CORN Anne Pro 2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard 60% True RGB Backlit – Wired/Wireless Bluetooth 5.0 PBT Type-c Up to 8 Hours…

Review updated 6/15/2020I am typing this review from the Anne Pro 2, connected to my PC via the included USB cable.First of all, I chose Kailh Box Brown switches. My previous keyboard was the ducky dk2108s with cherry mx brown switches. It’s worth to note that I bought that ducky keyboard back in maybe 2014 when RGB wasn’t so big — single color LED gaming keyboards were common, and that particular ducky retailed at around $120 at the time.The Anne Pro 2 configured with Kailh Box Browns came in at $90 USD shipped ordering from this particular vendor off amazon. For that price, it certainly is a little more expensive than ordering them with Gaterons; however, I read that the Kailh box browns had less wobble. In fact, when I compare these to the cherry mx browns, I do prefer the kailhs over cherry MX browns as they feel more substantial.EDIT 6/15/2020: while kailh box switches have supposedly been retooled, their stems are still oversized compared to normal MX stems. What this means is your keycaps get stretched out using this keyboard. I have used the Ducky frozen llama pbt keycap set on my anne pro 2 and they’re so stretched out that they fit quite loosely on my custom keyboard built with lilacs. They’re not loose to the point the caps fall off when I flip the keyboard upside down, but my point is: if you get kailh box switches on your anne pro, don’t put any expensive keycaps on it. Kailh box tactiles also eventually develop some sort of clicky sound, which might bother some people. I have since fallen into the rabbit hole that is building custom keyboards and will never return to using my anne pro 2 while plugged in; however, I still use it in bluetooth mode for my surface pro laptop almost daily.Soundwise: the keys sound nice on this board; however, I don’t know if the switches themselves are lubed so I cannot comment on that. I do know however that the stabilizers are lubed and they sound quite nice. The fact that you can tap the lower right keys to function as arrow keys is an interesting feature of this keyboard, and I welcome that functionality simply because I enjoy the sound of pressing those keys.Bluetooth functionality: So I have some mixed opinions on this. It paired easily to my samsung note 9 at first, and I also paired it to my microsoft surface pro. Sometimes, it doesn’t really connect immediately to my phone but it’s hard to judge knowing that samsung’s bluetooth is kind of wonky. It connects really quickly to my surface pro. I did experience the keyboard registering multiple hits as if it got stuck a few times over bluetooth. At this point in time I can’t say that it’s not functional, but I probably wouldn’t game with it. It is otherwise fine and I enjoy using it over my surface pro keyboard.Build quality: I am honestly surprised. This is a plastic cased keyboard that does not rattle and flex. There is supposedly a metal plate in there to add to the rigidity and weight; however, I have not taken it apart to play around. I just know that I am quite satisfied with the build quality. People who say made in China things are cheap need to get over themselves because this is a pretty good product. I wonder if I would have felt the same if I used any other “looser” switches? There are some rubber feet adhered to the bottom of the keyboard and they tend to hold it in place nicely. They keycaps are pbt and feel great. They’re actually nicer than I expected and I rather enjoy typing on them.Software: don’t forget to download the software from their website and update the firmware. If you like the key ripple effect, you have to install their alpha software. That’s one of the first things I did when I got the board, so I don’t know if that affected my bluetooth experience. All I know is I’m a fan! The software is easy to use and it doesn’t cause things to go wonky like the Corsair iCue software.Value: Okay. So a week before I purchased the anne pro 2, I also bought a fullsize prebuilt keyboard. You’re probably all familiar with the brand: Corsair. I picked up a Corsair k70 mk2 se. That’s the white one with the aluminum face plate, cherry mx silver (speed) switches. It was on sale for $110, but it has since gone back up to around $170. I honestly considered returning the Corsair after experiencing the Anne Pro 2. The only reason I kept the Corsair was because it was on sale, and I figured it’s always at least good to have one full size keyboard laying around. If I am going to build a keyboard in the future, I will likely not build a fullsize since there are more options available for the 60% size platform. Since the Corsair is an aluminum face mounted on a plastic case, there is so much pinging and you can even hear the springs in the mx silvers creaking as you press down on the buttons. Not good, but while I’m gaming and listening to music (a majority of the time I’m using that keyboard), I won’t be noticing it anyway. Enough about the corsair though — let’s keep talking about the Anne Pro 2.That leads me into my next point: the acoustic characteristics of the anne pro 2 (at least the unit I received) has suddenly sparked an interest in building. Whether you think this keyboard is meh or yay, it has made an impact for me. I started looking into custom build components and realized really quickly that for anyone who wants to build a 60% size board, you’ll easily meet the cost of simply buying one of these pre-built keyboards. If you want to make something better, you’ll easily exceed the costs on switches and the pcb alone, not including a case. So if you never plan on building, I think the Anne Pro 2 is a solid place to start. For me, I think i’ll keep it around for a long time simply for the portability with its bluetooth functionality.

