Drop CTRL Tenkeyless TKL 87-Key Mechanical Gaming Keyboard - Hot-Swappable Switches, RGB Backlit, Programmable Macros, USB-C, Doubleshot PBT Keycaps, Aluminum Frame (Halo True, Gray) - Perfect for Esports, Coding & Office Work

I bought this keyboard because I liked the TTY keycaps and was interested in cherry brown switches. I meant to order the high-profile case style, but got the low profile instead, which turns out to have been a happy accident.I'm not really a keyboard enthusiast, but when I was fortunate to get to work on many of the classic 90s unix workstations with mechanical keyboards and a number of now-classic terminals, Lears, VT100s, and so on. When I saw the Drop TTY keycaps, I had to have a set.The reason I decided to write a review is that today my idiot cat knocked over a mug of coffee on my desk and it went straight into the keyboard. So I figured-- now we'll see whether this thing is made well or not. Although it's a bit tedious, the fact that a person can pull all the keycaps and switches, take out a few screws, and have the thing completely disassembled is amazing. There was coffee everywhere inside, but the printed circuit board is coated in some kind of plastic so it wiped right off. A few of the keyswitches had coffee inside, but it was easy to blow it out with some compressed air, and worst case if the switch goes bad, I can just pop it out and replace it. In this case, the wet switches were on my arrow keys, and even though they seem to be working fine, I swapped their positions with some rarely used keys on the board. In fact, being able to reposition the keyswitches when reassembling the keyboard is nice since it allows you to spread the wear on the switches.As I mentioned, I wound up being really fond of the low profile case style, because all of the horrific debris that winds up under the keycaps doesn't make it down to the interior of the case, so it's relatively easy to pull the keycaps, blow the junk off, and then stick the caps back on.Finally, I don't really care about the LEDs, so it's nice that you can disable them with a firmware flash if you like.I type on this thing all day every working day, so although it's not an inexpensive option, as long as the PCB keeps working, any keyswitch failures would just involve swapping out a switch, so I suspect I may have this thing for a long time, and its kinda nice to have something that lasts when it comes to computer work.The keyboard is fantastic, easily the best I've ever owned. Its not great value for money, but if you do get what you pay for. And this thing is fully loaded.UPDATED: Due to personal reasons, I was unable to return this keyboard within the return window. That means I had to live with an expensive keyboard with issues. I found that if I used the QMK firmware that is provided on GitHub and flashed that the problems I was experiencing disappeared. So, the online configurator that DROP provides delivers flawed firmware, which was causing the issues. Why they are behind an active open-source communities modifications baffles me. My best guess is that it is due to the generic online QMK configurator not supporting every lighting configuration that the DROP keyboard supports (e.g., keyboard edge lighting) they are having trouble merging their customizations or just don't care.Since I am a veteran programmer, I was able to download the QMK firmware and modify it to do what I want with different layers and colors. Now it is a great keyboard from a crappy company. I would definitely not recommend this keyboard to anyone who does not want to fiddle with firmware. I have grown fond of the keyboard now that it is stable and is very configurable using my custom firmware. It is great to type on with the Cherry-Brown switches and is very well-built. DROP has a lot to learn about customer support.ORIGINAL:If you want to flash customized firmware to this thing, it will cause you nothing but trouble. The firmware that the DROP configurator creates has bugs that prevent one of the USB plugs from working and prevents the keyboard from powering on when you start the computer. You can use the old firmware but then it will not remember your RGB settings every time you power on. There is also a noticeable lag while typing. As soon as I switched back to my Ducky keyboard, it was night and day as far as key press response goes. When I contacted support about the USB and power on issues, and they told me they could not help me and I should ask in the community forums. It was at that point that I boxed it up and plugged in my Ducky One 3 TKL. I will be giving up the QMK customizations but shedding a company that does not care to support their products, which is a fair trade in my book.I have had a lot of keyboards and this is by far the best complete keyboard you can buy. Obviously building would be cheaper and you could fine tune but this is a very solid keyboard, all materials are amazing and it is a dream to type on. Clip and lube the stabs and you have one of the best keyboards ever! The dual outputs and the magnetic angle stands are great features and would make me pick this board over any.El cuerpo de aluminio le da una sensacion BASTANTE solida. Una construccion excelente. Esta pesado y no se mueve tan facil cuando lo quieres acomodar. Los switches Halo True son geniales para escribir, los uso en la oficina para programar y mi WPM ha mejorado sustancialmente desde que los uso. La iluminacion es bastante potente y se puede editar los valores y comandos de las teclas facilmente a traves de qmk, hay tutoriales en video en