Look, no $45 PBT keycap set is going to compete with GMK sets or the sort. If you know what you're buying these are actually a fantastic deal. Fits better than the keycaps that actually came with my board, so thumbs up there. Overall a great deal, therefore the 5 stars.
Wanted these for the shine through, PBT feels great and the sound's nice. Didn't find any blemishes on the keys, the underside isn't the prettiest in some of these along the edges. Legends are sharp, super crisp.
My only gripe is the uneven shine, most noticeable with white light. Some keys have the white LED come through clearly, while on others it's a bit muddled, with a tinge of color from the keycap instead of mostly white. Some of the light also bleeds through the keys outside the legends, with it being the worst on the W, being very apparent on max brightness.
Quite literally nothing to complain about at a price so low - these are a great visual upgrade from the previous stock caps I had before, being just black, but the Valiant set makes it more pleasing overall. One thing to note, however, is the coloration on the images of the caps. For the Valiant set, the black caps appear gray-ish and much paler than the actual product, so keep that in mind.
Bought my first set of these a couple years back for a drop CTRL build. Bought the “Valiant” (red/black) set, LOVED the colour (although I’ve grown out of it since), and I liked the idea of the shine-through feature.
Upon install of that valiant set it became very clear of the imperfections in the keys, where much of the ‘shine-through’ legend was cast too thick and didn’t actually let any light through, resulting in some keys (usually the 1.75U+ keys) having only the centre lit to a readable level, while the rest was noticeably darker or not lit at all.
In the years since, I’ve become the go-to for keyboard builds among my social groups, and so, bought a set of the “Black” keycaps as a general fitment/switch/acoustic tester during builds.
These slate keycaps look great, don’t have the same inconsistent shine-through problems as the valiant keycaps, and are a good deal for the price.
The only other thing to be wary of is that you NEED NORTH FACING LEDs/sockets for the shine through effect to work at all. Even if you have clear/smoked/milky switch housings, but they’re SOUTH FACING, the shine through won’t work at all.
My partner picked these for her fist keyboard build. Good quality. They look great. Nice that the legends allow some shine through. It’d be nice if they had some special caps (the board she picked had a mute button but she used the asterisks for it because she didn’t have many choices) but they are a good standard set of key caps that looks great. used for a TKS board.
These keycaps are amazing. I have no problem with them other than the fact that after 3-4 times taking them off, the spacebar started to warp and the stems on some of the other keycaps started to break. The PBT quality is good. There was no shining whatsoever with these.
I wanted a nice shine though keys for my first keyboard. This set really delivered. The key-feel is nice, I have been using membrane keyboards for years (yeah, I know. A really low bar) and the satin-y feel of the keys is a nice feel.