we've got something pretty cool here today it's something that doesn't happen too often it's actually one of a kind
hand-built sample and that's because we've got the black speech keyboard from
drop they've done a few Lord of the Rings keyboards in the past we've
actually got the Elvish and dwarvish ones here so I'm going to take a quick
look at those as well but what I'm really excited about is the black speech
one because it started as just a keycap set and then you know I think they just
got way too much hype and interest for it so they decided to do a whole oh my
God it looks good I've got to say I was like really
excited for this and for good reason I wanted the keycap set myself I was
thinking about buying it and as soon as I saw it I was like okay we got to just
kind of unbox this thing so you know maybe I can buy it from a company after
and just give my own copy we have to send
this one back because it is a sample and I have to be incredibly careful with it
apparently it was hand built for us so thank you drop really appreciate it it's
currently on group buy and that's going for another two months or so but it's
supposed to ship in may like right after the group buys done and you know what
while I'm not crazy about drop keyboards for the most part like they're okay
they're just not really my style right now they're consistent that's the one
thing I can say about drop is that their their stuff's going to come out it's not
like a lot of other keyboard group buys that it's just never gonna happen oh there's actually like a pretty nice set
of stuff under that box okay we got a cable some other keycaps okay so
basically if you don't like the red aesthetic that they've got on a lot of these you can change it to a black or
gray keycap to kind of fit the rest of the set and then a keycap puller let's
take a look at this cable looks like just a standard USB a to c Cable One
thing to note is that this isn't going to be Wireless I don't even know if
there's RGB in terms of features you might be a little lacking but you're not
buying this board for extra features or anything like that you were buying it
because of the super duper cool black
speech keycaps and then the super duper cool like eye of Sauron kind of uh oh
it's like it's got a physical like 3D feel to it which is kind of nice and
feels a bit more premium than just like a painted on eye of Sauron or something
that's even got what I think is narcel like the Silver's blade that gets
shattered uh right here or at least it's got a sword cut into three pieces that's
kind of what that is to me otherwise we've got like a ring wraith on the
Windows key which is super cool there's the one ring on the Windows key on the
other side as well then the big eye of Sauron up on the top left here as your
Escape key and overall I gotta say it's super cool I was actually thinking of
buying uh both the Elvish and the dwarvish keycaps and then this one came
along I was like oh my God okay never mind I'm not getting those I'm getting this guy I do have to be a little gentle
because like I said this is a one of a kind they're not even done yet one nice
thing in case you can't read black speech or you forget where you are these
all have front Legend or if they don't have front Legend then they are on just
the bottom right of the keycap in a really small print so that it's not
something that even stands out until you go looking for it
the switches feel pretty good they're holy Panda X so if you like those then I
mean hey here's your chance to get your hand on some holy pandas the one
unfortunate thing as well about this board at least in my opinion is that it
is soldered now in our case it's kind of cool because this was like hand soldered
one of a kind you know sweet however in most cases especially if you're not a
big fan of holy pandas which I mean I think they feel pretty good I don't know
but if you don't like them for whatever reason so you want to switch to clickies
or you have a personal favorite that you like to put in your own favorite boards uh you're not gonna be able to do that
at least not easily you can de-solder switches and replace them that way but
it is uh it's time consuming and it's a pain and I would not recommend it if you
can avoid it it's part of why I love Hot swap so much it just kind of works but
yeah otherwise like in terms of sound and everything it's not amazing it's
about what you get from a drop control however you can mod this thing to sound
a lot better so I definitely think that it's not the end of the world that this
is the only way you're gonna get a black speech keyboard and one thing that I
gotta mention of course is it's got adjustable feet flip up feet are a big
favorite of mine that I really wish were a more common feature in more premium
boards I want to take this apart so bad
but I can't I promise them that we would be incredibly gentle oh I didn't even
notice this on the back it's got like Drop plus Lord of the Rings let's open up the other keyboard see if there's any
real differences and then try them all out
so like don't get me wrong one thing is that the keycaps themselves are actually
very similar it's really just the colorway like we've got almost the exact
same oh no they are a little different like we've got a elf tree oh what's the
alpha tree I don't know which one it is so I'm not gonna comment for the most
part though the keycaps are pretty much the same the only real differences I'm
seeing are like on the Windows Keys even the Escape key is still an IFR run I was
kind of hoping that would be more unique to this set but I do love the color
difference especially with this red and black versus nice like kind of vibrant
