Keychron C3 Pro Custom Gaming Keyboard with Red Backlight and 87 Keys

what our customer say this product:

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1. M. Barra Verified Buyer – 15 March 2024

   Wanted to upgrade my work computer. This keyboard has been a fantastic upgrade. It skips the extra bells and whistles to focus on solid build quality and smooth typing experience. It does have some serious heft. Keys have very satisfying feedback which makes typing effortless. Adjustable feet have a low and high setting to get the perfect typing angle. Backlighting is monotone but more than adequate for night typing. For the price, you really can’t beat the experience.

   

2. myslee Verified Buyer – 12 April 2024

   this is an incredible keyboard for the price. keychron is notable for creating affordable entry-level mechanical keyboards as is, but the C3 pro is extremely impressive. there are many “budget” mechanical keyboards on the market, such as boards from redragon and royal kludge, but these brands do not provide the same amenities as the C3 pro for such a price point. the gasket mounting works wonders for the type-feel, and the sound-dampening foam does a great job at quelling any echo that may come from the plastic case. despite this keyboard having a plastic case, it’s got a nice weight to it. i’m talking enough to make you say “whoa,” when taking it out of the box. customization is an issue with this board, however. if you like red, you’ll be delighted to know that there are plenty of lighting modes to choose from. i understand that RGB is expensive, but i can’t help but feel as if even a white LED would be more preferable over red, as white can apply to a range of different setups. the switches aren’t hotswappable, either. if they were, this board would be even more of a game changer. overall, this board is best for avid typists that aren’t interested in keyboard modding. the “bouncy” feel of the gasket mount is very comfortable to type on, but isn’t great for gaming. i’d imagine this keyboard would do great in an office setting.

   

3. Manuel Verified Buyer – 26 April 2024

   Keychron really stands out with this keyboard in terms of quality for price. It feels amazing, it’s kinda heavy but the keys are amazing. The clicks sound nice and are pretty quiet. I had the video right up on the keyboard, thats why its loud. It has amazing response time and it size is pretty great for those looking for more space it definitely does give more, since it is smaller. Differently light settings from brightness to animations, the color is red though and wont change. It came with the key cap remover with a switch remover on the opposite end, and some replacement keys. Everything works as supposed to. The box arrived NOT in an go-keyboard.com box but in the sold keyboard box for those wondering. Very high quality keyboard

   

4. “flickologist” Verified Buyer – 17 May 2024

   The keys are gray and their printed labels are light gray. The labels are very difficult to read under normal office lighting. Some of the keys have white labels. Too bad they aren’t all printed white and legible. I am returning this keyboard. I had also purchased the Keychron C2 and it’s much better.

   

5. Mesmerized Verified Buyer – 24 May 2024

   This keyboard is beautiful. It performs – there are 4 programmable layers, lights galore (if that’s your thing) and everything about this is well thought, well designed, and satisfying to use. I love mechanical keyboards for that particular “thock.” I remember the old Macintosh keyboard, part of the original mac. We had two 5 1/4” floppy drives. Nothing sounds and feels quite like that keyboard did – but this one rivals the feel and gratifying sound. At this price, I don’t know how you’d come anywhere close to something this good. I’ll be investing in one of their other keyboard and we’ll see if the quality hold up.

   

6. Dwight D. Verified Buyer – 8 July 2024

   I don’t like the typing experience on this keyboard. I think the keys are too far apart. I wonder if anyone else is having this issue.

   

7. Arpan Bhattarai Verified Buyer – 9 August 2024

   

8. Itay Verified Buyer – 13 August 2024

   Very nice keyboard, I enjoy it for now and it looks perfect fine for now. I believe it’s the best keyboard for this price range. My first mechanical brown switch keyboard and it sounds nuts

   

9. Wendy Mailen Rangel Zambrano Verified Buyer – 15 September 2024

   Es mi primer teclado mecánico, y de verdad me sorprendió lo bien que se siente, muchos dicen que luego de usar uno de membrana genérico de 10 dólares cualquier cosa se siente superior pero ya luego de casi un mes de tenerlo me sigue sorprendiendo lo bien que funciona en juegos y en trabajos de ofimática, 100% recomendado

   

10. HYESEONG LEE Verified Buyer – 7 October 2024

    Key touch sense & adjustable back light(brightness & pattern )are so good // Optimal price !

