Drop Mystery Box Series 3

Introduction

Drop, famous for their collaborations with the likes of Sennheiser, Mito, Marvel and many, many others has recently launched their third mystery box, guaranteed to contain the following:

A base keycap set from MT3, DCX or GMK
A base keycap set from the Drop Skylight series
70-110 Switches from Cherry, Kailh, Everglide, Halo or Holy Panda (X)
A deskmat

Coming in at 99 USD, the mystery box costs about as much as you’d normally pay for the first keycap set alone, quite the value! While I did notice that the items we got in our boxes did go on sale, the box is still significantly cheaper than buying the products separately, so there’s no value lost even in a “poor” box.

The only real downside of it is the obvious one, you don’t know what’s in it and whether or not you like it.

Drop did limit the boxes to a maximum of two per purchaser… So that’s exactly what I ordered for this article. Let’s not hold things up any longer and take a look what’s in the box!

Box 1 – Skylight R2 Bamboo

The Skylight series is a keycap set mainly oriented to offer variation on Drop’s own ALT, CTRL and ENTR keyboard lines. They feature a 2-color theme, in this case a bright green and white colorway… would fit in quite well with Kailh’s box jade switches.

At a 45 USD asking price, you get most of what you should expect. Skylight uses PBT plastic with doubleshot injection, making them very resistant to wear and tear from day to day use. The shine-through lettering also makes you able to use your keyboard in the dark if you’re into that.

The only real downside is visible in my pictures… While it will fit perfectly on your average TKL or full-size keyboard, the set includes no 1u keys to use them on something like my TES68, forcing me to either leave them blank, use different keys than they’re mapped to or use keycaps from a different kit.

The profile used is OEM, commonly found together with Cherry on everything from mainstream keyboards to high end designer kits. It’s a relatively low profile, but one I can personally very much enjoy.

Box 2 – Skylight R2 Rose

The Skylight Rose is very similar to the Bamboo kit, but instead of a bright green, it uses a bright pink accent color. They combine quite nicely with Holy Pandas color-wise, as you can see in the pictures.

As far as the rest of the kit goes, it pretty much comes down to the same up- and downsides as I noted with the Skylight Bamboo.

Box 1 – MT3 Godspeed R2

The Godspeed keycaps are inspired by the history of space exploration, and the very first thing I noticed about it is the change in names of common keys. Instead of ESC, calling it abort, instead of backspace having cutoff and so on. The kit we got is specifically the Apollo base kit, named after the US mission to the moon.

Godspeed has been made in a total of four different profiles, in this case using the MT3 profile. This is a custom profile designed by Matt3o after IBM terminals of the 1970’s, quite a funny coincidence considering the Apollo program ran right around that time. Coming from OEM and Cherry profile kits, I did need some time to get used to it, but once I did I did enjoy the slightly higher and more curved around profile that MT3 offers.

Box 2 – MT3 Camillo/Olivetti

The MT3 Camillo (on the box marked as MT3 Olivetti) is a keycap set inspired by Olivetti, an Italian manufacturer most famous for their typewriters and “portable” desktops in the IBM compatible era. While they do still exist today, they were bought out by Telecom Italia in 2003 and started focusing more on other market with little success. This set specifically is themed after Olivetti’s terminals, like the Cherry G81-3000 based KBD2812.

While it is doubleshot injected, making it practically impossible for the lettering to wear out, it does use ABS plastic instead of PBT. While ABS is easier to work with in regards to bright colors, it also tends to start shining over time. Considering the lack of bright colors in the kit, I’m not sure why Drop decided on using ABS here instead of PBT plastic.

The same coincidence as with the Godspeed comes back, as Olivetti is famous for their IBM compatible PCs.

Box 1 – Cherry MX Blue RGB

When first opening the box, this was the first thing I saw and felt… A little disappointed. While it’s not a bad switch per se, blue switches between the likes of Kailh, Outemu, Gateron, Huano and in this case Cherry feel extremely similar. Even if I actually started out with Outemu blue switches, it didn’t feel special to type on the same kind of switch on a different board again.

Nonetheless, there’s still a bit to talk about. The Cherry MX Blue switch, like many other clicky switches use a click jacket. This gives it a tactile bump and a click sound. The downside of using a click jacket over something like Kailh’s click bar is that it gives a rather high-pitched, cheap click compared to a click bar giving a much deeper click in both feel and sound. For that reason, I’d rather point at something like Kailh’s box white at a similar budget.

Box 2 – Drop x Invyr Holy Panda

Now this was a much more pleasant surprise. I’ve been curious about panda switches in general, but as they were never sold per 10, I haven’t picked them up before. But as I now have a full set thanks to Drop, I decided to put them into a TES68 for a quick test and… holy. Even on a cheap test fit board I could immediately feel the difference. While I do generally prefer linears, I enjoyed typing on these a lot with their sharp and very noticeable tactile feedback.

Coming in at 67 grams of actuation force, these definitely aren’t a lightweight switch like your average brown switch, but that’s something I personally prefer anyways. They’re definitely a switch more oriented towards typing than gaming, but if you’re looking for a high-end tactile switch, you should definitely keep these in mind with something like Durock/JWK’s T1 as potential alternative.

Box 1 – Drop x Marvel Infinity War

Coming in a nice-looking cardboard tube package themed according to what’s inside we find the first of two deskmats.

The mat features Thanos with the infinity gauntlet in a dot-like pattern that I feel… mixed about. While I’m sure this would look really cool to the average Marvel fan, it also looks a bit… Blurry.

Drop’s deskmat here is surprisingly low friction given how it looked to me at first sight… Wouldn’t call it anything of competitive level, but definitely something that’s fine for the average gamer. Not bad!

Box 2 – Drop x Marvel Iron Man

Following that up is the Iron Man version of the same deskmat. Instead of the bright purple of infinity war, it comes in a dark red mat with the words “Iron Man” proudly displayed on it.

While I do have similar feelings about the dot pattern of this mat like I had with the infinity war version, it did feel less blurry compared to it. Other than that, it’s the same high-quality mat.

Conclusion

Normally this is the moment that I tell you to go buy something or not but… the boxes are already well sold through. You can still pick up the individual items off Drop’s site or Amazon, but for the mystery box itself you’ll have to wait for Drop’s next round of mystery boxes.

Either way, as far as value is considered, you’d already get your money’s worth on the GMK/MT3/DCX kit alone, but it all depends on if you like the contents of your mystery box if it’s worth it or not. But all things considered, I don’t regret picking these up myself.