green so let's take a look at the dwarvish set I didn't mention this before but the box that's like the the
outer shell for the box is this really cool uh map of Middle Earth and one
thing that actually really bothers me is Gondor there is an R here I promise they
didn't screw it up and and put gondo on the map but when I first just saw a flat
image in teams I was like oh my God they screwed it up
but it's really it's just a really nice little touch that it sets it apart from
just a regular drop keyboard like you are getting something pretty unique here
speak friend and enter oh I like this
one the most this is a clear winner for me personally so don't get me wrong as
much as I absolutely love uh this eye of Sauron kind of printing or artwork or
whatever is going on here I love this Starry kind of motif on the Dwarven
keyboard and I love these keycaps I really dig the gray almost Stony kind of
looking keycaps and I am in love with
this one like way more than the other ones you know what my only real problem
though is that unlike the Elvish and the
black speech ones uh the legend isn't
super hidden like as you can see here it's pretty clear that it's like a one
and then a you know Rune dwarvish Rune to indicate instead of like a really
tiny kind of just barely visible English
or I guess or Arabic numeral for the
numbers oh you know what the cool thing is too they're really okay so the really
cool thing about this one the Dwarven one versus the black speech or the
Elvish is that instead of the eye of Sauron you get a dragon and you probably
get Smaug chilling up on the Escape key that's great I love this thing man you
know what I don't know which one I like the most I think it's the dwarfish one but there's something really unique and
cool about the black speech one that kind of just draws my eye even though I
think I like this one visually the most there this just it's very eye-catching
okay we've got I think all three of the variants here which is amazing I can't
believe they sent us uh these guys too I really wanted these but I just couldn't
ah my God it's hard to get out even with the glove on okay I'm just gonna
that's not working either wow
that's fine uh Mount Doom is clearly gonna go with our black speech board and
then let's get lothlorian with our dwarves and anduin for our elves
beautiful now obviously I'd be taking the keycaps off and replacing them and
everything they don't go right here they go on the Escape key or actually you
could put them on basically any of this top row uh and it would fit and look
pretty good so that's up to you I think they're great I honestly kind of wanna
see what I can take home after the end of this yes
nothing okay I'm gonna I'm gonna type on all these in a sec here but not before
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gonna try it out I'm gonna type with the finger gloves on this is probably gonna
go poorly but you know we'll see how it goes oh yep I'm gonna Reef not Mulligan
Mulligan that never happened
112 97 it's not bad not the best I've
done but it could have been worse there's something about the cupping on
all of these keycaps a lot of you might be familiar with feeling the home row
not through cups but through uh the little bars or dots on the f j key and
that's not happening here it's going with the more of a I don't think these
are sa but they're almost sa and so they're going with that really cupped
feel so that you know where your fingers just kind of sit and it does a good job
but there's also this kind of weird raised Edge on some of them that feels a
bit exaggerated and so this doesn't feel like a typical sa keycap set or essay
variant and because of that I would ever
so slightly sometimes feel like I'm struggling to lift my fingers just a
little bit and they'd catch on some of the keycaps not much and I would
definitely get used to that over time it might also help if I had the feet up and
I was typing at a bit more of an angle so that might be something to be aware
of but other than that like it feels pretty good now in terms of sound these
aren't like the best I've ever used or heard myself however you can modify drop
control keyboards without too much ease and there's tons of videos on YouTube uh
to show you how to do that if you're ever worried about you know running into
a big project that you don't know how to do my only real complaint has got to be
that this is not hot swap I really wish it was let's take a keycap off and take
a look and while I only typed on the black speech keyboard all these other guys are using the same switches and
it's basically the same keyboard aside from some uh you know artistic design
changes so you're going to get the same typing experience relatively across each
one one of the really nice things about this too is that while I didn't think
there was RGB there's definitely at least illumination so while you can't
see much of it on these keycaps in particular because they're not shine
through or anything if say you like the board and you like the artwork design on
it so you want to keep it and you like the switches you want to keep those you
can do that and just change the keycap set to something else that's more shine
through if you want to take advantage which is actually great if you want to
maybe just swap out wasde or something for something shine through for when
you're gaming so that you I don't know some people do that like I've had rubber
keycaps on my wasd at one point just to get a feel for it
one thing to note though is that they do appear to be North facing so if you
prefer south facing LEDs then that could also be a problem for you
what do you prefer a lot of you in the community prefer south facing apparently
