Closer Examination:Keyboard

One of the reasons the MOONDROP DASH is hard to get out of the box is because it's a beast in size and mass alike. This is despite the relatively small 75% form factor whereby you get a total of 81 keys in a modified US ANSI layout—this can be seen as a truncated tenkeyless keyboard with a single bank of keys and no R. Ctrl, R. Win, Scroll Lock, Pause/Break, Home, and End compared to the 87 keys on the TKL format. See, MOONDROP's management is a set of young nerds who are enthusiastic about audio and keyboards given the cross-interest between the two hobbies in general, and they wanted to bring out a premium offering as part of the brand's debut into the keyboard space. As such, the DASH employs a top-mounted PCB design fit into an extremely thick, wrap-around CNC molded aluminium alloy chassis. It's an industrial design given a retro aesthetic complete with the ridged white fins at the top that double up as a heatsink for the DAC/amp and USB hub inside. This is a necessary compromise that others might take as ugly and bulky. On my end it's more the logo placement as a screwed-in badge that takes away from the aesthetic otherwise complemented by the keycap colorway too. You can remove the badge but not easily turn it around, so there's an option to keep it removed or add in a custom piece if you are enterprising enough.

MOONDROP is using a pixelated font for the keycaps which will be divisive, but I dig it in the overall retro theme going on. The base colors of off-white and gray get a couple of red accents not only on Esc and Enter but also fillers on the Enter, Ctrl, and Win keycaps too. The use of 1.25u keys on the bottom row means the DASH only gets two modifiers to the right of the space bar key before a small gap leads you to the arrow keys. but this also allows for increased compatibility with aftermarket keycap sets if you are so inclined. The lack of any backlighting as well as keyboard-specific functions/legends means keycap swapping is not going to hold you back much either, although do try out these first given they are very well aligned and feel nice. The legends are placed centrally and have secondary functions above the primary ones as applicable. The bezels are smaller than average on the other three sides with a light chamfer, further making the keyboard seem smaller than it is from a front-on view. As it stands, the DASH comes in at 313 x 163 mm here but is a whopping 46 mm high at the top as well as a heavy 2.1 kg without the cable, to make this a less-than-portable solution. The goal here to have a compact multi-functional device on your desk but then comes the part where we have no dedicated volume or media playback controls here! With a volume knob being the fashionable thing to have on a keyboard these days and there being plenty of room for one at the top, this is a big omission from MOONDROP that will be a topic of dicussion for a while and may even be a dealbreaker for some given this is a keyboard marketed for having integrated headphone outputs.


Turning the keyboard around reveals a frosted polycarbonate bottom panel which one would think is ample opportunity to have bottom-firing LEDs for accent lighting, but that's not the case here with a grand total of zero LEDs on the DASH. There are no certification stickers here and the PC panel matches the overall aesthetics while being used to allow threaded holes for keyboard assembly in addition to a weird keyboard feet configuration via side-mounted screws that allow two pieces of polycarbonate to be rotated around the screw shaft as seen above. These effectively become keyboard feet for more elevation options but in practice there are only two configurations which are stable enough in use and they barely differ in height to where it doesn't make much of a difference. I'd much rather have seen a fully closed panel without exposing the DAC/amp PCB you get a sneak peek at here, and it seems this is the third update in the works for the finished retail units, whereby these will be more practical to use—I am not completely sure what the changes are at this point. There are also seven circular rubber pads on the back to help prevent any scratches to the case and add in friction against the resting surface, but it's not like this dense unit is moving around easily on its own!


On the back side facing away from the user and aligned towards the right is where you will find not only the expected USB Type-C input, but also two extra USB Type-A ports. The MOONDROP DASH has a USB hub here to allow intake from a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (USB 3.0) or better input signal and then splits it four-ways to go to the keyboard, the DAC/amp, and these two USB ports. USB 2.0 will suffice for power to the keyboard alone but obviously that would handicap the keyboard. The provided cable does a good job in not only looking nice but also being verified to not hold back the keyboard as long as you plug it into a compatible USB port on your PC. The cable is coiled closer to the keyboard to allow for a shorter straight section of this 6' long cable to be used with a laptop/phone/tablet as well as with a PC further away given the coiled section can be easily stretched. But remember that this newer cable is in white and split past the coiled section too.


Update: Here we see the MOONDROP DASH with the stock cable that will ship with retail units. I mentioned before how this new cable fits the aesthetics of the keyboard better and it even matches the more premium feel of the entire ensemble now courtesy the split, coiled design. Functionally it is no different from the previous cable, except perhaps with the knurled metal housings that provided additional grip to attach/detach the cable.


A look from the left side shows the high profile nature of the case with its 46 mm height at the top and 22 mm at the bottom. A palm rest would not be a bad idea for those not used to touch typing with fingers hovering above the keyboard. The audio section is also here but we will cover it in more detail on the next page. The thicker case profile makes for non-floating keycaps which themselves are low in profile and contoured similar to the Cherry keycap profile across all six rows, except it's slightly edited to help make the keys more accessible at a lower typing position on this tall keyboard, and also assist with touch typing once you get used to the keyboard layout. The provided keycap puller tool also comes in handy to remove some of these keycaps for a closer examination without scratching their sides, as the plastic ring-style pullers can potentially do. Now we can see that MOONDROP has gone with extremely smooth thick PBT plastic for the keycaps (average wall thickness 1.4 mm) with dye-sublimed legends that will essentially last forever. I do want to note that the two red keycaps are not the exact same color here although it's more evident against a black background and less so on the white keyboard itself. Also, note the injection points for the PBT plastic keycaps are completely on the underside of the keycaps, to where you don't see those marks anywhere in use.


The MOONDROP DASH comes with one first-party switch option at this time in the form of the MOONDROP x G-Square Lunalight linear switch. The Tessence tactile switches may show up down the line, but there is no guarantee. These switches are apparently made by Haimu, a relatively new switch manufacturer that's quickly rising from having debuted as an OEM for smaller keyboard brands such as Velocifire to have their own branded switches. Regardless of the factory itself, my sample has the Lunalight switches characterized by the white color as opposed to the Tessence which is more a pastel/baby blue in color. These come MOONDROP branded to continue the trend of everything on the keyboard being developed in-house. The larger keycaps use screw-in PCB mount satellite axis stabilizers, which further cements the DASH as more than just another mainstream-class keyboard, and even come lubed so well to where I really don't see the typical user bothering to replace or even re-lube them. Well done MOONDROP!


The provided switch remover tool can be used to pull out some of the switches for further inspection or simply swapping out to other switches courtesy the use of a hot-swappable 5-pin switch socket on the keyboard. Note also the poron foam sheet between the plate and the PCB, and the plate itself seems to be aluminium again with a smooth paint job that is durable enough to resist the use of the switch remover tool. The PCB is south-facing as indicated with the LED placement, although it doesn't make any practical difference here except to those willing to solder SMD LEDs in and program the keyboard accordingly. The MOONDROP Lunalight switches are all white in color with a smooth nylon housing and the stem has walls around it for added dust and spill resistance. This is a 5-pin switch so you can expect some extra stability in the socket compared to the 3-pin Cherry MX style switches you can still use on the keyboard should these not be to your satisfaction.