Logitech MX Keys Review - Probably the Best Productivity Keyboard

I was looking for a good productivity keyboard for daily work for a while. I was a fan of Logitech products, especially their mice, but their best keyboard option was the Logitech Craft.

I was never a fan of the Logitech Craft. I liked the keyboard part but the top part was too large and I always thought the knob was stupid. Especially since it made the keyboard so expensive.

So I was pretty excited about the MX Keys which was essentially the Craft but minus that knob and large top section and half the price.

I’ve been using the keyboard for over a year now and it’s absolutely fantastic. Here’s my review.

The Design

This is a full sized keyboard layout with a numpad on the right side and every key you could possibly need.

The width of the keyboard is about 17 inches wide and the height is just over 5 inches. It’s about 0.8 inches thick and very solidly built with a single metal plate making up the frame.

It has the low profile chicklet style keys you’d see on something like an Apple Magic Keyboard which I actually quite like. The keys are easy to press and have a nice little indent for your fingers in each one. They’re also nice and quiet which is another thing I really like.

The keyboard has a nice dark metal background and black keys. Overall the colors look fantastic and help give the keyboard it’s premium feel.

The Features

The MX Keys works on both Windows and Mac computers. There are certain keys that have both operating systems keys printed on them. Like a key that says “cmd | alt” or another one that says “opt | start” so everything’s labeled and works in both environments.

Logitech kind of promotes this as a feature but this is one thing I’m not a super fan of. They really just did this so they could mass produce a single keyboard instead of one for each operating system. I’m on a PC so I would have preferred Windows specific keys. I do have a bit of a problem where I go looking for the Windows key and I don’t see it because it’s labeled as “opt | start” which is admittedly a pretty minor complaint.

Although I would have preferred if they maybe did what Keychron does and included alternative keycaps for Mac and Windows that you just swap out yourself.

The keyboard charges with a USB-C cable. With the backlighting turned on it lasts around 10 days and with the backlighting off it can last up to 5 months. I can definitely confirm that I hardly ever have to recharge the thing.

Speaking of the backlighting the keyboard uses proximity sensors that detect when your hands move over the keys and turn the backlighting on right when you need it.

When you move your hands away the backlighting turns off to save battery power which is a pretty neat feature.

The intensity of the backlighting automatically adjusts to the ambient lighting conditions or if you prefer you can set the brightness manually.

The keyboard uses either Bluetooth or the included USB Receiver and you can pair up to 3 different devices with the keyboard and switch between them by pressing keys on the keyboard.

The Software

The Keyboard is designed to work with Logitech’s Flow software which allows you to copy and paste files from one computer to another, even from a Windows computer to a Mac one.

I used to have a Macbook beside my desktop and I can confirm that copying files over is super easy.

The software also allows you to customize the function keys on the keyboard as well which is very nice, especially since there are a lot of function keys including on that I’m not sure what it does…

The software will also alert you when the battery needs to be charged as well with a little notification on your computer.

Other Things I Liked

There are a few other minor touches that I really liked such as having a dedicated screenshot button and a dedicated lock button at the top right of the keyboard.

There’s even a dedicated calculator button. I never really used the calculator that much before but I find myself using it more now.

I also really like the media controls, the play/pause, next track and previous track buttons. I listen to music and podcasts a lot when I work and having those keys is super helpful. If a keyboard doesn’t have those it’s pretty much unusable for me.

And just in general I love the overall look, feel and the premium style of this keyboard.

Other Things I Didn’t Like

Most of these are silly personal things that you probably don’t care about but still worth mentioning.

The main thing I don’t like about this keyboard is it’s too wide. I find myself bumping the mouse into the right side of the keyboard all the time when I’m working.

I personally never use the num pad so I would have much preferred a more compact version of this keyboard without it. If Logitech ever made a version if this keyboard without that it would easily be the most perfect keyboard ever.

I also ran into a bizarre issue using MusicBee which is my preferred music playing app and has my whole music library. For some reason the media playback buttons on the keyboard only work if MusicBee is maximized and the main window in focus.

If you have the program minimized like I always do when I’m working the next/previous track or play/pause buttons just don’t work.

I eventually managed to find a work around where I used the software and had to edit some configuration files to change the media keys on the keyboard to a complicated combination of key presses. Then I set that combination as the media keys in MusicBee and that works for MusicBee.

But then unfortunately those keys don’t work properly for other apps like the one I use for listening to podcasts or video players.

But that only seems to be an issue with MusicBee. Other media players seem to work no problem.

In Conclusion

This is easily the best keyboard I’ve found so far. There are a few minor personal issues I have with it that keep it from being completely perfect but it’s probably as close as I’m going to get.

I highly recommend you get one of these keyboards and use it every day for your work. It’s a fantastic combination with their MX Master 3 mouse as well.

It’s a fantastic combination of look, feel, use and price and it’s available from Amazon here.

And you can check out the official overview video from Logitech below: