LEMOKEY L0 HE 8K Review – One Handed Gaming Keyboard??

Oh man, some people are gonna be upset with this thing. This is the Lemokey L0 HE 8K, a one handed magnetic switch gaming keyboard, and much to my surprise, it costs more than a lot of really decent keyboards. It’s $160. Yeah. For those that don’t know, Lemokey is Keychron’s gaming brand, and this is one of their few products available right now. So, let’s take a look at this thing and see if we can work out why you might just spend premium keeb money on just, well, half of one!

First off we need to start with the obvious, the fact that this is just half a keyboard – actually a little less. It’s F1 through F5, tilde to 6, tab to T, caps to G, shift to B and control, FN, alt and space. That’s it. There is a clicky knob on the side, a USB C port up top, and a three profile slider switch, and that’s yer lot. Unlike some of the ergonomic split boards, there isn’t another half hiding in the box, this is it. This is all you get. What you do get though is actually really nice. This is a hefty bit of kit – chock full of metal making it incredibly stout and rigid. It’s really nice. Hell, even the adjustable foot is nice, it’s anodized aluminium that clicks into place both up and down – although they missed a trick by making you disconnect the damn thing to adjust it, since with a USB C cable in the way the tilting mechanism is blocked. Anyway, this is incredibly high quality, and I’m starting to see where all that money went, and why you only get half!

The switches are also quite possibly the best I’ve used. These are Lemokey’s own Ultra-Fast Lime Magnetic Switches, and these might just be the most accurate and fastest switches I’ve used. Some switches have a horrible deadzone at the top of the travel, but not these. Using their own switch test mode you can practically breathe on the board and it’ll register a seemingly accurate distance. It’s amazing. They are very light though – 25 grams of starting force and 48 grams of end force. That is very light – for context a Cherry MX Brown STARTS at almost 40g and ends at 60! These also have a little less travel than usual, not that I actually noticed. These offer 3.35mm of actuation range, although they seem to genuinely have 0.01mm sensitivity, which is incredible. 

While I’m gushing about the switches, let’s talk feeling. These feel great. Obviously they are linear, which is in no way my preference, but despite that I still enjoyed using this. The smooth feel and light force felt like the perfect balance for gaming, and obviously typing is kind of out of the question anyway so I guess who cares about that! As for the sound, well have a listen… To me this is alright, maybe a little hollow sounding, but otherwise fine. Again it’s 100% going to be drowned out by in-game noises and callouts to teammates, so the fact it isn’t overly loud is about all that really matters. 

Since we’re talking about gaming, I should mention some of the gaming features this thing offers. Thanks to this thing coming with mag switches, there’s actually a lot to cover here – although nothing groundbreaking. That includes adjustable actuation points and rapid trigger, last keystroke prioritization (ie Snap-Tap), dynamic keystrokes (aka multiple actions per key) and even the rare analog mode that turns WASD into an analog joystick. There is also an 8,000 hertz polling rate, and even more impressively a 256,000 hertz keyscan rate. That’s pretty damn rare too – in fact this is the first board I’ve heard of such a high keyscan rate on. All of those features can be controlled from Lemokey’s online configurator. It’s pretty easy to use, and all the features are pretty clearly laid out. Good job there!

The most important thing for a gaming keyboard, perhaps after feel anyway, is latency. Luckily I designed and built my own tool to test just that – the open source latency testing tool, available at OSRTT.com by the way, link in the description below – and just tapping on a key, I’m happy to report that this is one incredibly fast keyboard. With stock settings (but at 8K hertz), this is the second fastest keyboard I’ve tested. However, this isn’t a fair comparison, because the Nuphy Air60 HE had a much higher actuation point at like 1mm by default, so let’s have a look at what different heights does for you. At 0.8mm we get nearly 2 milliseconds off, down to an astonishing 3 milliseconds flat. At 1,000 hertz, by the way, that only added 0.1ms on average, or basically within margin for error. At 0.2 mm, which is insane by the way, then the keypress latency goes down even more to just 1.9 milliseconds on average, or by far the fastest keyboard I’ve tested. Great job Lemokey!

For actually gaming on this then… It’s actually really good. It feels great and it has all the keys you need.. The obvious benefit to this over even a 60% board is even more space for your mouse. If you wanna swing like mad, you have all the room in the world with this. Realistically we shouldn’t be comparing this to keyboards, we should be comparing this to keypads like Razer’s Tartarus Pro which is £130 and has noticeably fewer keys. This is a secondary board – obviously – just without the ergonomic design. This is for those that have the cash to spend on a very much nice-to-have not need-to-have accessory to make their gaming experience even better. And damn it’s nice. The quality, the gaming experience, everything. It’s spot on.

Now personally I wish that this was actually a full keyboard – maybe a TKL layout – that was magnetically attached in the middle, and just pulls off when you don’t want the other half. If you want to be really fancy, the second half could be wirelessly connected to this half, and when connected it charges, so when you disconnect it it’d start running from battery, but I understand that with all the metal and mag switches, that would make this a $300+ keyboard. I guess though if you’ve already got a premium keyboard you love the typing feel on, but want all the latest gaming features and some more room for your mouse, this might end up being that sort of money together. Obviously this isn’t for everyone, but I actually really like it. It’s expensive for sure, but it’s basically the same price as something like that Razer Tartarus Pro, has more buttons, no learning curve, and one hell of a quality feel to it. If you were considering a keypad, consider this too.