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As a complement to phaus's excellent comment, I'd like to talk a bit about keycap profiles. The two main categories are cylindrical and spherical profiles. Almost all off-the-shelf keyboards have cylindrical profile keycaps on them by default -- essentially, it's as if a cylindrical chunk has been removed from the top of a flat keycap. OEM profile and Cherry profile are the two most common cylindrical profiles (the keycaps that come with most off-the-shelf keyboards are OEM profile). A spherical-profile keycap has more of a fingertip-shaped divot in the top (SA, MT3, DSA, and XDA are the most common spherical profiles). I personally find spherical profiles more comfortable than cylindrical profiles, so you may want to give them a try, but if you're happy with your current keycaps then you're probably not missing much. The other major factors that describe profiles are height (hi-profile keycaps are taller than low-profile keycaps) and sculpting. With a sculpted profile, the keycaps on the top rows of your keyboard will be tilted towards you, the keycaps in the middle will be flatter, and the keycaps in the bottom row will be tilted away. Many people find this more comfortable than a flat profile (keycaps from any row of the keyboard are shaped the same), but others find flat profiles feel equally nice, and if you're using a layout like Dvorak or Colemak it's easier to switch your keycaps around to match (with a sculpted profile you'd have to buy an entirely separate kit with the alpha keys in the correct location). Hi-profile keycaps will be taller and, if they're sculpted, are generally sculpted more dramatically sculpted than low-profile keycaps. Sculpted keycap shapes are generally described by row number, with Row 0 or 1 used for the F-row and Row 4 or 5 used for the spacebar and modifier key row. (Numbering systems are not standardized, but R3 should always refer to the home row.) Of the spherical profiles, SA and MT3 are hi-profile and sculpted (except for a few SA sets, which use all-row-3 keycaps and are therefore flat), and DSA and XDA are low-profile and flat. Low-profile sculpted spherical sets are rarer -- MDA profile was recently developed to help fill this niche, but you will have trouble finding an MDA set outside of group buys. In terms of actual recommendations? Budget-priced spherical sets are unfortunately thin on the ground; they haven't really left the high-end group-buy-only enthusiast market, whereas there's a lot of cheap OEM profile sets with a variety of aesthetics. I own and like the Matt3o Nerd DSA set [1], which is currently in stock and costs $50. (Signature Plastics keeps some DSA sets in stock on pimpmykeyboard.com, but they're all $80-$100.) For a sculpted set, look at Maxkey SA sets on kbdfans.com (also priced at around $100, but it's a slightly better price than Signature Plastics' SA sets). [1] https://drop.com/buy/matt3o-nerd-dsa-keycap-set-massdrop-exc... |