The Mechanical Alternative To Apple’s Magic Keyboard

The new Coleus keyboard from Wombat is a mechanical model with a profile almost as low as Apple’s Magic Keyboard. With hot-swappable switches, the Coleus can be ordered with a choice of switch type for variable click action. Mechanical keyboards are growing in popularity, especially now that many of us are working from home and spending more time typing away at our computers and playing games. A good-quality keyboard is as essential to a knowledge worker as a musical instrument is to a musician.

The Coleus keyboard is designed with Mac users in mind and has a 75% compact layout similar to Apple’s Magic Keyboard. The Coleus differs from Apple’s standard keyboard with six extra keys on the right side of the keyboard, which can be programmed as direct emoji keys or almost any shortcut keyboard. The Wombat Pouch software can customize the Coleus to produce virtually any key combination. Shortcuts are the perfect way to speed up or streamline a workflow.

Unlike Apple’s Magic Keyboard, the Wombat Coleus includes RGB backlights behind each keycap with various lighting patterns and a choice of LED colors to suit the user’s mood. With the ability to connect with up to five devices simultaneously, the Coleus makes for an ideal multi-device keyboard when working between computers, tablets and smartphones.

The 84-key layout of the Coleus is like the Apple layout and has the same row of Mac media keys for triggering all the usual functions like screen brightness, volume levels and media controls. There’s also the extra column of six keys on the Coleus’s right-hand side, which can be programmed however you like. Wombat supplies spare keycaps for five of the most popular emojis. Logitech also used this concept on its Pop mechanical keyboard. Gen Z like to have keyboards with quick access to…