So I got the Anne Pro 2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard after recently building a new PC. I’m not really a hard-core gamer, so IDK if Im the best one to review this product for things like latency (or whatever is important in that area), but I can tell you the things I love about it and what I would change:What I Love- * The Size. I was a little skeptical about the 60% missing the the extra keys like arrows and such, but this thing is the perfect size for anyplace on my desk (or on my lap as Im using it right now). The special tap-functionality of the lower-right 4 keys basically works as arrow keys for the most part. You can tweak the tap speed for this in the app if needed. * The RGB. I love it. Its bright it works well both plugged in and wirelessly. * Wireless works great. (Maybe a little cumbersome to get it going the first time)What I don’t love: *The software is definitely… not intuitive. They really could use some English speaking technical writers to provide more clear documentation on the software end of things. * The version I got has kaihl white box switches. As this was a choice i cant say I blame them for this part, but I love the clickyness of the keys, I just wish there were more options for pudding caps for box switches… I bought some for non-box switches hoping it wouldn’t matter, but they definitely didn’t fit right. *Bluetooth Set up was kinda a pain. And if I’m being honest, Im not sure what I did to get it working, as I’m pretty sure I tried the steps the same way multiple times and it suddenly just started working. I think it can “remember” up to 4 Bluetooth devices, as I see that on the side of the “1,2,3 and 4” keys, but the software doesnt exactly go into real details there, and I only really need it to connect to the one computer at the moment.All-in-all, while I know mechanical keyboards are a very personal preference kind of thing, I can honestly say, I love this keyboard for what it is, and I would definitely get another one (probably in some MX switch version so I have more options for replacing custom key-caps.)

