Closer Examination

A hunch had me take a look at my review of the Hexgears Gemini Dusk, and it certainly is similar-looking! There are a few other such keyboards, however, and Drop ends up winning by simply being among the first, if not the first, to showcase and bring to market this design. I am not talking about the TKL form factor, of course, but, rather, the aluminium/plastic diffuser/aluminium sandwich construction with a thick frame that hangs past the front onto the sides and has a thin plate on the bottom. The Drop CTRL can be had in a black or this Space Gray frame color option, but with the same stock keycaps unless you take the kit for use with your own switches and keycaps. This pre-configured keyboard thus has a couple of different colors going on even with the keycap set of a gunmetal and lighter gray, which looks nice, but does make the legends harder to read without the backlighting on.

The Drop CTRL weighs nearly 1 kg owing to all the aluminium, but is quite low in profile at ~36 mm tall. Bezels are about average in size and feel smaller owing to rounded corners. There is no visible branding on the keyboard in use. The keycaps follow the same trend in only having the general legends and no specific ones for other features you might be expecting. This is an open-source-supported keyboard through and through. Single-legend placement is in the top center, and secondary legends are placed alongside at the top as well. It would be a fair assumption then that we will see north-facing LEDs, and the backlighting will be more uniform at the top as well. The font is clean and well-sized, making this is a keyboard that will do well in a variety of environments.


Flipping the keyboard around, we see large branding etched into the aluminium plate. Drop has updated it to reflect the branding revamp from Massdrop to Drop, and certification information is seen below. Six long rubber pads along the top and bottom prevent scratches to the aluminium plate and add friction for the keyboard against the resting surface. There is also a small hole on the left to access a reset/firmware flash button on the PCB, which you will get quite familiar with should you venture into the firmware customization options. We also find four sets of two magnetic pads, if you will. These allow the provided two add-on feet to simply be pushed in place, as they are held by magnetism. These feet also have rubber pads and are angled differently to allow a variety of install configurations, including elevation as well as negative tilt from the front.


We have not one but two separate USB Type-C ports. Both allow you to connect the provided cable, so it is not an extra port just for a USB device. Instead, these are for two cable-routing options depending on whether you are a left or right-handed mouse user, thus putting the keyboard cable further away from the mouse to minimize tangling. The cable itself is the usual 6' and sleeved gray to somewhat match the keyboard, at least when it comes to the darker keycaps. It needs an available USB Type-A port on your computer, and USB 2.0 will suffice for power and data alike. The spare port ends up being part of a USB hub thus; USB source permitting, it could power another device, such as a mouse. There is support for up to 4 W of total power intake (800 mA on the 5 VDC rail), meaning USB 3.2 Gen 1 can be handy here.


A look at the side further confirms the low-profile nature of the keyboard, including the flat case profile without the add-on feet. The keycaps use the commonly found OEM profile, and the various rows are thus sculpted as seen above. They float owing to the case and frame design, and the included keycap puller works quite well, too. The stock keycaps are of really good build quality, using very thick PBT plastic (average wall thickness 1.5 mm) with seamless doubleshot injected primary and secondary legends for the US ANSI layout. The PBT is not the smoothest of its kind, and my complaint about the legends not being as legible here as-is remains. These legends are at least backlighting compatible, which alleviates some of the issue. The Drop CTRL also uses standard keycap sizing and spacing, making for compatibility with a vast collection of aftermarket keycap sets, including several Drop itself sells.


The Drop CTRL is available in a variety of switches, including those from three different sources. I have the Halo True switches here, which are a tactile switch with a salmon-colored stem. These are manufactured by Kailh to Drop's requirements and retain the cross-point stem for the Cherry MX-style keycap compatibility. Larger keycaps still have the support bars from the doubleshot injection, which is kind of an Easter egg to me. They also use plate-mounted Cherry-style stabilizers which are lubed fairly well, although I would have liked screw-in stabilizers here. The lubrication combined with the thicker PBT keycaps should help mitigate some of that mushiness typically associated with stabilizers of this style.


The Drop CTRL was an early adopter of hot-swappable switch sockets, and the provided switch remover is handy for removing a switch for a closer look. This also reveals the 3-pin switch socket for examination, and the SMD RGB LED associated with each switch for backlighting is in a north-facing configuration indeed. These might be detriments for adoption, especially with this configuration not playing well with 5-pin switches that will need to be clipped, as well as some Cherry profile keycap sets that are better off with south-facing LEDs. Getting a closer look at the Halo True switch, we notice it is an RGB-compatible 3-pin mechanical switch with a transparent top and opaque bottom housing, as well as a cutout in the bottom and a large diffuser on the top for the LED underneath to shine light through.