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A DCX Review: Good Keycaps for the Price, Even Better on a Deal

Jun 3, 2023103 VIEWS

With many, many more people joining the keyboard hobby, vendors have been stepping up with the availability of keycaps. Most notably, the rise of alternatives to GMK. Not just cheap clones, but also more premium sets to attempt to match the quality of the German GMK. In this case, Drop's answer is DCX, their form of doubleshot ABS keycaps. There's a few things that I want to note that are different from other Cherry profile keycaps. 1: Packaging While packaging doesn't affect the performance of the keycaps themselves, it definitely has an effect on how premium a product feels, especially in an unboxing experience. I'm happy to say that not only are the boxes clean and simple in jet black and few brandings, but also the keycaps themselves also come in nice plastic trays that enclose each keycaps securely. I've never been able to unbox a GMK set without seeing a mess of keycaps with their paper trays. While plastic isn't necessarily that great for the environment, I tend to keeps all the packaging for secure storage, so the better the trays, the better storage is for me. It means for me, there's no need to get another keycaps tray to store them after opening.

Very nice and presentable packaging, and no keycaps out of place 2: Kitting The kitting of DCX is pretty good overall though it can vary per set. In my case with DCX Dolch, it includes an extra B keycap, ISO enter, various layouts for different bottom rows, short and long 0 keys, spacebars in varying lengths, and some extra colors for some more pop. Most keyboards shouldn't have any problems with layouts, including alices. Some 40% and ortholinear users might run into kitting issues however. Considering that all of this is in one kit is very convenient and user friendly. 3: Texture The texture of DCX closely resembles or is about identical to MT3, so smooth on the sides and textured on the top. Compared to GMK, it feels slightly smoother but still very grippy. Comparing it to Cannonkeys NicePBT, PBTFans, or Wuque Studio keycaps, there's slightly more texture overall. While the amount of texture is up to preference, I think that the texture is great and I wouldn't have any issues with typing on it for hours. 4: Font Font matters a lot to the quality of keycaps. For DCX, there's some good and some bad in this department. The alphas are excellent. They're easy to read, very sharp, and very uniform. Easily on par with GMK and its other competitors. My problems lie with the modifiers. In comparison to the other competitors, the DCX font for mods has larger lower case lettering and wider spacing between the letters. While the font itself is still sharp and even, the wide spacing and larger lettering makes DCX feel cheaper than the others. The font almost reminds me of the many cheap keycaps that you find on Amazon for $40. Not a good feeling for what's meant to be a premium product, though your mileage may vary on that one.

In order: GMK BRG, WS Camping, DCX Dolch 5: Price This is the major difference between the rest of the Cherry profile keycaps and DCX. Usually for group buys. Normally, DCX usually runs about $100 per set. Already it undercuts most GMK base sets, but is still more expensive than some alternatives such as the previously mentioned NicePBT, Wuque Studios, and PBTFans. With BOGO events coming in and out regularly, DCX sets run at about $50 per set, assuming you buy 2. Combine that with drop rewards or shop cash and it can go even lower. For that price point, these are easily the highest quality keycaps you could get. Final thoughts:

Overall, DCX and its colorways in the lineup are a great alternative to GMK and other Cherry profile keycaps. If you're not looking for any colorways tied to group buys, then these are great options for keycaps. As a GMK competitor, it falls just short of the quality, but also undercuts the price. With Drop's regular sales lowering their prices more, they're some of the best sets you can get for the value.

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Alexglu777

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