The people at Redragon very kindly sent me one of their K530 Draconic keyboards to try out.
The K530 is a 60%, 61 key, compact, portable keyboard. You can connect via USB C (L-type C cable, ideally, since the port is on the left side of the board) or wirelessly via Bluetooth 5.0.
Small switches on the left side of the board allow you to select between wired or wireless, and between 3 saved Bluetooth devices. This eliminates the usual hotkey connection switching stuff when swapping between devices, and I like that because I always welcome a more analogue, easy to read, way of doing these things.
Zero problems connecting the board to my laptop, iPad, and even the BOOX Nova3 via Bluetooth, or switching between those devices.
An inbuilt 3000mAh battery ensures that the K530 stays charged and useable for a good, long time (although I’ve mostly been using it on my desktop, plugged in, so haven’t really tested how long it will last).
The K530 comes with hot-swappable (with other Red Dragon Switches) Brown switches which, in Red Dragon’s own words “provide a soft bump, but no click, unlike blue switches for quiet use”. And they’re lovely to type on. Perfect for me in my day to day writing.
The K530 is RGB backlit with more than enough presets for me but, of course, there’s also the option to customise and design your own with the Red Dragon software. Like the (significantly larger) Epomaker HS84, the backlights on the K530 seem much less intrusive to me than on some other keyboards, and I’m actually enjoying the candy-coloured rainbow keys, rather than finding it an eyewatering unwanted extra.
Pretty lightweight, the K530 is, of course, incredibly portable, but it’s nice and stable on the desktop thanks to rubber grips and flip-out rubber-tipped feet at the rear.
Now 65% / 68 key is, I’ve discovered, my ideal size of board, mostly because I really feel the lack of a Del key when I’m typing on anything smaller. However, with the K530, I pretty quickly got used to hitting Fn+/? instead, not least because of the handy alts printed on the front of each of the keys. Yes, I am that daft that I need reminding.
As silly and small a detail as the front/side printing on the keys might seem, it has genuinely made a difference to the K530 ‘s day to day useability to me, making it probably the best, most user-friendly, 61 key / 60% board I’ve ever worked on.
The K530 Draconic keyboard is available via the Redragon website for $59.99 USD