Cherry has been the landmark profile for high end custom keyboards since their inception.
To many, it’s something thought of synonymously with GMK, and premium keycaps as a whole.
But what if I told you there might be a strikingly competent alternative?
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This is DCX by drop.
The best way I can sum it up is as if the quality and aesthetic of GMK had a baby with
the accessibility and variety of MT3.
And also inherited the packaging.
We have our standard 3 plastic trays.
inside are thin sheets of bubble wrap.
And that’s pretty much it, but it’s much more secure than GMK’s packaging at least.
Like GMK, DCX is ABS plastic and is manufactured using the double shot process.
And it’s important to mention this before I move forward: do not confuse DCX for a manufacturer.
GMK is a manufacturer, and DCX is a profile.
While the comparison is technically between Cherry and DCX, GMK is the most important
comparison to directly make to Drop’s DCX keycaps, since they’re one of the most common
cherry keycaps in the custom world and stack up in terms of pricing.
With that cleared up we can start spotting the other similarities.
For one, the concavity.
Each cherry key has a small dip towards the center when you look at it from the bottom
or top.
And the shape of this dip on DCX looks the same.
Overall, the differences between the profiles themselves are very very minute, and different
for each row.
For example, row 2 is ever so slightly steeper, and row 3 is a little bit shorter.
But none of the profile changes really differentiates DCX from cherry, as when you’re typing,
the changes are pretty much unnoticeable.
Another interesting thing I picked up on is that even though DCX is manufactured the same
way, it doesn’t have the same nick on the back of every GMK keycap.
This is a huge bonus, as I have seen the ‘GMK nick’ as a huge turnoff for a lot of potential
buyers in our GMK red vs blue samurai comparison.
I am happy to say that the nick is not on DCX.
In terms of textures, while they may look the same on camera, DCX feels much smoother
and, I might even say, “grippier”, than GMK.
keycap texture is a very hard thing to describe, and most of the time you really just have
to try it out for yourself to see what you like and what you don’t.
The thing you can see on camera, though, is that DCX is glossier than unshined GMK.
Another plus side is that, at least from my testing, DCX doesn’t have north facing interference.
At all.
You are free to use all your favorite non long pole switches on any north facing board,
and still enjoy the same feel and sound of typing on cherry keycaps.
This is huge to me.
A massive gripe with GMK is lead times.
Right now with supply chain issues and other problems in Germany, GMK sets are seeing insane
lead times, up to 2 or more years.
And this has made many turn to other options.
DCX is in-stock, unlike most GMK sets usage of the group buy system.
And with drop being such a large company, they’re going to be able to keep these keycaps
very consistently in stock.
It also looks like DCX has pretty extensive kitting, so board support isn’t going to
be an issue.
Now that we’ve gotten physical comparisons aside, we need to talk about possibly the
most important factor.
Sound.
How do they compare?
Ignoring differences in press force and other factors, DCX and GMK are really similar.
On the PE foamed QK65, there’s literally no difference in the alphas.
As expected with PE foam.
The GMK spacebar is slightly higher pitched and sharper.
With tenet, GMK also seemed to be a bit sharper and harsh sounding, while DCX was more rounded
out.
But they both still had the same pitch.
Of course, CRP is lower pitched than both because it’s PBT instead of ABS.
GMK also seems just barely duller sounding than DCX.
With glacier, there was barely an audible difference, but again, GMK seemed to be slightly
sharper.
But overall, the sound is mostly the same.
How about material quality?
Well, it’s great, to be expected from a large company with a lot of keycap experience.
Legends are sharp, of course, because of double shot.
The mod font is a tiny bit wonky, but only if you look up close.
The alphas are consistent, with the legends being in the right spot on every keycap.
Compared to GMK, the font on DCX is quite a bit thinner.
And I’m also very happy to say that the mods are all perfectly straight.
No banana spacebars like with GMK.
With how relatively young DCX is, there are definitely things I simply can’t comment
on right now, like color matching, quality control, and how novelties would look.
But in the near future, as more content gets put out and drop puts out more colorways,
we will be able to know about these aspects very soon.
But before we talk about whether you should look into buying DCX, I am obligated to talk
about the controversy surrounding DCX or should I say, MT2, and the designers drop works with.
Drop is not known for treating their designers well.
Most large companies that decide to dip their toes into our community aren’t exactly seen
as saints anyway.
We’ve heard of bad miscommunications with Matt3o, Drop doing things like MT2 without
their permission, and a whole slew of controversy surrounding Mito.
While this technically doesn’t affect the products and their quality, I think it’s
important to be mindful of the places your products are coming from, and being aware
that this is a company that has not been known to be particularly respectful to designers.
But if you ask me, I think DCX as a product is a smarter choice than GMK, especially when
drop starts releasing more colorways.
It’s higher quality in more aspects than one, easy to buy, sounds almost the same,
and doesn’t take a lifetime to ship.
But at the end of the day, these are both pretty expensive keycaps, and there’s no
doubt that there are high quality options out there that also compare to both of these
in terms of value.
But if DCX hits the plenty of checkboxes that it does for what you want in your new plastic
squares, it’s a great choice.