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Product Description
Inside every CTRL keyboard is a high-performance PCBA—an assembled printed circuit board—that brings it to life. For the first time ever, we’re bringing that same PCBA to our community members as a standalone component Read More
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Had an issue with a fully assembled CTRL board that was covered by Drop. Bought this as a backup so I could replace the PCB in the future if needed. Seems to be high quality, as are most Drop products.
The PCB is unique in the sense that it provides 2 usb c input ports. This is great as my PC at home is on my left, and at work, its on the right. Additionally, if one of the ports breaks or snaps off some how, you're not entirely screwed. The LEDS and the underglow LEDS are super bright and look fantastic against the acrylic accent piece of the drop CTRL. My biggest gripe with this is that LEDS are north facing so some switches may cause interference with cherry profile keycaps. With long pole stems becoming the norm lately though, this is becoming less and less of an issue, plus north facing LEDS typically are better for RGB lovers who use shine-through caps. I hope future renditions of this PCB support pcb mount stabilizers (screw ins) as they sound and feel much better than plate mount. All in all, this is a fantastic PCB and it is appropriately priced for what it offers.
I was pleasantly surprised the quality of the LEDs, sometimes LEDs can be a little lacking in the brightness department. I have much more expensive PCBs that aren't nearly as bright.
I see a lot of people giving this high ratings for two reasons:
It fits inside the CTRL keyboard
It was in stock and they were able to buy it.
Neither one of those features are extraordinary, at best they're the absolute minimum requirements for this product. The only reason to buy this is if your CTRL PCB died or you are building one from scratch with the special colored CTRL cases that Drop sells.
Availability for this product is generally poor. It is currently in stock, but goes out of stock and disappears for months. Drop, of course, won't even acknowledge posts asking when it's going to come back in stock. If you have a dead keyboard or an empty case, this is really frustrating (no how pretty the case anodization is).
Next, the board is pretty poor as far as keyboard PCBs go. It appears to have a high failure rate, mostly due to the way the Kailh sockets were soldered. For issues where one USB port stops working, it's just too frustrating to try to fix it yourself, because the PCB traces are such a rat's nest.
On top of that there are the standard complaints, it does not support PCB mount switches and the switches are north facing.
Received my first PCB, tested it only to find that more than half the switches didn't work. Received a second PCB only to discover while building the board that SO FAR 3 of the F keys don't work. Tried multiple switches in every non-working key and NOTHING. This was my first purchase from Drop and you can trust I won't be a return customer nor will I suggest them to anyone.
My old PCB was causing issues with plugging in and out and this resolved the issues. I wish they'd add an edition with 5 pins or a rotary encoder though.
- Works well out of the box
- Possibility to reprogram it with QMK
- Brights LEDs (per key & sides)
- 2 USB-C inputs
- Hot-swappable
Cons: