Awekeys reveals metal keycaps for low-profile mechanical and ergonomic keyboards entering development
If you've used a mechanical keyboard for any length of time, you'll have noticed that all plastic keycap sets will eventually start to show signs of wear, regardless of what material they're made of — a reality we experienced all too quickly in our Lofree Flow Lite review. One option to mitigate that wear, even if only somewhat, is swapping those PBT keycaps for something made from a more durable material, like the ceramic keycaps from Cerakeys or the all-metal keycaps from Awekeys. Unfortunately, such options don't really exist commercially for low-profile mechanical keyboards, like the Iqunix Magi65 Pro (curr. $159.99 on Amazon) that we reviewed prior.
However, Awekeys has officially published an interest check form to gauge the viability of a full-metal low-profile keycap set, revealing an intention to create such an option. Awekeys is an established manufacturer of all-metal keycaps, so it's safe to say if it's going through the effort of conducting market research about low-profile metal keycaps, there's a good chance the project will come to fruition — especially given how many subreddits the interest check post has been posted to.
Awekeys low-profile metal keycap details and expectations
In the aforementioned social media posts, Awekeys shared a render of a low-profile split ortholinear keyboard with two colour options, Titanium Black and Satin Silver, which are colour options the keycap maker has already made available in its current line-up of metal keycaps. The low-profile keycap design obviously still hasn't been finalised, but the render suggests that it may be something like a mix between the XDA profile and the LDSA keycap profile that is common on low-profile keyboards.
It's unclear whether Awekeys will offer compatibility for only MX stems (the cross-shaped stems on Kailh Choc V2 and Gateron low-profile switches), however the posts directly mention low-profile split ergonomic keyboards, which would mean compatibility with Kailh Choc V1 switches (basically the low-profile switches used by Logitech and big low-profile ergonomic keyboards, like the ZSA Voyager) is all-but necessary.
Given that these low-profile metal keycaps are still in the very early stages of development, it's unclear how much they might end up costing, but a set of full-height Awekeys metal keycaps costs anywhere between $139 and $200+.
Source(s)