    

11. Ju-Miao Cheng Verified Buyer – 13 October 2024

    I have a number of keyboards and gone through some too. My preference is low profile, so I enjoyed the k3. When I got this I was surprised how big it was. I bought for work as for gaming I enjoy something else. This is my first linear keyboard as I usually tactile or brown switches. But red is great! I actually was pleasantly surprised. Great keyboard overall but I’ll be getting a wrist rest for sure.

    

12. Arjun Kramadhati Gopi Verified Buyer – 25 October 2024

    Truly exceptional typing quality for the price. The reds are super smooth and silent. Space bar has no stabs. Love it. I have used the brown switched keychron k6 for 3 years. Time to replace it with the c3 pro! The only complaint is that the stock type c cable is so tricky to connect to the kb because of its wings. I ended up giving up trying and using a regular type c cable

    

13. Tracy R Verified Buyer – 30 October 2024

    It feels very nice to type on. I tried the via keyboard modification and made a sleep button. So far impressed with it for the cost. Beats my old dell membrane keyboard!

    

14. Nathan Martinez Verified Buyer – 3 November 2024

    Good product, for the price I can find nothing wrong with it, any complaints would only be solved by paying for another product at 4x the price

    

15. ThatGuyJake Verified Buyer – 13 November 2024

    I have 5 other Keychron boards. I originally bought this with the intention to modify it because it was on sale and was a great starter board to expand on. The twist is that, when I got it, I liked it just as much as my Q and V series! I added some Arasaka keycaps that are a slightly higher quality than the stock ones, and I absolutely love it! Goes perfectly with the red backlight AND side lighting! Love this purchase. Grab one if you need a quality board out of the box at a reasonable price…and I’ve spent a couple hundred dollars on other boards just to make them this good!

    

16. Brutal Riot Girl Verified Buyer – 17 November 2024

    The sound is nice, the only thing that is really weird is its crooked! Like there’s an unevenness the left side is higher than the right. I checked the pads but them seemed to be put in correctly. If it wasn’t for that then it would be great. If the keyboard last a long time, only time will tell, I will post here if it fails. I just bought this keyboard for my Steam Deck, when I dock it so I can use it in desktop mode. I tried playing a game with it but the height of the keyboard on the left side is higher then the right makes it uncomfortable to game with. I can say that it works with the official docking station for the steam deck, just plugged it in and it worked right away, I like how the letters are illuminated so I can see the letters in the dark if I needed to.

    

17. Carlos Gonzalez Verified Buyer – 23 December 2024

    El teclado posee una agradable sensación al tacto. Las teclas responden bien y sus diferentes modos de iluminación le dan un plus de estética.

    

18. bluntboomer Verified Buyer – 29 December 2024

    Literally the best price to performance keyboard you can find. It feels amazing, and does not feel flimsy in the slightest. the keys come factory lubed and sound satisfying stock. If you are looking for a keyboard on a budget (or not) just get this
    

19. Oscar P. Verified Buyer – 28 January 2025

    Me gusta mucho el sentir cuando se escribe, y despues de algunos meses de usarlo sigue como nuevo. Por el precio creo que es excelente, solo le falta la opcion de inhalambrico pero personalmente es algo “nice to have”
    

20. PhoenixTripleSeven Verified Buyer – 5 February 2025

    This is the typing test and initial review/remarks for the Keychron C3 Pro mechanical keyboard. It is a wired TKL-layout keyboard with sturdy plastic construction, having a good heft to it and absolutely no board flex at all. The case design is simple but elegant, not especially noteworthy in any regard but perfectly adequate. So far the key feel is quite nice, although I’m not sure what switches these are. Keychron markets this model as having “Red” switches, but what precisely this implies is unknown to me, as it’s not clarified if that means MX Red, some proprietary “Keychron Red” switch, or something more esoteric. The switches are linear with no click or tactile bump, and while they’re very smooth and pleasantly clack at bottom-out, they’re far too sensitive; the switch triggers almost immediately, which when combined with the (admittedly pleasantly) light key weighting, results in it occasionally registering false-positive key presses just from the weight of my fingers, most notably the space bar. This also makes it far less forgiving of fat-fingering the sides of other keys from an off-center keystroke. The stabilizers on the longer keys are absolutely excellent, though. No sticking or dragging, no extra friction at all. So far, despite the significant increase in typing errors, my WPM is actually much higher. This is likely due to a much lower resistance and thus less typing fatigue, but I think a lot of it is also psychosomatic. My brain just likes key go brrrrr, I suppose. The backlight being locked to red on this model is a bit sad, as full RGB LEDs are probably only a few cents more expensive to include on a mass-production product like this, but I can tolerate the red, even if it’s a bit basic (and perhaps, to some, a little distasteful). Overall, I’m exctatic about this board. Despite the glaring sensitivity problems with the switches, typing is absolutely a dream, and while I mourn the loss of my precious numpad, I can tolerate the TKL layout for now if this is the typing experience I’m getting.

