I've very much enjoyed this latest delivery at my door: A mystery box of keycaps, sent by Glorious as a part of its new KeyCapsules program. The box comes with a carefully placed sticker informing me of how special I am for having it (no. 318/1000) and a small illustration on the exterior alluding to the overall design of the keys.
This set of 138 keycaps is the first of many Glorious plans to release, on the first Tuesday of each month. Each will be produced in a limited edition run, of 500 – 1000 sets. Though that's arguably quite a lot for a group buy.
The contents of this box needn't be a secret. Just head over to the Glorious website and buy a set knowing full well what you're getting. However, Glorious didn't tell me what was inside the box before it arrived, which meant it was a complete surprise for me when I opened the box up. Inside were multiple sheets of keycaps with what appeared to be hand-drawn legends.
It looks like someone took a white-ink marker to some plain black keys.
As someone who's spent money on keycap sets multiple times before, this look is absolutely not my usual preference. To be honest, I wouldn't buy these myself if I saw them online. And yet, once I installed each key carefully onto the Asus ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless (the best gaming keyboard right now, by the by) I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I like them.
The black and white bordering gives the impression of a keyboard ripped out of A-ha's Take On Me music video. Though the sparing use of colour across the blocky arrow and WASD keys ensures the set stands out, even from a distance. The legends printed on the sides of the keys are legible from a regular typing position, and make for easy identification, despite being written in doctoral scrawl.
My only complaint on the design front is that the images on the Glorious website give the impression of finely scribbled edges. On the actual keycaps, there's much less detail, as if the ink has all drifted together. That's a bit of a shame, as I think I'd prefer the caps as they're shown in some of the promotional images, though the overall effect is more or less the same.
There are plenty of keys in the set to cover the almost full-size ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless, and included in the kit are various UK ISO-compatible keys, such as Enter and Shift. I did end up using a couple of ANSI keys for some of the peripheral symbol keys, as there were no exact matches, though mostly everything needed is included. I've quite a few spares to hand, too.
The entire set is a Cherry profile, which means you will need to match the profile of the key to the row on the keyboard. This only becomes an issue for keyboards with unorthodox layouts, which may mean, say, the delete key is in a different row than normal. The Strix Scope is one such board, though it wasn't an issue and one of the two included Delete keys fit just fine.
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I've no qualms with the quality of the keys. They feel of good quality, as PBT keys should, and should last longer than your average ABS keycap set. These keycaps still make for a satisfying clack in line with the original set loaded onto the wonderful-sounding Strix Scope II 96 Wireless. The one downside of this construction is that these keycaps don't allow for any light to shine through the legends themselves, which is a bit of a shame on an RGB backlit board.
I was expecting a higher price due to the 'limited edition' nature of the set. At $80/£80, it's a decent deal versus comparative sets over at Drop or kbdfans. Providing Glorious maintains the same quality throughout its future drops, I can see these sets becoming pretty popular. At the very least, if you're a keyboard enthusiast with a keen eye for keycaps, I'd keep yours trained on Glorious for next month's announcement to at least see what's coming up.
