Thoughts on Drop+Mito DCX Cyber keycaps
This is an interesting one that I’m looking at here. So, when it comes to premium keycap sets there are a growing number of options but the one that always gets the most attention is always the ur-manufacturer GMK. GMK, out of Germany, has been producing keycaps in conjunction with Cherry, of Cherry MX switches fame, for decades. They’re known for producing the lion’s share of custom keycap sets in Cherry profile. And there is an entire book to be written there about how GMK, group buys, mechanical keyboard enthusiasts, and even MX clone switch manufacturers all interact with one another. There’s a lot of good, a lot of bad, and mostly a mess to be wrangled through.
That’s where alternatives have been gaining prominence. There are a number of smaller, but well known within the keyboard community, alternatives to GMK for Cherry profile keycaps, let alone other profiles. Just some of the names are ePBT, JTK, Akko, PBTFans, and an ever-growing number of other options ranging from those who produce unique and well-designed sets not found with GMK sets to the growing market of GMK knockoff clones. Again, that in itself could be written about in volumes. The reasons for that market are vast and varied but mostly come down to availability and cost versus the genuine GMK sets.
That’s where alternative manufacturers of Cherry profile, and Cherry-like profile keycaps have gained appeal. They are typically cheaper, more regularly available, and often are simply sold as in-stock rather than through group buys. They also retain two key aspects that make GMK so popular: materials and construction. GMK keycaps are famous for being the best-known option for low-profile, double-shot, ABS keycaps. Again, there’s a lot that can be written about the benefits and pitfalls of ABS material and of double-shot ABS versus dye-sublimated PBT, but the focus here is on ABS double-shot keycaps.
And the reason for that focus is that Drop’s DCX profile keycaps maintain those two points of being double-shot ABS and in a profile similar to Cherry profile. Drop has been a name in the keyboard enthusiast community since they started as Massdrop years ago. Since then, they’ve exploded in growth and have become more focused on what they sell on their platform to being almost exclusively focused on keyboards and components, and audio components like headphones and DACs. As part of that they’ve been seeking more in-house products to sell as in-stock options rather than relying entirely on group buys. That’s how their partnerships with companies like Koss and Sennheiser have come from for their Drop x Sennheiser or Drop x Koss branding have come from. They sell a somewhat customized variant of a popular model of headphones as an in-stock product. And they’ve done exceedingly well with that venture as well on the whole. The Drop x Sennheiser HD 6XX and the PC38X (now Drop x EPOS PC38X as Sennheiser has spun off their gaming brand) headphones and headset are examples of that success.
With that success has come the desire to not merely be a reseller but to begin innovating. One of their greatest successes in that was when they developed and released MT3 profile keycaps. They began as an experiment in a high-profile, highly sculpted keycap design that proved successful and popular in the custom keyboard world because they are so distinct in how they feel, and sound compared to other options. They’re a more sculpted option compared to SA profile keycaps from Signature Plastics, which they also still sell. They’ve been rather open and enthusiastic about the entire process and have written plenty on why they have decided to pursue producing their own keycaps in their own profile that is similar, but distinct, from Cherry profile.
And that’s where this gets particularly interesting. Part of the move is to better control the quality of the product that is produced over something based on the standards another company has developed. Cherry profile keycaps are designed to the standards Cherry set out back in the 1980s when they developed the first MX switches. And there’s a reason that they are still produced to those standards today: they’re great. But if you want to develop your own standard you can’t very well slap that on top of someone else’s and call it the same. You have to build from the ground up and that’s where DCX comes in. DCX, Drop Cylindrical X, is their in-house design for a low-profile, cylindrical keycap design. What that means is that unlike their MT3 profile that was developed by Matt3o these don’t have a scooped face whereby there are ridges on all edges of the key faces. Instead, they have raised ridges on the east and west sides of the keycaps but the cylindrical valley for your fingertips is unobstructed on the north and south ends.
That’s how many of the most popular keycap profiles are designed such as Cherry and OEM. It doesn’t cup your fingertips the same way as SA or MT3 profile. It’s a ‘safer’ design in that it is very familiar to most typists and has a solid history of usage because of that. It doesn’t feel immediately distinct from Cherry profile keycaps precisely because it’s designed to be extremely similar to them. As much fun as I personally have with such mountainous keycaps as MT3, I also realize that is a highly personal preference that is strikingly divisive. It makes sense from a business perspective to cast the widest net and they’ve done that with DCX.
I certainly understand the appeal of Cherry profile keycaps. They feel wonderful to type on, to game on, to simply use day-to-day. They’re unobtrusive and intuitive to use. I currently have only one set of GMK keycaps, GMK Serenity, and I love using them. They’re a solid set with great texture, sound, and clarity of legends. Their colors pop and are uniform between keys. I absolutely see myself getting more in the future as there are numerous sets with various colorways that are beautiful keycap sets featuring wonderful artistry in their designs, especially with their novelty keycaps. Those are the keys that feature a non-standard legend on them that is related to the keycap set itself. For example, with my Serenity keycaps I ordered the honeycomb novelties when I got this set of DCX Cyber. They’re gorgeous caps and I will absolutely write about them in the future so stay tuned for that.
