Hey… you need wood?
Keychron keeps releasing keyboards at an insane pace! Every single week there are several news items coming out of their camp, and I genuinely wonder what their product roadmap looks like. How many keyboards do they have in the pipeline right now?
Keychron, hit me up so we can talk about how you iterate, do product research and release new keyboards.
The news about the all-wood K3 Max is old though (from January), old enough that the keyboard is currently out of stock. Don’t worry, reader, I’ve reached out to them to get hard hitting answers to all your lingering questions.
The K3 Max is also getting the special treatment, in the form of a solid walnut wood chassis. Keychron is calling it the K3 Max All-Wood Edition, and it is exactly what it sounds like, a low-profile 75% board dressed entirely in warm, natural wood.
I am personally a big fan of this direction. Moving away from plastic toward higher-grade materials just feels right, and wood especially has something the others don’t: every single unit is unique. The grain patterns, the subtle variation in tone, you get something no one else has. And visually, walnut just looks warm and inviting in a way that brushed aluminium never quite manages.
Same layout, same trade-offs
I tested the K3 Max earlier and came away genuinely liking it, particularly as a travel keyboard. It is light, slim, and fits easily in a bag.
My main gripe remains the tight spacing around the arrow keys and navigation cluster, and the All-Wood Edition does not change that. The layout is the same, which means if that bothered you before, it will bother you here as well.
Solid inside, not just outside
What Keychron has done cleverly is keep the internal aluminium plate from the original K3 Max to maintain structural rigidity. So the wood is more of a cosmetic shell on top, the keyboard still feels solid.
The complete feature set carries over as well: tri-mode connectivity via Bluetooth 5.2, 2.4 GHz and USB-C, hot-swappable low-profile switches, RGB backlighting, QMK/VIA support, and a 1550 mAh battery rated for up to 86 hours with the lights off.
The board ships exclusively with Milk POM low-profile switches, linear red or tactile brown, both factory pre-lubed, though it remains compatible with other Gateron KS-33 switches.
There is some acoustic work going on inside as well. Keychron has layered IXPE foam under the keys to keep things quiet, and a latex foam layer beneath that for switch support and a more consistent feel across the board.
Low-profile keyboards can sound hollow and clacky if nothing is done about it, and these foam layers are clearly there to address that. Whether it fully solves the problem is something I would want to verify in person, but at least the groundwork has been laid.
I am unsure if the K3 Max I tested had gotten the same treatment, but I remember liking the typing feel and sound. Then again, I am a person who likes both the sound and feel on most keyboards…
Measures are taken to dampen the sound! / Credit Keychron
What about ISO and JIS?
Right now, the K3 Max All-Wood Edition is only listed in ANSI layout. No word from Keychron yet on whether ISO or JIS variants are planned. For those of us outside the US, that matters. A lot.
I have reached out to Keychron directly to ask whether ISO and JIS layouts are coming, and when the keyboard will be back in stock. I will update this article as soon as I hear back.
Part of a bigger push
This is not Keychron’s first time working with wood. They used wood accents on the K HE SE line as well.
I thought the wood and aesthetics were some of the best things about the K4 HE SE when I tested that.
The All-Wood Edition K3 Max takes that idea further, with small details I enjoy, like the Esc key in a brown colourway that matches the walnut chassis.
We saw the same thing on the K HE SE line, and it works just as well here. It is a small thing, but it shows someone at Keychron is trying to do that little extra.
The brown Esc key is a nice touch, details like this matter. / Credit Keychron
Keychron has also been experimenting with other unconventional materials lately, ceramic on the Q16 HE and literal concrete on the K2 HE, so this feels like part of a deliberate push to see how far premium materials can go in a mainstream keyboard lineup.
The K3 Max All-Wood Edition is listed at $119.99, but is currently sold out on Keychron’s website.
RGB is present, good for those RGB warriors. Credit Keychron.
