KnewKey Rymek Classic Mechanical Keyboard brings back the joy
I’m sitting here banging away on my keyboard and hearing the click-clack of the keys – a sound I guess I haven’t heard for decades. It’s quite the moment, with thoughts of Ernest Hemmingway hearing the same sounds years ago as he pounded out The Old Man and the Sea.
Just one of the differences, however, is I’ll bet his keyboard never lit up while he was typing as mine is doing now. Not that I’ve got blazing speed, but rather, because I’m typing on the KnewKey Rymek Retro Mechanical keyboard.
This keyboard connects both via Bluetooth 3.0 and via USB micro cable. In Bluetooth mode, you can actually hook up to three different devices and quickly switch from one to the other by pressing the FN + F1, F2, or F3 keys. This is great to pair with your desktop machine, laptop, and phone like I’ve done. Or, maybe you and your significant other want to share, so you might choose to have their phone on F1, your phone on F2, and a joint iPad on F3.
When pairing the keyboard with Bluetooth 3.0, look for the display name KnewKey.
As you can see above, the Rymek has a metal stent that fits into the rear of the keyboard and securely holds a tablet, up to the size of an iPad Air. (If you have a bigger/heavier tablet, you can still connect, but just place it on a separate stand.) The keyboard will work across all Windows, iOS, macOS, and Android devices.
Key spacing is equal to the Logitech keyboard I use for my desktop Lenovo M800 computer – less the numeric keypad. You can see from the pictures that the key placement is quite different from my laptop and desktop keyboards in one main regard. The Enter key and the backspace key are inboard instead of aligned to the outer right edge.
I expected that to give me some getting used to, but they are still right next to the “ and + keys, so it wasn’t a problem.
When using the keyboard with the USB cable, the keyboard will always be charged. In addition, a nice little feature I’ve not seen anywhere else is the addition of two micro-USB ports on the back of the keyboard so you can plug it in from either the back right or the back left. Clever.
Remember how you used to hit that carriage return lever to advance your paper on your typewriter, well it’s still here, but now, you only need to give it a tug if you want to switch from Bluetooth to USB mode.
You’ve got a full set of F1-F12 keys and many of the others do double duty in combination with the FN key.
For multimedia, the F6 thru F8 keys enable previous track, Play/Pause, and next track. The analog scroll wheel on the right side of the “carriage” turns to increase or decrease volume. That, I really find useful.
Fn and the DEL key toggles through a number of lighting patterns and animations. I guess gamers get off on that sort of thing, but they would make me crazy. I leave mine “On steady” all the time. The up and down arrow keys raise or lower the backlight behind the keys from OFF to Full ON through five levels of brightness.
The model I chose has copper color keys and a nice blue backlight. There are multiple color keyboards available, so check their website for available options. Matching wrist rests are also available, but I haven’t tried those.
After typing on the Rymek Classic Mechanical Keyboard for some time now, there haven’t been any keys or functions that I find missing. And, I just LOVE that clack of the mechanical keys. Maybe I’ll go write a novel…something about a man and a giant fish.
Disclosure: KnewKey provided us with this keyboard so we could test it and do this review. There was no financial compensation involved, and all opinions are and always will be strictly our own.