Kemove K68 Review: A Cheap Mechanical Keyboard with A Premium Feel

I would like to preface the following review by saying that we received the keyboard as a free sample from Kemove. This will not influence the review in any way. Here are my impressions after a few weeks with it.

Even though I’m always on the lookout for cheap mechanical keyboards and expect some cut corners here and there at those price points, the Kemove K68 impressed me right from the start.

The Kemove K68 comes in one of the nicest packages I’ve seen in a budget mechanical keyboard. The board comes with a braided USB to USB C cable (why aren’t all cables braided by this point?). It also comes with a dust cover, a nice inclusion, plus a keycap puller, a switch puller and the 2.4ghz wireless dongle.

While the Kemove K68 is made of plastic, it has a metallic plate that makes it feel hefty and sturdy. It weighs about 650 grams and has flip feet giving it an adjustable typing angle. I like that but, personally, what I don’t like is that recess in front of the keyboard. 

Kemove K68 features

The K68 is a 65% keyboard with hot swappable north facing switches. It’s compatible with 3 pin and 5 pin switches and plate mounted stabilizers.

Our copy came with Cherry MX Red switches. To me, they  feel a bit scratchy and have a bit of spring ping in stock form, so I replaced them with some lubed Gateron Reds I had laying around at home. After I re-lubed the stabilizers, I got the keyboard sounding almost perfect with minimal effort. 

I must say the stabilizers are not very good and would probably benefit from wire balancing (making sure that the stab wires are not bent and sit flat).

If you don’t want to invest in better plate mounted stabs you could use a holee mod, which consists of placing a thin strip of band-aid inside the stabilizer stem to cushion the wire.

This would completely remove the wire tick from the space bar. However, it’s hard to find fault in this cheap mechanical keyboard considering that, well, it is so cheap or at least more affordable than the big leagues.

The Kemove K68 keycaps are double shot PBT with shine through legends.

Since they are low profile, they feel quite nice. For example, the space bar has sharp edges at the corners and a rounded edge where your thumb would rest. It’s a nice feature I wish more keycap sets came with.

On the left side of the board you will find 2 switches, one for changing between Mac and Windows layouts, and one for changing between the 3 connectivity modes: 2.4ghz wireless, wired and Bluetooth 5.1 that supports up to three connected devices.

The top left is where the Type C port is, which brings me to the braided cable that came in the box.

While I do like the braided cables, I don’t like the fact that the Type C end is angled at 90 degrees. This would have made more sense if the port was on the left where the connectivity switches are.

This was not a huge problem for me because when I use it on my desktop I have a custom cable. If I use it on laptops I will use it in 2.4ghz or BT modes anyway.

The 2.4ghz dongle has K68 written on it and that’s a very nice touch, since my house is full of generic dongles and it’s hard to keep track – and I know I’m not alone. What I would have liked is for the keyboard to have a slot for the dongle, so you can keep it safe while you travel.

Another notable feature of the Kemove K68 is that the keyboard comes with software for customizing its RGB, assigning macros and making different profiles for different applications. You can even use the RGB as a visualiser for music. 

While RGB customization is pure pain if you want to assign per key RGB as you have to do it for every single key, at least it works (i’m looking at you Royal Kludge and GamaKay).

I used the K68 mainly for video editing and gaming and I really enjoyed it. 

Since all the keyboards I own are 65%, I felt right at home with the form factor.

It’s a good budget mechanical keyboard, both if you are just starting in the custom mechanical keyboards hobby or you just want a decent gaming and daily use board.

 

Kemove K68 switches and price

The price is 89.99$ for the pre-build with your choice of Gateron switches Red, Brown, Blue, Yellow and Silver. For the build with Cherry MX Switches, Red, Brown and Blue, it’s 119.99$.

I prefer Gateron over Cherry but that is personal preference. However I don’t think that the 30$ difference for the Cherry switches is an upgrade. 

In my opinion, you can just buy one with Gateron Yellows and, if you don’t like them, you can always use the 30$ you saved and buy other switches.

That price difference is enough for some AKKO CS switches or Gateron Milky Yellows, some of the best budget linear switches (you can read my article on keyboard switches if you want to learn more about this topic).

Overall the Kemove K68 is a competitive board in its price range. It has hot swappable PCB compatible with 3 and 5 pin switches, bright RGB, an app that works and I really like the low profile keycap set. 

The case itself is not slim like other low profile mechanical keyboards like the K series from Keychron or the NuPhy Air series but the keycaps make it look smaller than other keyboards in its class. 

So, if you’re in the market for a good budget prebuilt mechanical keyboard that is wireless and is a good basis for customization, you should definitely give the the Kemove K68 a chance.

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