And right now, at least, that is a big difference between GMK and Drop keycaps here, right now anyway. There are no novelties in DCX sets as of yet. I don’t blame Drop, it makes sense. Doing a one-off mold is an extremely expensive process and part of why GMK sets can be so expensive. There’s research, prototyping, even wear testing to be done before such caps can be produced in a final product. That’s a heavy investment on top of producing your already expensive base sets. Instead, they focused on more reasonable, and more commonly usable, keycaps instead. That’s why DCX caps are offered in a base kit featuring only basic ISO support (but at least they have it). That’s why the addon kits are Mac compatibility and spacebars only at this point. These are kits that, while not sold with every base kit, are popular enough and can be reused for future sets. It’s a strategic choice that will hopefully be expanded upon in the future. I’d love for them to produce proper ISO compatibility sets, such as a NORDE (Nordics and Germany) expansion kit, UK English, AZERTY French, and a Southern European compatibility set (Italy, Spain, and Portugal I believe). These are sets they could produce the molds and make kits for all of their keycap sets and would be welcome additions. Again, I understand the reasoning of not jumping all in at once, but I hope to see such kits in the future.
What they do have is a solid backbone to build upon in the future and they’ve been expanding it with different colorways first. Some of my favorite GMK sets have been the darker, and purpler, options. Sets like Serenity, Laser, Retrowave, Vaporwave, and others have all caught my eye. In fact, I bought NovelKeys Vaporwave keycaps and would still use them today if they hadn’t been plagued by cracking and shattering stems that have left the caps unusable, one of the greatest tragedies for me as that is still easily on of my favorite sets of all time from an aesthetic standpoint. Also, Drop? Please if you start branching out make a Vaporwave kit for DCX. I will absolutely buy it. Or, hey, get together and do another run of GMK Vaporwave even! It’s a tragedy that there hasn’t been another run of that set. But I digress…
In any event, that’s why I decided that my first set of DCX keycaps should be DCX Cyber. I adore the colors of it. The very deep royal purple for most caps with a beautiful minty green for the legends. Accent keys feature a striking neon pink or highlighter green for their legends. And I can make it pop even more by using the accent keys of highlighter yellow with black legends. It’s very much inspired by the colors of the game Cyberpunk 2077, and it fits wonderfully together as a cohesive keycap set. Mito did a wonderful job designing this set, and the sister MT3 profile set in the same colors.
The legends are beautifully crisp and distinct. There are no offset letters or strange rotations. It’s obvious that these are using brand new molds with tight tolerances. I think that’s especially apparent when it comes to the texture of the keycaps themselves. These are smoother than GMK keycaps. Not to say either are particularly rough, just that the texturing feels more subtle than GMK. If you like the grippiness of GMK keycaps, you may find these to have a bit of an adjustment. I find I like the feeling of both, for their own reasons. GMK has a distinct textural feeling that I feel is particularly grippy when new and slowly fades to the familiar and smooth shine that is the end result of any ABS keycaps. I love that slow transition and wear as it shows how the caps wear from my usage and typing. It’s a kind of patina that I think is a large part of the appeal of typing on mechanical keyboards as a whole. As these DCX keycaps are quite literally brand new I don’t have any sort of wear upon them yet, but I equally look forward to seeing them age with my use in the future.
What I can talk about is their construction as a new product. Like GMK keycaps they are double-shot ABS, and they feature walls that range from 1.4mm to 1.55mm thick, nice and solid. They are very different from GMK, however. The layering is solid on all the walls, and top, of the keycaps. Their stems are of the legend color rather than the keycap color unlike GMK keycaps. That reminds me of other manufacturers, but the Drop keycaps feature both plastics all the way to the base of the keycaps while some others cut off the legend plastic well before the bottom of the keycaps. This gives the Drop keycaps a sturdier feel to them overall, and at least the appearance that they will wear better over time by having the plastics completely fused more like GMK. They ultimately feel more premium and feel like they’ve had more quality control versus cheaper keycap sets that I’ve used.
Continuing on, I don’t feel the irregular depths for molding like I feel with cheaper ABS double-shot keycap sets. With some of those I can feel a difference in height with the legends versus the keycap faces themselves while with the DCX keycaps they are like GMK keycaps in feeling like a cohesive and singular surface that I can’t feel the legends. That also lends to their more premium feeling. Likewise, they lack the burrs that are so frequent to cheap keycap sets. Edges are still sharp on the bottom, but not painfully so.
