Lofree Flow84/Flow100 Keyboard Review

These keyboards are available in two sizes. We bought and tested the Lofree Flow84, which has a compact (75%) form factor. It lacks a numpad found on typical full-size keyboards, but it takes up less space on your desk.

A larger Lofree Flow100 is also available, which has a compact (96%) form factor. It has virtually all of the same keys as a standard full-size board but a much more compact layout, again taking up a bit less space on your desk. See an image of its layout.

The slim, lightweight design of both size variants makes them easy to carry around, store in backpacks, and take with you on the go.

These keyboards have excellent build quality. The chassis is made of lightweight but sturdy aluminum and has very little deck flex when twisted. The case has a premium look and feel with tight tolerances. The edges are noticeably sharp rather than rounded, an aesthetic choice that may or may not appeal to you.

The gasket-mount design adds a touch of springiness to the typing feel without making it feel mushy. The keys are stable, with no noticeable wobble, and the board is free of rattling or ticking sounds.

The keycaps are made of durable PBT plastic with dye-sublimated legends and a smooth, non-slippery finish.

Thick, rounded feet on the underside do a great job of keeping the board in place while typing. The top pair of feet are fitted to a metal bracket and provide a small typing angle incline.

These keyboards have a low-profile design, making them quite comfortable to type on even without a wrist rest, as you don't need to angle your wrists too steeply to reach the keys. Unfortunately, there are no adjustable incline options.

These keyboards have good hardware customizability. The PCBs are hot-swappable with Kailh Choc V2 pinouts. They also use low-profile Cherry-style stabilizers that clip into the plate and can be removed without completely disassembling the board.

These keyboards have poor backlight clarity as the stock keycaps lack shine-through legends. The backlighting has a slightly yellowish hue with a bit of green bounce lighting from the dark green housing of the Kailh Ghost switches.

For reference, see a photo we took with several stock keycaps replaced with standard shine-through keycaps from another low-profile keyboard in our inventory.

If you buy these keyboards in the black colorway with Kailh Phantom Switches, we expect less overall reflected light. It may also have a different hue due to the dark purple housing of those switches.

The included cable has a smooth plastic coating and retains some kinks from its packaging. The connector on the keyboard side has a 90° angle.

Lofree indicates that the Lofree Flow 84 has a battery capacity of 2,000 mAh with a working time of up to 40 hours.

The larger Lofree Flow 100 has a battery capacity of 3,000 mAh and the same advertised working time of up to 40 hours.

A physical switch on the back edge of these keyboards toggles between wired, Bluetooth, and power off modes. You can also change between Windows and Mac modes using the Fn+N and Fn+M hotkey combinations.

On the front of the case, there's a small LED strip that acts as a battery indicator. While the majority of the keyboard has white-only LEDs, there are RGB lighting strips on both sides, which are capable of displaying eight different colour settings. They also have static and breathing effect options that you can adjust using hotkeys.

For a complete list of hotkeys, Bluetooth pairing instructions, and other information, you can see a digital version of the user manuals for both the Flow84 and the Flow100 on Lofree's website.

• USB-A to (90° angled) USB-C cable
• User documentation

These keyboards provide excellent typing quality. They have a gasket-mount design, which lends a soft, slightly springy quality. Inside the chassis, layers of Poron and IXPE foam help soften the typing experience and round out the sound profile.

The keycaps are made of durable PBT plastic and have a soft textured finish that isn't slippery. The keycap profile is generous and leaves plenty of space for your fingers, but it's also quite flat and lacks the distinct concave top or defined ridges that some other keycap profiles have. You may have no issue adapting to these keycaps or find it takes a bit of getting used to, depending on the keyboards you typically use.

The layout may also take a bit of getting used to, notably the function row on the top of the keyboard, which is typically spaced and offset from the alphanumeric keys in most layouts.

