Matias Quiet Pro Keyboard

Computer

I’ve been playing about with new keyboards over the last few months - my most recent purchase is the Matias Quiet Pro for the Mac.

This is an American layout board that works with Bluetooth on the Mac and has a Mac based layout. It uses quiet Alps based keyswitches, rather than any of the Cherry MX or Cherry based knockoffs.

Quality

The device feels sturdy enough when being used. However, there are some aspects that make it feel a bit cheaper than it should.

The housing is plastic and there is a large line where the two parts of the plastic shell meet. This feels cheap, especially where the two parts of the case don’t meet up quite right, and therefore there is a crack around the entire keyboard.

However, the typing experience is good. The keys feel more stable than my Keychron K8 and whilst I do like the click clack of the blue switches of the Keychron, the quieter typing of the Matias is the reason I purchased it. The Matias switches were the first mechanical keyboard switches that I’d used in the past, having owned a Tactile Pro Keyboard as my first mechanical keyboard and I like the Alps mechanical switches that were used in that, but I ran in to an issue removing the space bar, breaking the keyboard.

MacOS

I bought the macOS compatible version and it works out of the box on macOS, once I changed the keyboard input to American. This is a bit of a change from the ISO standard that I’m used to, but it’s not major and quickly adjustable.

The biggest plus for me is that the media control keys on the function keys all work out of the box without any issues1. This keyboard fits in nicely with macOS.

Keycaps

As the keycaps display most of the alternative characters on the keyboard that the shift and option buttons will allow that character to type, the keyboard feels very busy.

Whilst I don’t touch type, I’m fairly proficient at using muscle memory to allow me to type without looking at the keyboard as I do so. Therefore, once I’d got used to the keyboard, I’ve not been to bothered about the “busy-ness” of the key caps.

Sound

The sound is one of the main selling points of the keyboard and was perhaps one of the reason I looked at purchasing the keyboard. By being able to have a quieter keyboard, I was hoping that I’d be able to type during video calls with less of an issue than I currently had with my Keychron Gateron Blue switched keyboard. Which is quite loud.

Comparing the two, the Matias is significantly quieter than the Keychron, which, in fairness, is what I’d expect for a board that is being sold on quiet! I’m still not sure I’d be able to use it to type notes during meetings, but I’ve moved more to writing notes at the minute, so haven’t really given it to much of trial.

Conclusion

For me, the keyboard works and I like the much smaller footprint on my desk. I thought I’d really struggle with a tenkeyless keyboard when I started using one, but I’ve really grown to like them. I even purchased a separate numpad in case I ever need to use one, but I’ve barely used that 2.

Time will tell if it lasts longer than my previous Matias keyboard - I’m hoping so.

  1. Except the brightness controls, but I managed to resolve that by using Monitor Control. ↩︎

  2. Perhaps because it’s a cheap one and I find I spend most of my time chasing it around the desk as it moves when I’m trying to use it, on the rare occasions I need it! ↩︎