OnePlus, the brand known for making flagship-level smartphones at a fraction of the price once upon a time, has just made a mechanical keyboard — or has it? The sharp-eyed among you will notice striking similarities between the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro and our favorite mechanical keyboard, the Keychron Q1 Pro.
OnePlus has effectively rebadged that $200 keyboard, changed the styling a bit, swapped out the keycaps and switches and added a height-adjustment bar. The changes add $20 to $40 to the bill (depending on the switches and keycaps selected), bringing this keyboard to a lofty $220 or $240. Still, it has a lot of admirable qualities and an exceptional build that may appeal to keyboard enthusiasts.
The Keychron Q1 Pro is an excellent keyboard for enthusiasts, and the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro is a stylish iteration on the Q1 Pro that has something to offer OnePlus fans. It won’t be for the average typist, but there’s plenty to like.
What we liked about it
It can do the job it’s meant to
Getting work done on the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro is a smooth process. The keyboard may not be ergonomic, but it’s plenty effective for quick and accurate typing. I was able to get up to 103 words per minute with 98% accuracy while typing in Monkeytype after a little time getting readjusted to the longer travel of a mechanical keyboard.
While the keys don’t have the clicky actuation point of select mechanical keyboards, there’s a distinct actuation point that’s easy to feel, helping me keep up a consistent typing rhythm. As compact as the keyboard is, it didn’t make sacrifices that would have resulted in awkward key arrangements like squished arrow keys. In fact, the arrow keys are offset, making it easier to avoid misclicks or quickly switch over to them without needing to look down at the keyboard.
There’s also a handy dial in the top-right corner of the keyboard that, by default, controls volume but can be customized — much like the rest of the keyboard — to do quite a bit more through the VIA tool (which itself is just a web app that can run in a browser).
And it’s not just the typing that’s effective either. I have a half-million complaints about Bluetooth, with reliable connectivity being chief among them, but the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro connected to my devices quickly and consistently almost as soon as it woke up from sleep. Thanks to that, it can have a fairly aggressive sleep timer without becoming a nuisance. That’ll help stretch its already bonkers 100-plus hour run time on battery power. It’s not entirely reliant on Bluetooth either, with USB-C offering a hardwired connection.
Its oh-so-snazzy and sturdy design
The OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro is both elegant and robust. The whole thing is a meaty block of matte aluminum with a few polished metal accents. That metal wraps all the way around. This makes for a hefty keyboard that you probably won’t want to haul around. At just a hair over 4 pounds, the keyboard alone is heavier than a great many modern laptops.
The weight does have some benefit, helping the keyboard press down into its rubber feet and stay firmly planted on a desktop.
The keyboard gets some extra elegance with retro flair from its multitone keycaps. The keycaps are a mix of dark gray and light gray, generally split between character inputs and function or modifier keys. That’s topped off with red keys for Enter and Escape (which is actually swapped for OnePlus’ logo on the legend). Those keys are all surrounded by glowing, colorful LEDs that can really put on a light show, including some of the more fun lighting effects I’ve seen outside of SteelSeries keyboards. While the LED lighting is per-key, there’s, unfortunately, not per-key lighting controls for more user customization.
The OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro includes a stand on the underside that swings around, effectively offering infinitely adjustable height up to about 1 inch above the lowest level. That stand can also hold the keyboard up vertically and out of the way, which can come in handy for anyone who tends to eat lunch at their desk.
What we didn’t like about it
A lack of clarity for the keys
Between its Bluetooth connectivity and RGB lighting, the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro has a fair bit going on. But the keycaps aren’t thoroughly labeled. For instance, I would have been hard-pressed to figure out how to pair this keyboard via Bluetooth or how to turn on the backlighting without the user manual. Many of the functions are unlabeled and require holding the Fn key and tapping or holding an additional key. Others still surprised me, like the need to press Fn+N in order to enable N-key rollover. Unless you’re going to commit all this to memory, it’s a lot to keep track of.
Then there’s the matter of the backlighting being purely aesthetic. OnePlus’ choice of keycaps is completely opaque. So none of the lighting actually shines out through the key legend. It makes for a pretty display underneath the keycaps, but it offers no functional benefit while trying to use the keyboard in the dark.
The price is quite high
At $220, the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro is not cheap for a keyboard. Mechanical keyboards typically come at a premium — and that goes double for wireless keyboards — so it’s not a surprise to see this model coming in at over $100. But paying over $200 for a keyboard can be a hard pill to swallow.
As lovely as some of the features are, it’s still not as feature-packed as a lot of other keyboards coming at the price. Some (though few) offer a dedicated wireless dongle with lower latency and higher polling rates, like Logitech’s G915 and G715 alongside an otherwise similar feature set. Plenty offer dedicated macro keys, dedicated media playback controls or custom backlighting on a per-key basis. Each of these omissions on the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro hurts that little bit more when it costs so much. Of course, few of the competitors are made out of a block of aluminum.
Bottom line
The OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro is effectively just a customized Keychron Q1 Pro, which was already a top pick here at CNN Underscored. It should come as little surprise, then, that it’s also a fine piece of typographic hardware. The $20 to $40 uptick is a small price for those who want the alternate switches and keycaps, and the height adjustment bar is an actually meaningful addition to the Q1 Pro. It’s a great pick for keyboard enthusiasts who want a compact, mechanical, tenkeyless option that’ll live on their desk. Those after something ergonomic or cost-effective should look elsewhere, though. Keychron has a whole host of similar keyboards, like the Keychron K8 Pro, for a fraction of the price if you can live without the all-aluminum build and the dial.