you can see the shine through a little better I've never stopped and like tested that myself personally so I don't
know for sure but it does it is a sticking point for a lot of people out
there another really minor nitpick that a lot of people might not even care
about is uh you can't really put the space bar upside down and still have it
fit the rest of the keyboard because of the Elvis scripture or black speech
scripture on it and other than that it's pretty nice it's an anodized aluminum
and so it's a little Hefty it's also a tkl I I don't know why I didn't mention
that yet but basically you're just you're not gonna it's 10 key less you're not gonna get your numpad and all that
but it is a smaller profile on your desk
so for those of you who care who need that little bit extra desk space decal
is often preferable or even you know will go as low as a 40 if you really
want to why not don't go as low as 40 don't do a 40 it's gross yeah I agree
what was I gonna do oh wait I was gonna weigh this zero pound how many pound now
2.164 so it's not that V it's definitely
enough that you've got it's got a bit of weight to it and you can tell that it's not just all plastic but it's not going
to be some like six plus pound thing that just sits on your desk and doesn't
move that being said the rubber feet on the bottom aren't great they're not like
bad and it might work a little better with the feet flipped up oh yeah that's a bit
better although you're always in danger of this or it just flops down like that
is it the keyboard for me not particularly but that's mostly because
I'm kind of getting away from tkl's right now I've been really a lot more
into getting that numb pad back on my desk but in a compressed layout whether
that's like a full compressed keyboard or if it's like an 1800 with like just a
bit of a gap kind of there it's pretty sweet and for the switches the keyboard
and the keycaps and the cable like everything that you see here except for
these novelty keycaps because these are much more expensive on their own they
are beautiful though dwarf Factory does a really good job if you like these
maybe check out Jelly key as well they're they're great if you like these
Artisan keycaps that's what I was gonna get to these are about 65 a piece for a
1u keycap which is actually pretty on par for most uh kind of specialty custom
keycaps like this range fluctuates a bit if you are okay with that price and you
like this kind of design where it's a 3D
model and then they've resined it over top or whatever you then check out Jelly
key as well they do a bunch of cool stuff I've got a few keycaps on the way from them but 65 bucks for a single
Escape key when I'm like I'm alert of the Rings fan but I'm not like oh yeah
everything Lord of the Rings like it's just I grew up reading the books and I love the movies and I've played most
games it was a banger the book's great hey the book's great
first movie not so bad second and third movies we just don't speak of those yeah
I'm not I'm not like the hugest fan so I don't need this in my life however if
you've already got like a themed setup in your room or you're looking to do
that with like Lord of the Rings everything then this is absolutely kind
of the best choice to go with unless you're willing to pay really big bucks
for something super duper custom now the keyboard itself with keycaps with
switches with the cable with everything else you saw in the Box this goes for
right now it's on group Buy for 169.99
so it's 170 bucks and it is 199 at
launch I don't know if they're gonna do another round if it's all gonna sell out
during the group buy who knows but they are looking to ship in May of this year
which is always great at 170 or 200 there are a lot of full keyboards that
you could buy that are pretty good competitors to this thing out of the box
they're honestly even better in a lot of ways in terms of especially in terms of
like sound and maybe type feel on the stabilizers the reality is you just
these days you kind of want like some really good tape on the back and some
foam silicone on the bottom maybe just to make it all sound everyone's looking
for that like either that creamy thock kind of sound or they're looking for
that like high ping like old IBM kind of
sound and this is definitely more on the old IBM kind of noise
but for me it's just not what I'm looking for right at the moment if you
want to get something like this that is basically the same but without the
really really cool art style um then you can get I don't know
anything from kikron is going to be similar price and maybe even a gmk pro
if you want one but I gotta say they have crushed it in terms of just Lord of
the Rings stuff they've absolutely done a number on the design here and I'm
really pleased with it overall when it comes to a product like this that is
attached to a very marketable IP it can
be really tough to get something down in price that is anywhere close to this to
be perfectly honest I've actually got a set of keycaps alone I've got the
forexian keycaps ordered and those are 150 bucks just for the keycaps I gotta
say this is a pretty good deal if you're a big Lord of the Rings fan and you want
any of these three keyboards or even the keycaps like they're beautiful and
they're very well handcrafted like absolutely stunning it's kind of your
option and I think you should go for it that's the drop control and Lord of the
Rings keyboard specifically the black speech set that we've got to be super
careful with if you want to check out any other kind of Ip related stuff I
opened a Star Wars LG C2 recently it was
good it was just also really expensive