The right keyboard can make you more productive, improve your gaming, or save you from wrist painKeyboards these days come in all shapes, sizes, and styles, and people’s preferences tend to be just as varied depending on what they’re doing.
Do you want wired or wireless? Portable or bulky? Low-profile laptop-style keys or chunkier desktop versions? Does it need to be mechanical? Do you need a numpad? Do you want LEDs, custom hotkeys, USB pass-through, and other typical gaming features?
We streamline the process of choosing the perfect option by outlining what we know to be the best keyboards available in 2022 and offering buying advice for those new to the market too.
Best keyboards in 2022
1. Logitech MX Keys – Best Overall
Pros
- Premium design
- Logitech Flow technology
- Solid tying experience
Cons
- Short battery life
If you’re looking for a keyboard that doesn’t compromise on quality or experience, look no further than the MX Keys.
The MX Keys is a full-size wireless keyboard with a tidy design. It boasts an improved key feel compared to other office-focused Logitech products, featuring slightly concaved keycaps that guide your fingers towards the centre when typing.
The backlighting is intelligent thanks to built-in proximity sensors, lighting up whenever you bring your hands near the keyboard and turning the lights off when you’re away from your desk to conserve battery life. Rather uniquely, it can also adjust the brightness of the backlighting based on ambient light levels in your environment.
The issue is that even with intelligent lighting, the backlit keys can have a negative effect on battery life. The MX Keys, with 8hrs of use a day, can last around five months with backlighting disabled, but that drops down to only 10 days if you turn the lighting on.
Keys aside, the MX Keys feels solid and that’s thanks, in part, to the metal sheet at the core of the body and is improved further by a grippy strip to stop the keyboard from skating across the desk while typing – even during the most intense email arguments.
You’ve got compatibility with Logitech Flow on offer too, allowing you to connect to up to three devices at once, and thanks to Bluetooth connectivity, that includes mobile devices and tablets too. There’s also 2.4GHz Wi-Fi support and a USB receiver in the box, ideal for products without Bluetooth.
2. Hexgears Venture – Best mechanical keyboard for work
Pros
- Great mechanical feedback
- Low-profile design
- For gaming and office
Cons
- Loud clicky feedback
- Varying battery performance
The Hexgears Venture has a simple goal: to be the best low-profile mechanical keyboard in the world. Simple, but ambitious – but the Venture just about pulls it off.
The Venture uses Kailh Choc mechanical switches, with a choice of red (linear), brown (tactile & smooth), or white (clicky AF). Our review unit came with the white switches, and while they do make a proper clatter, they’re satisfying as hell for it. The brown should run quieter if you’re more worried about noise in an office, while the red are recommended for gaming.
Speaking of which, the Venture is designed to suit both gaming and productivity equally well. I’ve mostly used it in the office, where the sleek, compact, and minimalist design is welcome. But whack on the (optional) RGB lighting and suddenly you’ve got a flashy gaming board, with both per-key lighting and a light ring, all configurable from the keyboard itself.
The low-profile keys mean that typing on this falls somewhere between a laptop and a classic mechanical – essentially ideal for anyone (like me) who loves mechanical keyboards but has ruined their muscle memory through years of typing on low-travel laptop keys.
The board comes with rechargeable AA batteries, charged over USB-C (a welcome bit of future-proofing). Battery life is variable – Hexgears claims it’ll last four weeks on two-three hours’ usage a day, but that’s without the RGB lights. Switch the lighting on and the company estimates 16 hours of use, which is roughly what I’ve seen, and in practice means plugging it in once every few days.
You can of course use it wired while it’s charging, or wirelessly over Bluetooth, with support for hot-switching between up to four devices. Hexgears even throws in a few Mac keycaps just in case, though since these weren’t included in my review sample I can’t comment on them (but, y’know, they’re keycaps, so I’m sure they’re fine).
3. Logitech MX Mechanical – Best wireless keyboard
Pros
- Mechanical switches
- Satisfying, comfortable typing experience
- Multi-device connectivity
Cons
- Premium price
- Switches aren't hot-swappable
Logitech’s MX Mechanical is the first mechanical keyboard in the MX collection, bringing with it all the joys of a satisfying typing experience and the smarts that the MX range is known for.
