Keycaps and MX Sliders
Keycaps and MX Sliders
Those who own or have owned a Realforce keyboard know the frustration of Topre’s unique keycap mount. If you wanted to try out some custom keycap on your Topre keeb, you were pretty much out of luck. Only Topre keycaps fit Topre switches. There are ways around it, replacing the slider, purchasing a clone or a used CoolerMaster NovaTouch and do some surgery. Before the RGB there was no official MX mount from Topre themselves. Topre embracing the MX mount with the RGB is pretty much a monumental shift for them, and a huge win for us.
I begin to see why the RGB is so expensive, if it were priced in the $150 range, you’d see RGB boards sacrificed for their sliders. The RGB would become the shark fin soup of the keyboard world. No, we don’t want that to happen!
The row profile appears to be bog-standard OEM profile.
One issue with ABS plastic keycaps is that they tend to shine up more quickly than other plastics used in keycaps.
As you can see on the spacebar, there is some shine already happening after two weeks of typing.
There’s few things more polarizing to a keyboard enthusiast than keycaps. The RGB uses ABS double-shot keycaps, with a striking resemblance to the Ducky Shine 5 keycaps. The giveaways are the split numbers and the ‘Q’ key. There’s not an issue here, really, whoever makes Ducky keycaps make damn good keycaps. So are the RGB keycaps, and much better than many other backlit keycaps.
They are slightly thicker than the Shine 5 keycaps I mentioned before, and a little bit smaller at the base.
The RGB’s keycaps are also thicker than Topre’s highly regarded dye sublimated PBT keycaps, which is a surprise, given how poor the RGB sounds in comparison to the Realforce 87U.
The result is a very good default set of keycaps for the RGB. I’m skeptical that changing keysets will make that much of a noticeable difference in improving the RGB’s sound. We’ll investigate that shortly.
Here’s a family shot. From left to right, Ducky YOTG ABS doubleshot, stock Realforce dye-sub PBT, Captor’s PBT doubleshot, GMMK ABS doubleshot, Ducky One dye-sub PBT, Realforce RGB ABS doubleshot, PMK Jukebox ABS doubleshot, and lastly a Gateron Yellow switch, cause why not!
All of these keycaps are good quality. You can immediately see that the blue Ducky One dye-sub PBT keycap is thickest and chunkiest of them all. The Realforce RGB’s keycap is just a little bit thinner, but still surprisingly hefty. The thinnest cap here is actually the standard Realforce PBT.
However, there is that little something, how these keycaps affect the pleasurable feeling of using your keyboard. The RGB’s keycaps are some of the best doubleshot keycaps I’ve had under my fingers, but somehow don’t give the RGB the Realforce thock thock that I’m used to. Like the stock Realforce PBT caps, they have a slight grain to them, but lack the PBT tickle. Being ABS plastic, they will shine up pretty quickly.
Lastly, the legends sit absolutely flush with the keycap. This means very high quality indeed.
The RGB’s keycaps are thick, doubleshot, ABS, with excellent legends. You’d have to go pretty deep into custom keycap territory to come close to matching the quality of the RGB’s set. And you could with the MX mount, but the rate of return would be pretty small. A few reviews of the RGB have already done this, put a high-end PBT set on the RGB to see if it makes the RGB more Realforce like. We’ll get to our experiment as well, but the short answers is: not so much.
