Thoughts on Keycap Profiles

Something about mechanical keyboards that is a lot of fun is testing out different keycap profiles. Keycap profiles are how the caps are sculpted. There are numerous different profiles of keycaps, tall and short, or flat and sculpted, and all sorts of shapes and designs.

Common variants include, Cherry, OEM, MT3, SA, and XDA. Some are very old, like Cherry. Others are relatively new, like MT3. Ultimately, you have a massive number of options in profile and then in materials and colors as well.

First is height. Of these, Cherry is the lowest height, meaning the caps themselves are short and extend only marginally above the switches. This doesn’t mean they are flat, merely that they don’t rise higher above the keyboard. The tallest would be either SA or MT3 profiles, they rise much higher than Cherry or XDA profile and even above OEM. Cherry profile was, as with many things in the mechanical keyboard world, was developed and patented by Cherry. It’s famously used as the profile for GMK keycap sets and is popular for being as low profile as it is. The caps are gently sculpted, with each row a slightly different angle and slope. Their faces are somewhat barrel shaped, meaning they carry a very shallow trough that is lowest in the middle of the key and highest on the left and right sides. There is no upper or lower lip, just a simple U-shaped trough down the middle of each key. The home row is typically marked by small flat bars on the F and J keys though may be a single dot or omitted entirely as well depending on user preference (if the set includes such an option) or simply the set itself. Cherry profile is found in numerous types of plastic, generally though in ABS and PBT.

XDA is slightly taller but unlike the other profiles I mentioned, doesn’t have different profiles for the different key rows. They are all the same height and shape. They’re short with a very shallow bowl in the center for the fingertips. They’re wide, with the top face being larger than the others listed as well. This lack of difference in height makes them popular for people who want to change the physical layout of the alpha caps from QWERTY to say Dvorak or Colemak as there would be no mismatched rows. They’re also popular in ortholinear keyboards that lack the standard staggered key layout on most boards and instead are built in a perfect grid system. I’ve only briefly used XDA for my own ortholinear board I built, and they serve this purpose quite well and give the board a regular feeling as well as appearance. The one convex key is the space bar which is rounded and rises versus the rest of the keys being slightly concave. XDA caps are also found in both ABS and PBT, and sometimes more unusual options such as POM or with a rubberized coating.

Next is OEM profile which has a similar shape to Cherry profile, with taller caps. They’re common with prebuilt keyboards, though Cherry profile is as well. They carry a similar U-shaped trough to Cherry though have more slope to them in the north-south direction than Cherry. They’re often found in inexpensive sets, or even knockoffs of premium Cherry profile sets. OEM sets are typically made in either ABS or PBT.

SA profile caps are very tall in comparison to Cherry or XDA, nearly double the height in fact. They’re heavily sculpted where the scoop is more pronounced in the north-south than the east-west direction. In that regard, the profile is 90° different from OEM and Cherry, with the U-shape being east-west rather than north-south. The combination of being heavily sculpted and tall gives them a smaller top and is reminiscent of keyboards from the 1960s to early 1980s from terminals. They’re most popular for typists and less-so for gaming though I’ve used them for both. It also means that their heavily sculpted nature prevents them from typically being molded from PBT plastic and instead are generally produced in ABS, especially if all profile rows are part of the set. Most SA sets, especially the more coveted, are produced by Signature Plastics, though other manufacturers have begun selling them as well, such as Ducky and Akko.

Finally, the most unique of those I mentioned, MT3 profile. This profile is even more heavily sculpted than SA. Very tall, and rather than a U-shaped trough these carry a very distinct bowl shape for the fingertips. Also unusually, rather than using bars or dots for marking the home row, MT3 uses deeper set bowls on the F and J keys. As they are bowl shaped that means that all edges of the tops have a slight ridge. For some, this is very uncomfortable for them. For others, such as myself, I adore the profile. It feels wonderful to type on and is fine for gaming in my experience. Like SA, however, they are mostly found in ABS plastic. There are single-shot variants with dye-sublimated legends that are in PBT, but the double-shot variants are ABS. Also of importance is that MT3 profile is exclusively used for Drop sets as of right now due to them holding the patent and the molds. This could, and likely will, change in the future but right now MT3 is from a single source. 

Ultimately, there are dozens of different profiles, and these are but a handful of options. Some people prefer a single profile entirely for all their sets, for instance, Cherry. Other people, such as myself, love to explore different profiles to find different sensations for typing tactility. Some prefer only PBT as it takes the longest for the keycaps to begin to “shine”, smoothed over time from merely touching them with your fingers. Some enjoy seeing the patina of ABS plastic as they age and shine from typing.

I wasn’t sure if I would like the shining of keycaps. Certainly, paying over $100 for keycaps to have them lose their stock texture and to smooth and shine over time was a concern. In the end I’ve found that I like that. I like that I can see how I have affected my keycaps over time and to see how they have become mine. Some people have found ways to accelerate that process and to pre-shine all their caps but that’s not something I’m particularly interested in doing as I like the irregularity of the patina from my own usage instead.

In the end, like everything else with mechanical keyboards, trying out different sets to find your own tastes, your likes, and dislikes, is part of the fun of the hobby. They have different feels, different sounds, different looks. New profiles aren’t super common but are slowly being released. DCX for instance is another profile from Drop that was created as a counter to Cherry profile. Matteo Spinelli, Matt3o, designer of the MT3 profile for instance has been posting updates of prototypes and renders for a new profile as a less polarizing option than MT3. This means that as time goes on, we’ll continue to see more designs, and more experimentation in keyboards. I’m excited for seeing more options in this space.