    

21. Sergio Verified Buyer – 7 February 2025

    work’s great very comfortable to type on

    

22. Richard Verified Buyer – 11 February 2025

    EDIT: Had to stop using this keyboard because keys sometimes stick and repeat endlessly. When the back-space key sticks it totally trashes a document. Hard to complain at this price point but I am disappointed with the non-standard keycap labels for all the number keys and punctuation keys. Unlike all other keyboards I have used over 30+ years, this keyboard (and apparently all Keychron C Pro series keyboards but not the Q and V series keyboards) has the key character identification labels next to each other instead of the non-shift value below the shifted value. So instead of having the “2” below “@” the key is labeled “2@”. This is true for 21 keys, all the number keys, square and curly brackets, slash and back-slash, colon and semi-colon, single-quote and double-quote, etc. I’m a touch-typist but this difference makes it harder to find those rarely used characters. Also, the keys are hard to read unless the red backlights are turned on.

    

23. Ivan Verified Buyer – 22 February 2025

    Por sus materiales se siente como si fuera un jueguete o una cubeta.

    Sin embargo, se trabaja muy bien en él.

    Es un muy buen teclado a un muy buen precio.

    Yo lo uso en mac y tras personalizar un par de teclas estoy pudiendo trabajar en él a la perfección.

    Eso sí, no es un teclado en español; y como tal hay que acostumbrarse a tener el acento junto a la tecla enter y a que la tecla enter sea horizontal y que no abarque las 2 líneas de los teclados en español.
    

24. DUNIT Verified Buyer – 1 March 2025

    This keyboard found its home on my rig :P. Zero complaints.

    

25. Typo Negative Verified Buyer – 4 March 2025

    I’ve been doing the mechanical keyboard thing for a few years now. Always on a budget, never the super expensive stuff. At this point I was wanting to try a gasket mount keyboard. That’s right around when this board was revealed. The typing experience is great. I got the linear reds. They feel as smooth as it gets compared to the different boards and switches I have tried. The stabilizers all sound decent, no rattle. I wasn’t sure how a gasket mount would feel in person. It doesn’t really flex or bounce much unless you sit there and press down hard just to watch it move. But it does soften everything when typing and reduce some of the noise; the force of your keystrokes are no longer being trasmitted through solid mounting points or screws and into the rest of the keyboard and outer case. The foam gaskets around the edge are absorbing everything. It is very satisfying to type on. These gaskets DO move at least, there are other boards out there that are gasket mounted yet the end result is still very stiff with little movement. You can squish these keys down and watch the gasket work. I’ve seen a video where someone disassembled the board and showed how the PCB (circuit board) has flex cuts in it which would allow for further flex and typing feel, but it is mated to a steel switch plate. This kind of defeats the purpose, I wish this board had a polycarbonate plate. You can point to the limitations of the price point and say perhaps a steel plate is cheaper, but it seems like the flex cuts in the PCB would be an extra step/expense, so I don’t know why those are present, only to have a steel plate. We could have taken the typing feel even further if those flex cuts were allowed to work. The keycaps are a bit of a weak spot, thin and slippery, but it’s understandable. This is something easy to customize anyway with a set of keycaps that you enjoy. At least they included a few extra accent keys. The only other issues I have come down to personal preference. I wish the one color choice wasn’t red. Blue, green, white, I’d rather be stuck with just about any other color if I can’t have RGB. A budget board limited to the red color choice is something already done by certain other brands, it would have been nice to have a different color represented here as a different brand identity. I will probably leave the backlight off most of the time, but then it is hard to read the keys. I also prefer smaller form factor keyboards like 65%, so although I am enjoying this board, it is larger on my desk than I prefer. It has the function row that I don’t need, and the extra keys on the right side taking up 2 inches more space. Obviously I knew this going in, not really counting this as a fault, I just hope they take this “Keychron Basic” branding even further, and we get different board sizes and colors. Ultimately I think this board is important for what it will hopefully do to the overall market and hobby, more than just how it stands as a keyboard alone. This is a nice leap forward and a shortcut for people entering the hobby, you can get a gasket mount keyboard with incredible sound and typing feel at this price now. That’s crazy to think about. As long as you are ok with the TKL layout this is a pretty great option to start with. Although, at the last second, it occurs to me some of the compromises are pretty severe. A big thing about the keyboard hobby is customization. Without hot swap sockets for the switches, you won’t be trying different switches on this board (unless you want to solder one by one). You won’t be performing common mods on the stabilizers to make them quieter because the soldered switches won’t allow you to remove them. And then you have the one backlight color limiting what you might do in terms of keycap color or overall theme. So in the end you are kind of giving up a lot just to get a gasket mount keyboard at this price. There are similarly priced budget boards that will have all those other features, but with a standard mounting style, so you have to decide what you’d rather have. If you don’t care about changing switches or RGB colors, then I would say get some nicer keycaps and this is still a good buy. All we need now is for competition to push this even further, and to get more features added back in at lower price points. Overall I think this is a pretty unique idea that they had and I’m glad they did it. I mostly wish it had a PC plate and a different color.