internet, busquenlos.La misma pagina de DROP te puede guardar y generar los perfiles para instalar al teclado. El 2do puerto USB-C se puede usar como hub. En general recomiendo bastante este teclado para todos los casos. El hecho de que sea hot-swappable significa que se adapta a todo: gaming, escribir, programar, etc...Pronto le pondre mis Holy Pandas :DI've been using the DROP CTRL as my daily driver for over a year now and I'm very satisfied with it. It's pricey for sure, but I have some very specific asks from a keyboard and this nailed all of them perfectly and I've had no quality issues to speak of with it.Probably the major reason I wanted this model is the hot-swap keycaps. It's not exactly "easy" to remove the key switches, but after you do it several times, you can get the hang of doing it with the included tool. The Halo True keyswitches I received weren't really my thing, and I suspected that when I ordered. Personally I like linear quiet keyswitches like the Cherry MX silent. I bought some Gateron silent switches of various types off Ebay and swapped out all the switches with those, using lighter keyswitches for modifiers. For me, it's perfect, and the CTRL's hot-swap sockets made this easy.The included keycaps are lovely and a great design, I really like them. The one qualm I have about them is that I keep the lights off on the upper function row because otherwise they'd reflect off my monitor, and with lights off, the stock keycaps can be quite hard to read. This is a very minor nitpick, though, and is probably true for any dark keys with shine-through keycaps.I also love that you can easily customize the keyboard layout, using QMK to do this was fairly easy. I'm a developer so I even coded some specific tweaks I wanted. For example, I have the keyboard start up with a mid-brightness warm-white glow on all keys except the top row and spacebar (to avoid seeing the light from the edges reflecting off my screen). I also customized the Fn layer keys quite a lot and made Caps Lock an Fn key. I turned the "Ins" key into a Media Play/Pause key.I digress but the point is that if you want this sort of extreme customization, you've got it with the CTRL and I'd never buy another keyboard that doesn't have this sort of flexibility because now I'm hooked on my obscure, personalized keyboard layout.Pros.1. It works, did a keyboard checker, and it works on both mac and windows.2. No repeated key entries ( the common QC complaint about this board )3. BEAUTIFUL board - nothing compares ( subjective )4. Silver Speed Switches are amazing.5. The build quality is 100%.6. Earth-friendly packaging.Cons.1. If you use a USB Switch, you have you to have a dedicated AC power for the switch/hub. The board draw > 2W I think.2. Default LED Colour scheme is too tacky for my taste, fun but too "gamery/tacky"3. Burns holes in your wallet.TLDR, good chance I would buy it again for work.Time to code boysThe quality of those is amazing. Solid aluminum, I love the Kailh Box Whites for gaming/typing, nice rough keycaps with a font that's to my taste. However, I do have a few complaints.The first thing that I don't like is that the light diffuser is not smooth enough, you can notably see where the bulbs are, as there are obvious bright/dark shifts between each of them. Secondly it does not have a easy to use software, its quite primitive although does have enough functionalities. Saving the profile and switching between them is also quite a hassle. The last thing that annoyed me is when I realized most after market cables will not work with this board because of how much power it uses. It's annoying because I really would have liked some coiled cables with aviator plugs.Great "end-game"esque keybaord but not perfect.You get a lot with this keyboard. Hot swappable pcb, cnc aluminum case, per key rgb, usb type c connection, and qmk programmability. Sure, its a tkl at the same price level as a Corsair K100 or a Logitech G915, but this keyboard (and the Drop Alt) isn't competing with those gaming models; its competing against custom builds and guys like GMMK Pro. I think the Drop CTRL is a great board, but isn't perfect. If you invest on it, it can become the perfect tkl board.Keycaps are pbt and are ok quality but I swapped them with better ones (worth mentioning that without lights on, legends on stock keycaps are very hard to read). Switches are ok too, Halo Clears feel much better than Cherry MX Browns and I suspect the same holds true for the Halo Trues, and since you can easily swap them I just got the MX Browns at a good price and replaced them with Boba U4s (I'd recommend getting the Halos and selling them if you don't like them). Stabs are the weakest point here, they kind of suck at this price point so you may want to replace them if you want the best experience (oddly enough I have 2 of these boards, in one the stabs are pretty ok, on the one I am reviewing here they sucked and I replaced them). I know many people have custom cables so the stock cable is almost irrelevant, but for this amount of money I expected a braided cable to use on the go.TL;DR: materials are top notch, features are great, out of the box it feels better than most keyboards from Corsair, Logitech, Razer, etc. To make it trully great you may have to invest on new stabs, keycaps and cable (in that order).Note: this thing draws a lot of power on max bright setting. Some custom cables may not provide enough power, specially if they are very long. I use mine with a powered usb hub and so far no issues with cables over 6'. If you use the stock cable you should be ok.