Ceramic Keycaps 👎
Are ceramic keys worth the price?
Ceramic key caps?
My honest experience as an early adopter of a unique set. Ceramic keycaps from Cerakeys
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Hello everyone! For the most part, I've been a lurker here for the past few years, and its awesome to see neat ideas come to life. One of which, are these ceramic keycaps from Cerakey. I've had them for about a week now, and they are without a doubt one of the most unique experiences I've had.
I think they are amazing but do be warned that these are among the first attempts (I believe) of these kind of keycaps, and there are some big issues.
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Pros:
It feels smooth and cold to the touch. I absolutely love typing on this set.
Helps achieving a deep sound. There are a lot of factors in play that affect the sound signature of a keyboard. So I won't say that slapping these on are just going to make your keyboard sound deeper alone. I have a QK65 R2 with all foams, POM plate, and tape mod. It made my keyboard sound deeper.
The colors look great to me and has quite a few colors. They have a blank variant and another unique one, crazed, where it is purposely cracked to achieve a unique look. I'm not a fan of it personally though. I have the White & Indigo pair with legends, the legends are also indigo in color.
My keyboard doesn't have RGB, but from what I've seen they light up the entirety of the keys, a great in-between of opaque keycaps and clear ones in my opinion.
Great customer support experience. Below you'll see my issues regarding the fading of the keycaps, and Cerakeys does not delay in solving my issues. They were going to send me a new cap but put it on hold when other caps started to fade. They want to ensure that I can have all problematic keys resolved.
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Cons:
Very high chance you will have to mod the caps in some way. While the keyboard feels amazing, the nature of its material, so I'm told, comes with issues that plastic keycaps simply do not have. I'm mostly referring to the tolerances of the stem and issues with the legends. There are probably other things I haven't considered.
These keycaps are fingerprint magnets and paired with my sweaty hands, I am constantly wiping the caps.
The legends are decals that are baked on. They faded very easily with my set. My hands probably speed this process up along with the constant wiping. So far only my WASD keys are fading. I'm not sure if this kind of keycap can even be double-shot, it would be fantastic if it could be.
The stems have a high chance of being loose, Cerakeys knows this and even include a bandage-like tape similar to what you may get when you buy stabilizers. The tape goes between your switch and the keycap stem to thicken it. When a keycap is loose it can pop off easy and wobbles a lot. I have had to tape maybe a dozen my caps, paper also works in place of the tape.
The stems are ceramic too and sadly these really rub on the switch stem. I have Gateron Oil Kings and parts of the stem are stained black from the stem of the switch. The switch has ceramic particles on it. I've heard someone express concerns that it was shaving off the plastic of the switch itself, I'm a little concerned here too. Oil Kings are not cheap.
They are heavy, while that helps achieving a deeper sound profile, you may have issues with lighter switches not coming back up or coming back up more slowly. Cerakeys actually sent my keycaps with 2 box switches, not sure which ones, but I believe its intended to handle the spacebar, just in case the customer's switch couldn't handle the weight. My Oil Kings handled this well but it is slower coming back up.
No ISO stuff yet. I had to switch back to my ANSI PCB to put these on. There are plans in the future for an ISO kit, but no date for it.
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OK typing out all these cons makes this sound like it is not worth it, of course that is up to you to decide. To be clear, these are by far my favorite set. I bring my keyboard from work and home constantly now, it's always with me. I love it. But these issues cannot be ignored and I think it absolutely needs to be known to anyone considering these keycaps when they are available again.
These were for sale during a Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaign that have all ended. I don't know when it will be available. Probably after every backer is fulfilled and major issues addressed.
I had paid in the ballpark of $200 CAD for this set, about $150 USD.
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TL;DR
Great experience when everything is right. But has large issues that have to be basically modded around. Cerakeys are looking at ways to solve some of these issues.
If you get these, you will be doing extra mods to them like taping the inner stem and possibly spray coating the caps.