    

26. Fox Verified Buyer – 5 March 2025

    I was looking for a smaller size keyboard without sacrificing too much and found this gem. I love it so much, I used to have a 100% and initially thought it wouldn’t work but the size is perfect! It’s easy to set up right out of the box, just plug in and start using it. Of course there’s options to customize your keys but no need to worry about it if you don’t want to. I went with the brown switch keys and man, I cannot get over the sound they make, I love it! Not too loud but a satisfying thud. All keys work great and have had no issues with anything!

    

27. mike Verified Buyer – 5 March 2025

    Didn’t even come in shipping box. Keyboard box is damaged and the home button key is crooked seems that the switch sautered to board got bent and does t sit or angle flush. Terrible quality

    

28. Deadweasel Verified Buyer – 5 March 2025

    This is a board where accepting a couple of compromises will give you a pretty nice experience in the end. Compromise 1: the keycaps. I don’t care that they’re “double-shot”, because they are ABS, and in the standard Cherry profile, which is the common format used by the OEMs and cheapies. Cherry profiles feel like garbage to type on (by comparison) and the thin ABS means each stroke has a hollow, plastic-y “clink”. They’re also shine-through, meaning they’re intended specifically to accomodate: Compromise 2: the backlight. Good lord why can’t we get a well-built board at a lower price by leaving out the stupid light show? Thankfully we don’t have to deal with managing anything in the way of colors and patterns though. In this case, the backlights are red. That’s all, just red. You can make them brighter or dim them to off. One color, but required for the keys, because you can’t actually see the legends if the light is not on. But this is all okay, because I didn’t decide on this board for its keys or its stupid lights. I chose it because it’s a Keychron gasket mount, hot-swappable keyboard that sold for $30. Like house hunters say: it’s got good bones. The rest can be upgraded. So that’s what I did: yank out the keycaps and swap in some XVX profile caps from Dagaladoo, coupled with clear o-rings to soften the sound and feel even further. Then, turn off the stupid backlight (fn+S). It clashes with the keycap colors anyway, and isn’t needed to be able to see the legends when needed. I also disregarded the basic USB-C cable that came with it, because I had a nice braided cord already in place to hook it up to anyway. It’s got some weight to it, which is nice when you’re looking for a peripheral that doesn’t shuffle around while being used, like any of the cheap featherweight boards do. The switches feel quite smooth and are very quiet, especially after the keycap mod and swap. This board feels and sounds… formal, professional. Like the difference between a disposable digital camera and a super-expensive high-precision Red camera, you sit down in front of this thing and you experience a comfortable and tuned Mercedes SLR, rather than a cheap and disposable Chevy Corsica. Once the backlight is off, you notice the other nice touches like the recessed USB-C port underneath, the multiple-direction channels moulded-in so your cord can be guided to come out naturally to whatever side you need it, the flip-out feet to elevate the angle even further (though I find its stock “flat” position to be elevated enough on its own), and the subdued CAPS/MODE lights. Rather than blow out your vision with a super-bright light, there’s a muted red dot that stands out just enough to get the point across. The board also comes with a keycap and switch puller (wire loop type), but if you have the clip type puller available, keep it handy if you intend to swap out keycaps. Some keys that are surrounded by the faceplate, like the ESC or arrow keys, can be difficult to get under with the loop puller. That said, they do come away nicely and without disconnecting any of the key switches underneath. Overall I feel like in this configuration, this is the experience that should be the introduction to mechanical keyboards for the uninitiated. The drastic difference in sound and feel will really highlight what they were missing, pounding away on that OEM board at the office all this time. 😀 The only reason this isn’t a full-out 5 stars is because there is one flaw that I can’t overcome with a simple mod: the firmware. This keyboard is almost a computer in its own right, for some reason I can’t really understand. It is programmable, and its firmware can be swapped out for a fully-customized key map instead of the standard one. Okay, I guess if you’re used to a non-QWERTY layout, that’s cool. But having such a readily-morphable design also opens the way for unexpected behaviors in certain situations. For example, I woke my system this morning, and discovered after logging in that whatever key I last hit, that’s what would now repeat endlessly on whatever I happened to have in focus. Hit another key, and that one would start repeating endlessly, without any further input from me. This was stopped and corrected by unplugging and re-plugging the USB-C cable, but, dang. I have not seen a keyboard doing its own thing out of the blue like that (without a mechanical failure to explain it) since the days when I was hacking on old PS/2 keyboard controllers. Overall, I think it was definitely worth the price of entry. I mean, they had to face some compromises of their own to get it so relatively cheap; I’m just glad they chose sensible compromises that we can upgrade at will. And no, not having RGB lighting is not a compromise, it’s a blessing. If you need animated color interest on your keyboard, you’re looking at it far more than you should be, and you are doing it wrong. Or you have a channel full of Patreons to entertain, which I totally understand too! 😀

