
By way of what you may count on from day-to-day use of the L5 HE, it’s nearly equivalent to utilizing the P1 HE. The L5 HE makes use of the identical web-based configuration software program because the P1 HE, permitting you to customise inputs, modify the actuation factors of your switches, and alter the RGB lighting. You even have the choice to decrease the polling charge should you’d like, however I can’t consider a motive why you’d.
Identical to the P1 HE, the internals of the L5 HE are fairly simple to customise. Six small screws maintain the board collectively, and also you don’t even must take away any of the switches should you’re simply making small changes to the PCB. The acoustics of the L5 HE are wonderful, though personally, I believed the P1 HE sounded higher out of the field.
Lemokey contains a wide range of small silicone dampeners with the L5 HE that may be swapped out alongside the contact factors of the PCB. This lets you modify the acoustics of the keyboard, however I discovered this observe to be extraordinarily finicky as a result of among the dampeners being each extraordinarily small and in hard-to-reach spots alongside the PCB. Whereas I’m glad that that is an possibility, it’s an annoying course of, and I simply want Lemokey had improved the acoustics out of the field.
My greatest challenge with the L5 HE 8K is that it’s too just like the P1 HE, and the L5’s increased value isn’t completely justified. In truth, it makes the P1 look higher by comparability, on condition that it has Corridor-effect switches and deep {hardware} customization) for much less — plus Bluetooth and a couple of.4 GHz wi-fi as choices. The aesthetic adjustments and better polling charge may be vital to some customers, however I can’t justify paying an additional $30 for some questionable upgrades.
