Recently, I talked about my foray into mechanical keyboards and resurfaced with one to call my own. The Royal Kludge RK987 with a backlight and swappable keycaps. I have been diligently using it for work and the occasional personal activity and I still love it. I love the typing experience that comes with using the XDA and Cherry keycap profiles on red switches. But what is a keycap profile?
Keycap Profiles, Defined
The world of mechanical keyboards can confuse even the sharpest of minds. That’s because there is almost an infinite variety of choices and it feels more intense when you’re thinking about what keycap profile you should use or would want to use.
As explained by The Keeblog,
A keycap profile describes the shape of the keycaps on a given row of a keyboard. The main ideas behind “sculpted” keycap sets are ergonomics and aesthetics. As with all aspects when customising your mechanical keybaord, the best keycap profile for you is subjective and depends on your personal preference.
The Keeblog
The blog also talks about uniform vs. flat vs. sculpted profiles, high vs. medium profiles, and spherical vs. cylindrical profiles.
Why Cherry Profiles?
Keyboard customisation brings out a whole new world among keyboard enthusiasts, including the complexities surrounding the various keycap profiles. If you’re anything like me, you could be left staring at your online shopping cart, wondering which one should you get. If you’re also new to the hobby, you might even start with the Cherry profile keycap sets.
Cherry profile keycaps were originally manufactured by the company Cherry in 1953 and continued to manufacture both keycaps and keyboards since 1973.
This profile is known to be aggressively sculpted and features some of the lowest profile keycaps on the market, especially when it is compared to OEM and SA keycaps. Cherry profiles are the most famous alternative to OEM as they are customised to the user’s needs, offering amazing performance and increased productivity.
Their low profile enables each stroke of the Cherry keycaps to provide a more robust sound due to the lack of room within the keycap for sound to travel around. A sculpted keycap means that each row varies from one another, letting users feel out each row and creating a sense of differentiation across the entire keyboard.
Each row may feel different from one another but they are quite comfortable to press compared to the standard, uniform keycaps. As a keyboard user with Cherry profiles, I find it easy to press and long hours of typing often flow more smoothly than ever.
I find that Cherry profile keycaps are the most comfortably designed profiles on the market. Evidently proven by my fast-flying fingers across the rows when I’m typing for work (or even for this blog). I love the bassy sound the keycaps produce when I type fast. Because of the red switches, pressing each keycap is also much easier and requires far less effort.
Again, I say that I am not a pro in the mechanical keyboard arena. I can only explain based on my experience of using this particular profile and what I’ve read as well. There are many more profiles that you might be interested in knowing. Check out Autonomous and Switch and Click for more insight on the other keycap profile sets.
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