One of my favorite products of 2025 almost flew under my radar. The Keychron K4 HE is an impressively affordable and fully-featured Hall-effect keyboard, with a signature pillowy feel and a mature design.
I leapt at the chance to review the Keychron K4 HE. Not because of all the Hall-effect stuff, but because I thought it looked really cool. The wooden side panels evoke a sort-of retro feel that fits well with the wooden window frames, doors, floors, baseboards, and furniture in my office. In any case, I was right to judge a book by its cover—the keyboard’s pretty great. It offers all the benefits of a typical Hall-effect keyboard, like per-key adjustable actuation, but it feels far smoother and a lot less springy than other HE keyboards I’ve tested. I’m not sure whether it’s the Gateron Dual-rail Magnetic Nebula switches, the tray-mount design, or a combination of different factors, but the K4 HE is just fantastic for the price.
HTG Wrapped 2025: 24 days of tech
24 days of our favorite hardware, gadgets, and tech
For those unfamiliar, Hall-effect switches utilize a magnetic design and don’t have a firm actuation point. The K4 HE offers adjustable actuation between 0.2mm and 3.8mm, meaning that you can trigger a key press at whatever travel distance you prefer. If you want the keys to trigger when pressed all the way down, you set a deep actuation point. A shallower setting lets you type or play games by placing just a small amount of pressure on each key, which can make you feel pretty fast if you take the time to get used to it.
Of course, you can also set actuation settings on a per-key basis in the Keychron Launcher web app. And that’s where things get really interesting—gamers can set their WASD keys to a super-shallow actuation point while leaving their other keys at a less sensitive setting, for example. This kind of setup gives you fast, slippery in-game movement while reducing the possibility of accidental key presses on the space bar, the “E” and “Q” keys, the number row, and so on.
You can save three custom profiles to the K4 HE, and it’s got some extra features for those who want to take full advantage of Hall-effect’s capabilities. The Dynamic Keystrokes feature lets you set up secondary actuation points on individual keys, so you can trigger the “run” action in a game when you press the “W” key beyond a certain point and things like that. There’s also Rapid Trigger, which improves strafing in some shooters by resetting your keypresses immediately after you raise your fingers, and Snap Tap, which utilizes Last Key Prioritization to provide instantaneous changes to directional movement in some games. (Snap Tap is banned in some competitive games, however.)
Keychron K4 HE Review: A Gorgeous and Affordable Hall-Effect Keyboard
I just wish the typing experience was as good as the gaming experience.
Now, I should take an opportunity to note that magnetic switches generally aren’t ideal for typing. I immediately fell in love with the K4 HE as a gaming keyboard, but it took me about a month to get comfortable with it as a typing surface. The trick is to be gentle—glide across the keys, don’t put too much weight in your fingers, and become acquainted with whatever actuation distance you’ve set up in the Keychron Launcher.
But for all of this keyboard’s merits, it’s got one or two flaws that really disappoint me. The keys are slightly cramped, which is a shame, although you could probably remedy the problem with a set of wider, flatter keycaps. The RGB backlight is irredeemably ugly, in my opinion, and the color temperature skews toward blue or orange even when set to white. The 1,000Hz polling rate in wired mode is also kind of odd, although I don’t think that the average person needs an 8,000Hz polling rate, so it probably doesn’t matter too much.
You can buy the Keychron K4 HE for $145 MSRP on Amazon, the Keychron web store, and at other retailers. There are white and black variants, although I prefer the look of the white one. There’s also a few variants on this design, like the full-sized K10 HE keyboard and the compact, tenkeyless K2 HE. All of these models come with Windows and macOS-specific key caps, by the way.
8/10
- Brand
-
Keychron
- Wireless
-
Yes (Bluetooth and 2.4GHz)
- Backlight
-
Yes (RGB)
- Media Controls
-
Yes
The Keychron K4 HE is one of the more affordable Hall-effect keyboards available today, yet it offers a super-smooth and pillowy experience with advanced software customization. It’s an excellent option for gamers who want a competitive edge and a genuinely fun typing surface.
