Keychron's Wild 100-Key Macro Pad Gives You A Shortcut For Everything
When you hear "macro pad", you probably envision something gamers use to cheat in video games. Cheaters or not, that's exactly who Keychron's new C100 8K macro pad seems to be targeting with its distinctive aesthetic featuring clear ASA keycaps and fully customizable per-key RGB LED lighting, to say nothing of the supported 8-KHz report rate. The truth is, though, macro pads can be used for a lot more than just automatic inputs in video games, and besides, no gamer needs a full one hundred macro keys.
I've long been an advocate for gaming input devices in the office. Having extra, programmable macro keys on your keyboard can be an incredible boon for certain types of work that benefits from being able to perform a given sequence of keystrokes. Most of the better devices will even let you configure the specific speed of the keystrokes, including delays, let you set the macro to repeat, either while held or after being pressed, and save the configuration to the device. All of those features are supported by Keychron's C100.
But truthfully, the standout feature of this thing is its size. A ten-keys-by-ten-keys layout gives you fully one hundred keys, with 96 of them programmable (four are dedicated lighting keys), and it's a blank slate out of the box. It literally doesn't do anything out of the box; you're going to have to program in whatever functions you want yourself. In that sense, it's almost more similar to grid controllers like the famous Novation Launchpad or Akai Force used in music production, and indeed you could certainly use it that way, although the custom Keychron Apex switches aren't velocity-sensitive.
The configurable lighting is actually a practically useful feature in this case, too; you can use it to outline areas of the macro pad based on their function. The keycaps are transparent, so the lighting will shine right through. Keychron also notes that the LEDs are "north-facing", meaning they face away from the user to avoid blinding you in a dark room. The keyswitches support no-solder hot-swapping if you prefer a different switch type than the default "Red" (linear, light actuation force) style.
The one feature we're not super keen on is the 8-KHz reporting rate. This is dubiously useful even on a regular keyboard, but on a macro pad it's downright absurd. You might think "well whatever, better too high than too low, right?" but actually, high report rate devices can cause performance problems in some games, most notably some Unity engine games, as well as FromSoftware titles like Elden Ring and Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon. The issue, according to Peter 'Durante' Thoman, has to do with apps getting hammered with legacy Windows Messaging events on a thread that also handles rendering. At high polling rates, the sheer volume of these messages can consume enough of that thread's time to cause enormous frametime spikes and massive stuttering on otherwise capable hardware.
Fortunately, Keychron historically allows you to manually configure the report rate of its input devices, and that is almost assuredly the case on the C100 as well. There's not really a lot of reason to raise it above the USB 1.1 default 125-Hz rate; that's a new report every 8 milliseconds, and if you think that's too slow, I have some oxygen-free audio cables with diamond connectors to sell you. Unlike those expensive cables, though, the C100 is only $64.99, which is honestly downright cheap for the feature set this thing has.
If you're keen on a 100-key macro pad, this is the only one on the market. Unfortunately, it seems to be sold out, both at Keychron's website and on Amazon. At least on Amazon you can set up an 'auto buy' that will purchase the item for you when it becomes available. Let us know what you think of Keychron's new C100 in the comments below.
