Anyone here tried GMK keycaps? Is he hype justified?

GarlicDeliverySystem · February 3

Currently waiting for my Zoom98 to arrive, I saw a lot of people in the discord and other discussions saying they will definitely put on some GMK keycaps on that.

Having looked at the prices and availability of these keycaps made me wonder: are they actually that good? Especially compared to other premium brands (i.e. drop, pbtfans,...). I can see that people like the designs, but is the quality worth the extra price and hassle to get them?

In other words: anyone ever bought some and are they that much better, compared to the competition?

saintlouisbagels · February 3

I use to buy GMK keycaps in my prime days of burning money. I owned like 3 different sets, about $200 each. yikes.

They were very crisp quality and I enjoyed them, but I don't think I would be able to point them out compared to a $80 set of keycaps.

I don't like that they're ABS - they got shiny over time! And I much prefer flat profiles like DSA and NuPhy's KOP instead of Cherry OEM.

Overall not worth it in my opinion.

atarione · February 3

umm sort of am right now (i think) I busted out this ancient Cherry G81-1800HAU keyboard I got for a few dollars at a garage sale many years ago.. and if it had been a G80 and not a G81 it might have been my daily keyboard since then...but it is an G81 with the absolutely abysmal Cherry MY (spring over membrane) design.. and it is an absolute abomination to type on.

Personally I probably wouldn't pay GMK prices for there sets the ABS meh.. too expensive.. I have a $20 (sale) PBT double shot Blue Samurai Clones (no kanji or novelty keys.. meh). The $20 clones were surprisingly well made and feel quite good I have them on my old WASD V1 keyboard.

However, the key-caps are beautiful double-shots ... which I believe cherry sold the tooling for to GMK some time ago and so GMKs should be quite similar to these? But I would probably just buy cheaper pbt double-shots personally.

This board sucks but these key caps are fantastic... and somewhat useless as the keyboard layout doesn't lend them to moving to another board that well.. MEH..

my cat Harvey was extremely excited to help with swapping the key-caps on the WASD keyboard, as you can see he was a huge help.

GarlicDeliverySystem · February 3

50 minutes ago, atarione said:

Personally I probably wouldn't pay GMK prices for there sets the ABS meh.. too expensive.. I have a $20 (sale) PBT double shot Blue Samurai Clones (no kanji or novelty keys.. meh). The $20 clones were surprisingly well made and feel quite good I have them on my old WASD V1 keyboard.

However, the key-caps are beautiful double-shots ... which I believe cherry sold the tooling for to GMK some time ago and so GMKs should be quite similar to these? But I would probably just buy cheaper pbt double-shots personally.

I've also heard that GMK took over the tooling from Cherry, so it would make some sense to me that modern GMK is comparable to old Cherry quality in that respect.

I've personally had a few bad experiences with clones or cheap keycaps from a few vendors, even more reputable brands like Keychron seem to be hit or miss with the stuff they sell under their own brand. So I am more inclined to pay a little extra for "known-good" quality in that sense.

It is one of these things that once I notice something that is uneven or annoys me on a keyboard/keycap, it is hard to ignore for me, personally.

I like your cat btw!

7 hours ago, saintlouisbagels said:

I use to buy GMK keycaps in my prime days of burning money. I owned like 3 different sets, about $200 each. yikes.

They were very crisp quality and I enjoyed them, but I don't think I would be able to point them out compared to a $80 set of keycaps.

Indeed, the price is my main concern and hardly justifiable to me currently. It would be somewhere north of 200EUR for me to get a full-size set, except if I were to go with one of the few ones in stock with a EU shop.

Like GMK Gladiator (https://oblotzky.industries/products/gmk-cyl-gladiator?variant=44815222538508) would be 131+32.5 = 163.5 EUR before shipping/extra taxes for the 100% layout, and that doesn't even include the macro, accents or novelties... insane.

They do look good on paper/screen though.

I do have to say that I have no issue with ABS, currently running ABS in the office (https://domikey.com/collections/sa-series/products/dolch-sa-profile got them at a sale) and they only start to get shiny ever so slightly right now after ~1year of usage. So I am open to high quality ABS.