tl:dr – This is the worst pre-built mechanical keyboard ever made. Buggy (to the point of almost unusable) Obinslab software, Almost unusable Bluetooth pairing performance, key strikes don’t always register (creating typos that you didn’t make) and to top it off, keyboard often “crashes” while using forcing you to turn off, and turn back on, try to repair over Bluetooth (about 90% failure) and try to resume working.OverviewAbout eight months ago, my nephew and I both bought Anne Pro 2 Bluetooth mechanical keyboards on the same order. We were geeked to be getting into the mech keyboard scene, and we had no issues with the purchase or 2-day delivery. But as things often do, a nightmare ensued.As a side note, I have since purchased a Keychron K6 and Cooler Master Sk-621, neither of which have any of the issues outlined here for the Anne Pro 2. The AP2 sits in my closet in it’s original box, collecting dust until I can get it returned.While my nephew doesn’t use the Bluetooth functionality as much as I do, the main use case for me was to have a single keyboard for all my main devices: Personal laptop, Work laptop, Samsung S9 phone, and Raspberry Pi 4 (backup computer so to speak).Initially when receiving the Anne Pro 2 keyboards, we were happy to get the extra colored keys and key puller in the box, but the real issues that we experienced pretty much made the two of us go hunting for better Bluetooth-enabled mechanical keyboards.Almost Unusable SoftwareI am a bit confused as to what is what here, but I assume that Obins is the company that developed the software (and possibly the keyboards themselves) that supports the Anne Pro series keyboards. The software itself is “ObinsKit.” I may be wrong, but for this review, I will go with Obins as both the software and hardware company.Issue #1: No way to download your configurations and copy to another computer.One of the hassles I had right from the start was that I needed to do some quick, on-on-the-fly macro settings changes at work. The problems was that I had configured the macros on my personal laptop sitting at home. ObinsKit does not read the current settings and display in the app like other keyboard apps. If you update your keyboard on a second computer, it over writes the current configuration. Additionally, when you plug in the Anne Pro using the USB-C to the computer, ObinsKit does not read the current configuration so that you can update it regardless of what computer you’re on. Essentially, you have to reconfigure the keyboard from scratch every time you do an update because it will overwrite you previous configuration.Issue #2: Bluetooth fails to pair/re-connect 90% of the time.I don’t know much about how bluetooth works, other than both the Anne Pro 2 keyboards my nephew and I have fail to pair and re-connect almost 90% of the time. We throw block parties if the Anne Pro 2 actually does connect to the intended device. Forget quickly toggling between two devices, like working on your computer, and switching to the phone to answer a text message.The Anne Pro 2 fails to connect/re-connect so much that you spend at least 10 to 15 minutes “forgetting” the last bluetooth profile on the device, and creating a new pair to the keyboard for each device.All the other bluetooth keyboards that I own will automatically connect to my devices as soon as I switch devices on the keyboard (usually a function key plus 1,2,3 or 4 key or some combination). Unfortunately, the Anne Pro 2 is so buggy that it just cannot perform this rudimentary task. Whenever my nephew or I need to re-connect to a previous device, we just delete the old bluetooth profile and create a new one.If you’re buying a keyboard primarily for it’s multi-device capability as I did, the Anne Pro 2 epically fails at it’s job.Issue #3: Doesn’t always register keystrokesI don’t know how keyboards are programmed that when you hit a key, it sends the key stroke to the computer, but the Anne Pro 2 frequently misses keystrokes. I mean, I hit the key, but on the computer screen, the keystroke doesn’t register. This happens over both bluetooth and when wired directly to the computer through the USB-C cable.This inconsistency leads to frequent typos. In a test of 100 characters, my Anne Pro 2 missed three keystrokes, and my nephew’s missed 4.As I create a lot of content for work (as in 2 or 3- 3,000 word documents per day), I cannot have a keyboard that doesn’t work 100% of the time.Issue #4: Keyboard sometimes doesn’t power upThere have been times when I pull the keyboard out of my back upon arriving at work and the keyboard just won’t turn on. I struggle with it for about 10 minutes and giving up, pull out the evil membrane Dell keyboard that came with my workstation, and work in misery for the rest of the day. My nephew also has this issue.Issue #5: “Unknown Device Error”About once a day, I’ll randomly get an “Unknown Device” error pop up from the toolbar and the keyboard will just stop working. Don’t know why it’s happening, but it halts all work, and yet again, I’m pulling out the membrane keyboard for the rest of the day.Issue #5: Customer Dis-Service from Non-English Speaking PeopleSo customer support is abysmal unless you have a friend that can communicate in Mandarin/Cantonese Chinese. That’s if you get any response at all from their tech support.It took me six attempts to reach them, and they only responded a month after my last attempt. Their response in English was garbage as it made no sense:“Graciously, we invite the USB-C to disassociate woth [sic] impliment [sic] and promote better connection and happiness.”Obviously, I was getting something about the cable here, but I wasn’t sure what they were getting at.I work with a Chinese-speaking person at work and had them give it a try. This time, the translation made a lot more sense as the customer support person was able to fully understand what my co-worker was writing.“Try a different USB-C cable because the one you’re using might be defective.”I did as instructed, but that fixed none of the issues.Turns out that they know the software has a lot of issues. They say they’re working on fixes, but six months after speaking with them, no update to the software fixes any problem, especially the Bluetooth connection failures.They also acknowledge that the keyboards have issues. There are no plans to fix because “its a small number of keyboards that have issues.”As of this writing, I am still fighting with them to return both keyboards for replacement/reimbursement.

Every time I launch the software it offers a firmware update. Every time it fails with a IAP Mode error.I purchased it for the Tap layer which allows a key to perform one action/keystroke when tapped and another modifier-key function when held. This is unusable in that keystrokes are skipped it you type at a decently fast speed.Also, modifier keys do not always work with mapped keys. Pressing “Ctrl then Fn then arrow” may work but pressing “Fn then Ctrl then arrow” might ignore the Ctrl key’s modification. Setting one layer may undo settings in another layer. The order you program they layers seem it have an arbitrary affect on the behavior. Keystroke in the Fn layer sometimes will and sometimes will not recognize that the shift or ctrl key is also being held.Macros can only be used in combination with the function key. The macro layer will not map to a key-press on its own – without holding the Fn key.

keyboard is way too loud and clacky. I ordered the red which was suppose to not be all these things. o rings did not help. overall i like it. its function and lighting is good. the lighting is why im going to keep it.