Tong Family

Well, I have three of these Anne Pro keyboards and they are inexpensive keyboards with Jade Box White, Gateron Blue, and Gateron Brown keys. I’ve liked how small they are as 60% keyboards, but recently on my M1 Mac, they are having Bluetooth trouble. They are greyed out on the Mac Bluetooth menu which I’ve never seen before.

When they start they sometimes work, but other times, I have to connect them wired to get them to connect Bluetooth. I’ve looked on their site and r/annepro2 and it looks like the product is sort of with many folks having. It is a little hard to figure out how the keys work.

This is one product where the manual is vital because there are many magic keys. The main thing is that the has a TAP layout where if you click on the lower right briefly you get the arrow keys. And then they have lighting control with FN2+9,0 and + and – changing and turning off the backlight.

The main thing is that if you hold down FN2 and numbers 1-4, you get a slow blink and this change for 5 seconds will turn on pairing, if you just short-click on it, it switches to it.

Bluetooth reset didn’t work

So I tried to follow the guides to reset the Bluetooth, you can reset it by doing a pkill bluetoothd and I tried to delete the properties in /Library/Preferences but none of these worked. I even tried repairing it.

More keyboards

So I think that sometime soon all three of these keyboards are going to break. Fortunately, I do have another Bluetooth keyboard, a Keychron K6 with Gazzew U4T Thocky 62g that I built a custom, but to remind everyone, here is what we have with a reranking and dropping the Anne Pro 2 and I also tried to the mod my Keychron K2 V2 but that failed, I broke the connector, so I just had to harvest the keys. So sad:

1. Keychron K6 with Thocky 62g. This was before Keychron allowed programmability, but the keys are just great. This is our only wireless
2. Compact F77 keyboard. It took me a long time to like this keyboard and I think it needed some break-in. It uses the original IBM Buckling sprint design. It is loud but now that the keys have stopped repeating so much, it is pretty awesome. And heavy and strange, but great.
3. Unicomp New Model M. I’ve been using this a lot more. This is again something I thought I wouldn’t like, but I do like the firm click effect. The main problem is that it is huge and plastic, so the F77 is nicer.
4. Varmilo VA97M Mac Cherry Brown. This is a nice wired keyboard with side lighting, but the keycaps are themselves not translucent.
5. Fujitsu Realforce TKL Topre. I’ve grown to love this keyboard’s soft dome feel but need to use it more.
6. WASD Code V2 with Cherry MX Blue. It is the one keyboard that has fallen out of favor with me in the last ten years. I put dampers on it and it just feels super mushy. I’m in the middle of retiring it now and am going to substitute the Fujitsu Realforce for it.
7. MagicForce 68. This is a bright bargain and that feels very janky.

Keyboard desires

Rtings.com has a list of mainstream great keyboards and some lust for things are. Some choices that are interesting with reviews from Rock, Paper, Shotgun (for gamers), sadly Deskauthority is gone, but hopefully Keyboard Institute will return, r/MechanicalKeyboards, IGN (for gamers), Switch and Click (for typists), XDA (for developers), Tom’s Hardware (wireless only), The Verge (gamers), PC Gamers

1. Bluetooth. Something to replace all those Obins AnnePro 2s. Ideally, this would have removable keycaps and also switches for future flexibility.
2. Small. That is 60-65% is ideal and 75% is OK. 60% means no arrow keys, 65% is arrow keys but no function keys and 75% is function and arrow keys but no keypad.
3. Removable Switches. So you can swap key switches to your heart’s content
4. Double-shot PBT keys that are see-thru so you can see the lettering light up.
5. Backlighting. This is pretty important as I do a lot of typing in the relative dark. Ideal south-facing (toward your feet)
6. Programmable. Ideally with Via or QMK something
7. Well supported. Not too cheap so that they go obsolete like the Anne Pro

So here are some choices:

1. Keychron Q Pro and Keychron Q65 Max. They have been knocking it out of the park with their Q Pro line which has Bluetooth and also removable keys and is programmable. They have a huge variety of keyboards with the Q2 Pro at 65% or Q4Pro at 60%. They use their own Keychron K Pro switches. The Q Max is the next step up at more like $210. These are using Gateron Jupiters which are thocky like the Pandas.
2. Leopold FC66MBT. I’ve heard a lot about these as trusty and reliable with trusty Cherry MX Blue keys.
3. Drop ALT v2. Drop is a mass buy site and this smaller one is pretty nice. NOrth facing and not Bluetooth. The CTRL v2 is the larger keyboard and similar.
4. Keydous NJ80-AP. A really niche keyboard like the Keychron. I only worry that like the Anne Pro 2, this will not get support and there is a Fakespot warning on the vendor. $189 or so with the right kit.

Now here is a wired keyboard, but I put them here because they have the new Hall Effect keys and then some traditional wired ones. I have enough of those:

1. Keychron Q1 HE. This one is just coming out so not clear how good it is, but kind of cool.
2. Wooting 60HE+. These are the new Hall Effect keyboards. Basically, this means they are analog and great for gaming. Not wireless thoug
3. Glorious GMMK and GMMK Pro. This is an expensive keyboard but is well known amongst aficionados. It’s not wireless though
4. Ducky 3 TKL. Another one I’ve heard alot about, not wireless though