It’s sleek, sporting a grey and black colour scheme that looks like a cross between the MX Keys and Logitech G’s G915 – and that’s no bad thing. The mechanical switch (Tactile Quiet, Linear and Clicky) feels satisfying with that signature click-clack as you type away, though it’s certainly not a quiet experience.
The concaved keycaps feel stable when depressed, helping avoid mispresses and providing a comfortable low-profile typing experience. The only downside is that, unlike many mechanical alternatives, the switches aren’t hot-swappable.
It’s backlit, like many other keyboards on the market, but as with other MX products, the keyboard will only light up when it detects your hands. It’s admittedly a small feature, but it helps improve battery life and really does show an impressive level of detail.
There are also function buttons focused on work, including shortcuts to mute your mic in video calls and to activate dictation alongside standard media controls and an emoji key. If that’s not your style, the entire row of F keys can be reprogrammed via Logitech Options+ for PC and Mac.
It’s also where you’ll be able to set up Logitech Flow, allowing you to use the keyboard on multiple devices without having to manually switch inputs.
Throw in other benefits like the ability to easily switch between 3 devices, Bluetooth connectivity, USB-C charging with long battery life and per-app shortcut customisation and you’ve got an impressive mechanical keyboard.
4. Logitech MX Keys Mini
Pros
- Premium build
- Compact, portable design
- Great typing experience
Cons
- Varying battery life
If you like the idea of the Logitech MX Keys but you want something more compact, the MX Keys Mini is a solid alternative.
It offers the core MX Keys DNA, complete with concaved keys and scissor switches that make for an exquisite typing experience, but ditches the number pad for a more lightweight, portable design ideal for those on the go or with small desk setups.
Just like the standard version, the MX Keys Mini offers intelligent backlighting that’ll automatically wake as your hands get close, you can quickly switch between up to three devices and it’s compatible with Logitech Flow too, allowing you to use the keyboard with multiple systems at once.
That’s not to say there’s nothing new with the MX Keys Mini though; there are new buttons available, offering quick access to emoji, dictation, screenshot and mic mute functionality – with the latter three ideal for those working from home. Though the standard version is compatible with Windows, Mac and a variety of other platforms, there’s also a Mac-only variant available with Mac functions.
There’s also an improvement in battery life compared to its bigger sibling, offering up to 10 days of use with backlighting on, and up to 5 months of use if it’s disabled. As with other Logitech peripherals, charge is provided via USB-C.
5. Keychron Q3 – Best customisable mechanical keyboard
Pros
- Highly customisable
- Compact 80% TKL design
- Premium build
Cons
- No wireless connectivity
- No USB passthrough
The Keychron Q3 takes the company’s popular approach to fully customisable mechanical keyboards and applies it to an 80% TKL form factor: a friendly midpoint between compact designs and expansive full boards that saves some space by omitting the numpad, but still leaves dedicated room for the arrow keys and the Home/End block.
You can order the Q3 fully assembled – with a choice of three colours, three Gateron G Pro switch styles (red, blue, or brown), and the option to include a programmable control knob or not. Those more willing to get into the guts of a board can also just buy a barebones setup and select their own keycaps and switches separately.
Those who do buy just the board will still get their money’s worth, not least since the body is built out of aluminium, giving it both a sense of quality and some serious heft. That’s enough heft to make sure it isn’t really portable though: this is a desktop keyboard, and picking it up once should be enough to disabuse you of the notion of ever using it for anything else.
Even if you opt for assembled, everything is hot-swappable and so easy to tweak on the fly in the future. VIA and QMK firmware support means every key can be remapped, including assigning macros, as can the RGB lighting. Keychron also ships the Q3 with both Windows and Mac keycap options, so you won’t be surprised to hear that it works on either OS too.
The Q3 won’t work wirelessly, but uses a single USB-C port to connect – though disappointingly there’s no USB passthrough option either. If you can live with that, this is easily one of the best customisable mechanical keyboards around.
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