These keyboards have a gasket-mount design that slightly softens the impact of keystrokes. They also have layers of IXPE and Poron foam inside the case that help dampen overall noise and deliver a quiet typing experience.

We tested the Lofree Flow84 with linear Kailh Ghost switches, but we expect the black colorway with tactile Kailh Phantom switches will be somewhat louder.

The Kailh Ghost switches have a moderate weight, and a fairly short pre-travel and total travel. Actuation is fairly lightweight, but there's a small increase in spring resistance towards the end of travel and a fairly active rebound, likely due to these switches have a progressive or multi-stage spring. Altogether, they feel very smooth and responsive and likely won't feel too heavy or too lightweight for most people.

You can also buy this keyboard in a dark colorway with tactile Kailh Phantom switches. These switches are similarly weighted but have a small tactile bump to overcome near the start of travel.

The Lofree Flow84/Flow100 keyboards use non-adjustable mechanical switches.

The Lofree Flow84 we tested has linear Kailh Ghost switches. You can also buy this keyboard in a black colorway with tactile Kailh Phantom switches. See the Differences Between Variants section for more details.

These keyboards have great single-key latency over a wired connection, making them suitable for playing games in any genre. However, the latency is also quite inconsistent. These inconsistencies are too small to be noticeable in-game, but they can have an impact if you play at an extremely high competitive level.

While it's normal for Bluetooth latency to be significantly higher and less consistent than wired latency, this keyboard exhibits extraordinarily poor Bluetooth latency. You're much more likely to experience noticeable delays if you play games using a Bluetooth connection with this keyboard.

These keyboards have reasonably good multi-key latency over a wired connection. They're well-suited for playing games in all genres. However, the performance is somewhat inconsistent compared to dedicated gaming keyboards, and while this doesn't pose any issues for casual gaming, it may impact your experience if you play competitive, fast-paced titles at an extremely high level.

Although these keyboards appear to have exceptional chord split performance, that doesn't necessarily translate to accurate real-world behavior in rhythm games or other applications that rely on precise timing of multiple simultaneous inputs.

We believe the unexpectedly good measurements stem from how these keyboards handle input reporting. Rather than sending key events as they're registered, they may use a report-based system that batches multiple inputs into a single transmission to your computer.

In previous testing, we've observed similar behavior in lower-powered productivity keyboards, some of which unexpectedly outperform dedicated gaming models in this test.

This report-based batching means that a chord of simultaneous key presses may be delayed while the keyboard finishes scanning and packaging them into a single report. When that report is finally sent, the inputs arrive at the PC with virtually no delay between them. However, the added latency introduced on the keyboard side during the batching process isn't captured by our measurement.

In contrast, high-performance gaming keyboards typically use event-based reporting. They prioritize sending individually timestamped inputs as soon as they're registered, preserving their timing more accurately. This minimizes the risk of delayed or misaligned inputs due to batching, an especially important factor in fast-paced, timing-sensitive scenarios like rhythm gaming.

These keyboards don't have software, but you can customize some settings, like backlighting, using shortcuts directly on the keyboard. For more details, see the Extra Features section.

On Windows, the F1-F12 keys are all primary, while shortcuts, like media control functions, are on the secondary Fn layer.

By default, the F1-F12 keys on macOS and Linux are on the secondary Fn layer. Disappointingly, there is no Fn lock hotkey function to change this behavior.

However, for Mac users, you can check your System Settings menu, where you can enable the Function Keys option to set F1-F12 keys as primary.

For Linux, you may need to create a custom script to achieve the same. See a user-created example script for Arch Linux.

These keyboards are fully compatible with Android, iOS, and iPadOS. However, some functions behave slightly differently, depending on the operating system.

With the keyboards in Mac mode on iPadOS and iOS, the F4 key does nothing, but all other keys, including media hotkeys, work as expected.

On Android, with the keyboards in Windows mode, Fn+F3 does nothing, and F4 opens Google search.