    

29. Yuriy Verified Buyer – 9 March 2025

    

30. AirsickAce Verified Buyer – 9 March 2025

    This keyboard beats out my $100+ keyboard with the exact same form factor from a leading competitor and is a fraction of the price…making it probably the world’s best keyboard.

    

31. Nehemoth Verified Buyer – 10 March 2025

    Update: This happened a couple of months ago when I wrote this review and now I realized that I’d never updated. Of couple of weeks after the review, I received a package with a new board for the keyboard, v2 if I remember correctly. Has been working since then without any issues whatsoever. I’d ordered this keyboard back when it was announced in September, as my first ever mechanical keyboard it fell great. Certain keys began to lose the red ink almost after a week of light usage, then some months later the key A began to operate erratically, sometimes when you typed it would be repeated several times and sometimes it wouldn’t function at all. To be honest a bother but not something major but today the whole QWERTY row won’t work. Not matter what you can connect, reconnect the keyboard and nothing, restarted the computer an nothing. It looks like the keyboard it’s dead. This may be a cheap mechanical keyboard but I took care of it, a cover for the dust since first day, it was turned off everyday after using it, so looks like a manufacture issue.

    

32. Da Brown Verified Buyer – 11 March 2025

    I saw Ars’s review of this item and decided to give it a try. Item came packed nicely with the USB cable, key remover tool and black keys (to replace the packed red keys if you choose). Color is vibrant and it has the heft of solid construction. Once I plugged it in, I noticed the label “Caps / Mac / Win” was placed upside-down. I must have handled over 700 OEM-style keyboards and never saw one that I had to return. No biggie – they are a niche company with limitless configurations so an oversight isn’t so bad. Emailed support and after confirming that I purchased it, they informed me to use a hair dryer to remove and re-adhere the label. I don’t have a hair dryer and that’s not going to work for the long run. Reading the warranty online didn’t instill confidence that they had my back. If either the QC worked out or support was more helpful, I would give them 5 stars, but alas, they failed at both. Thank goodness go-keyboard.com helped with the replacement.

    

33. adam Verified Buyer – 13 March 2025

    Better than I thought. I got this as a fast cheap replacement after spilling beer on my logitech g pro keyboard and it is comparable in almost every way at a fraction of the price. I would even dare to say better. The keycaps feel amazing and build quality is also top notch. I 10/10 would recommend.

    

34. greyfiveys Verified Buyer – 15 March 2025

    Love this keyboard. For $30, it’s definitely worth it. Sounds amazing, feels amazing. The only downside I can remotely think of is that the RGB is only red, but I feel like it adds to the aesthetic. It’s a really nice keyboard.

    

35. wasf2000 Verified Buyer – 26 March 2025

    لا تفوتكم الكيبورد مره رهيبه عمليه خاصه لحقين الجيمنج