Interestingly, the spacebars are not double-shot. They are single-shot plastic that retains the same thickness as the other keycaps. That also puts them more in line with GMK sets rather than clone sets. They do feature fewer reinforcement ridges versus GMK sets, but I have no warping to my set, so they’ve done well. In fact, they are thicker than my GMK spacebars. The spacebar from GMK Serenity ranges from 1.1mm to 1.3mm thick while the DCX Cyber spacebar is 1.4mm to 1.5mm thick. That they’ve been able to produce a thicker spacebar without warping due to plastic shrinkage during the molding process is commendable. Amusingly, my knockoff double-shot ABS keycaps feature an even thicker spacebar of 1.65mm to 1.75mm making it by far the least flexible of the three sets spacebars. In the end, it is the GMK spacebar that feels the flimsiest and easily twists and flexes compared to either Drop’s or the knockoff’s spacebars. As spacebar irregularities is one of the most frequent complaints of GMK keycap sets, they could learn from both of these sets in my opinion. One note about having such a hollow spacebar is that it does sound quite hollow but that also makes it easily modifiable as well. If you want to add some dampening to the underside of the keycap with so few reinforcement struts that will be easiest with the DCX keycaps as there won’t be ridges to prevent adhesion unlike the GMK or knockoff keycaps.
Something that is minor, but incredibly helpful, is that part of the tooling marks on the inside of the DCX keycaps are labels. Under single unit keys, such as alphas, the row profile is listed such as R1, R2, et cetera. For wider keys they instead list the width of the key, such as 7U or 6.5U for the spacebars or 2.25U for the ANSI return keys. That’s honestly one of the nicest additions to keycaps I’ve seen, and it can be extremely useful for making sure you’ve got the correct key for the profile or width to match the keyboard you’re using. I’d love to see that become adopted by other manufacturers because it’s simple but effective for improving the ease of use for the keycap sets.
As for comparing the profile between DCX and Cherry I’m not sure how much I even need to get into that. Drop does have some helpful photographs on their website comparing the two, with better lighting than I could manage at the moment. And what it shows is my base opinion of DCX profile as a whole: it’s basically a tweaked Cherry profile that feels indistinguishable between the two when typing. I don’t think it feels superior or inferior. In fact, I don’t think it feels different at all in the grand scheme of things. It feels like a low-profile cylindrical design with smooth edges, gentle texture, and some excellent home row bumps on the F and J keys. They feature a wide bar that is prouder than the GMK homing bar, approximately 0.9mm thick, 3.4mm wide, and 0.5mm tall. I like the home bars on these keys and appreciate how distinct they are as I also tend to rub my fingertips on the homing bumps as I think and these are great tactility for that. And, if that’s not your thing they also have bumpless alternative keycaps for your home row as well.
What I’m seeing with these keycaps is a lot of detailed work and passion has gone into designing and developing the DCX profile into a viable alternative to GMK. They’re a solid entry into the premium keycap set market. And I think that’s an important distinction too. They’re cheaper than GMK, but not cheap. At $100 they’re cheaper than the basic GMK sets at $140-150 with no novelties. But that’s obviously more than the $50 Akko sets or $35 knockoffs that plague Amazon and the various Chinese webstores like Aliexpress. But they also have tighter tolerances and higher quality control standards. Legends are crisper and far less uneven than the knockoff sets. I also have to assume they’ll last longer, and wear more evenly compared to the knockoffs. They certainly lack ethical ambiguity when it comes to those knockoff sets as well. And, right now, they are available in some great options for solid colorways such as the ever-classic BoW and WoB and 9009 but also some unique options like Cyber and Deep Space.
That attention even goes into the storage that these keycaps come in. I honestly hate the storage my GMK Serenity sets came in. It’s some of the flimsiest and thinnest cardboard I’ve ever had the misfortune of using. The caps never stay in position and the whole thing is a mess. The Drop keycap box isn’t colorful, in fact it’s entirely black with a simple embossed Drop logo on the front. But it’s decent quality cardboard and the caps themselves are in plastic trays that keep the caps in place for storage. I understand, and want, to reduce the use of plastic packaging but surely a middle ground could be found between entirely plastic shells and the paper waste that GMK is using right now. At the very least, I have a great box for storing these keycaps when I’m not using them and have no reason to replace the box or to toss it. In that regard, it’s solid storage even if it does make it less pretty versus some of the GMK sets that don’t use the paper garbage that was used for Serenity.
I think it’s going to be interesting to see where Drop goes from here. Obviously, doing sets with novelties would be a great next step. As would introducing more ISO compatibility options. Doing more unique colorways is also always a welcome addition. I’d also like to see them do more experimentation with materials such as perhaps polycarbonate or POM keycaps in DCX profile. Or, they could also introduce dye-sublimated PBT sets to make the costs of doing novelties a non-issue as the cost for printing is negligible versus producing unique molds each time. That would also be popular by virtue of the number of people who prefer PBT keycaps due to how they wear versus ABS keycaps. They’ve had DCX keycaps out for roughly a year now and have been steadily adding more color options but not a lot besides as of yet. I’m definitely paying attention to where they go from here though and imagine they’ll have plenty of announcements in DCX this year even if most of those are just new colorway options.
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