Vortex Doubleshot PBT Keycaps (feat Ducky Shine 3)

[Heisenbleurgh]

First time using PBT Keycaps, got these off Massdrop. First time using Massdrop too, so I'll add a couple points about that too. Some pictures are from my phone so they're not the best.
 
Full image album: http://imgur.com/a/YgVDE
 
Packaging (and Massdrop shipping)
I was surprised by how big the box was when it arrived, since Massdrop decided to add air-filled bags literally at every side of the box.

 


I appreciate the concern and now feel more confident about ordering bigger or more fragile things, but I don't think I needed this was required for a box of keycaps. I'm only complaining about this because of international shipping and I appreciate packages being as big as they need to be. Still, I'd much rather complain about them overdoing it
 
The keycaps come in a cardboard box with a top that comes off, held together by a red cardboard strip with a keycap and "KBtalking History" on it with a texture. Below it the black top box you can see a keycap with a nut on it, which they're known to include (along with a squirrel) in several of their keyboards. Once the top comes off you'll see a thin sheet of dark grey foam, 0.5cm / 0.2" thick. The box is all black, inside and outside and besides what I previously mentioned has nothing else on it but a sticker indicating these are blue keycaps.

 


 
Content
Below the thin foam are the first set of keycaps, and an included plastic keycap puller. I prefer using the longer metal keycap pullers available with other keyboards such as the Ducky for everything but longer keycaps. These come in cardboard that only barely keeps them in place. Tilting it would make the keycaps fall out but you don't need to worry about them moving around while closed, as the cardboard and foam give a good tight seal. This set includes the numberpad and bottom row keycaps and would usually include ISO other alternative keys. This specific drop on Massdrop stated these would not be included but they would if purchased somewhere else. Second set includes top 5 rows of a 60% keyboard.

 


 
I don't mind the cardboard, but it could be better. I ordered a set of Max Keyboard keycaps before that used a hardfoam instead of cardboard and was able to keep the keycaps in placed even if flipped upside down.

 

The Keycaps

The first thing you'll notice is how clean-looking these are, specially the white keycaps. Not a trace of shine after 3 days of use, not even in the WASD keys after a couple hours of heavy gaming. The double-shot blue plastic has the exact same texture and cannot be felt at all, it's crazy how they blend into a single texture under your fingers, feeling like blank keycaps. Definitely not like blank ABS keycaps though, since these have a really nice texture, they're not sand paper rough, but they're definitely not smooth. A couple of them are slightly rougher on the sides, but besides that all keys have a uniform feel on top. On good pictures you can pretty much imagine how it feels, since you can see it.

 

 

 

I tried to get pictures to show how much thicker they are than the regular ABS keycaps included with the Ducky. They're pretty thick but I don think there's thicker out there. One of my only problems with the keycaps are how much taller the top row are. I haven't looked up the exact profile, but as you can compared to previous Esc keys, the ones included in the Vortex are much taller. I'm not entirely sure how much they'll affect since I haven't used them much, but I have noticed the transition from number keys to F keys feels really nice with the extra height but they still look weird to me

 

PBT and LEDs

I see this question a lot and have looked it up myself a lot before getting these, so here's my input on how it looks:

Day time:

 

 

 

Night time + monitor on:

 

 

 

Wave effect:

 

Complete darkness:

 

 

Wave effect:

 

Typing Experience

It's been extremely enjoyable. No shine that leads to sliding or sticky keys, a nice slightly rough texture, extremely clean looking (you can tell if something's on the keycap 5 miles away). This might be due to the material, thickness or both, but at first they felt so much stronger that the blue switch just felt softer for some reason. I can't quite explain how or why, but it made the switch feel like less work. 

The uniform texture across the entire keyboard (blue and white keycaps do feel the same) is very nice, since what happened with my previous ABS keycaps was that some were shiny and others weren't. This might eventually happen with PBT but I've been lead to believe it takes much longer. I'll try to give an update after a considerable amount of time using them.

 

 

Summary

Pros

• Very sleek, minimalistic packaging
• Nice textured keycaps
• Looks amazing
• PBT means longer lasting. Double-shot means legends that don't wear off

Cons

• Would prefer foam to hold the keycaps over cardboard
• No light trough them
• Expensive
• Makes you want to write a lot
• Makes you wanna buy other sets to mix and match

 

They're just a tad too expensive to go around recommending to everyone (almost $70 in mechanicalkeyboards.com), almost as much as some very cheap mechanical keyboards, but if you've already had a very nice keyboard with the stock keycaps for a long time and are looking for a way to bring life and excitement back into it or just get it to look clean again, this are a nice idea. They feel great, look great and I'm not sure I can ask for more from a keyboard.

Available in blue on white, red on white, green on white, orange on white, pink on white and all black with white legends.

 

Feel free to leave questions if you've got any

[Builder]

Beautys

[0s4x]

Very nice review of some very nice keycaps. If I hadn't already decided over the last day or so that I was going to get a Model M, I'd definitely get myself some of these. The night+monitor on shot is exactly what I would want out of a backlit board.

[ZacDaMan72]

Umm, I'll stick with my black/grey ones... I might even swap the grey keycaps of my G710+ to black ones.

[Bluuz]

Looking back, would you have purchased the translucent version of the keycaps instead?