Drop Mech Keys Meetup Recap - Thanks for Visiting!
As you may have seen, we just hosted our first meetup in quite a while here at Drop HQ (Corsair HQ, but they seem to like us enough :) )! It was a blast to get to meet so many enthusiasts local to the bay area—it had been 10 years since I was last hanging out with keyboard nerds in the bay, at KeyCon 2014. We had a great time hosting everyone at the offices, checking out all the very nice boards y'all brought, and sharing some of our own projects/spaces! I knew it would be fun to host in the Game Room when I first saw it in person, but seeing it come to fruition was still so cool. Alright, I'll stop blabbering on now. xD Picture time! (Oh, real quick - there will be more of these! Stay tuned for more info and to catch the next one!)
May 15, 2024
- The PCB is a hot-swap socket but only allows for 3-pin switches.
- The stock stabilizers are at best terrible.
- Case has a lot of hollow/pingy noise when you type.
- The RGB lights per key are north facing-- which I guess could be seen as fine since the design/marketing choice was to have this primarily as a light up RGB board.
- The configurator Drop provides to program the board is limiting and doesn't matter since you would need to re-flash every time you disconnected your keyboard.
The list can keep going on (i.e. keycaps but that's hugely subjective) but overall these were some of the issues with it. Since the launch of V2, a couple things have been changed. The hot-swap PCB now allows for 5-pin switches, the stock stabilizers are "upgraded" (more on this later) to their drop phantom stabs. Case noise should be reduced from all the foam they give out now and it only took maybe shy of half a decade but this thing is finally VIA capable. Although these changes are a great step in the right direction a couple of things still don't add up to have this board still be priced at $250. The new stabilizers for V2, look exactly the same as the one found from V1. The only difference is that the housing comes in white now. I can't see any improvements or really anything different from the previous versions stabs and the "new" drop phantom one. Great to see foam, but that isn't really such a huge upgrade, stupid-fish have already been providing great foam for the Shift. The update for Shift finally being VIA capable is something that is long overdue and should have been done years ago. So it's definitely weird seeing that as one of the big marketing points. When the Shift first came out years ago (still a bit pricey) it was almost a good deal and I really had high expectations for it as I am a fan of the 1800 layout and no one was really doing it back then. However, looking at the V2 and all the "updates" that were made, it is easy to say that you can pass on this board and not feel like you are missing out on anything. For the price point, there are boards everywhere that do it better right now. Something else to note, all the additions found in the V2 are 100% compatible with the V1. I was really excited about this prospect because I thought changing out the PCB and checking out the foam set would be something to look forward to. However, to my surprise the PCB and even the foam set were priced extremely high. Considering the biggest changes to the PCB were the addition of 5-pin switches and changing out the chipset (not even a wireless option!), it doesn't warrant that kind of pricing.