Drop ALT V2 Keyboard Overview
Taking a first look at he keyboard it is quite small, but still has some heft to it. I opted for the black version of the keyboard, which has a black casing. You can also get it in space grey. The casing itself is made of anodized aluminum. One thing I really like about the design here is that there is basically no extra space on the casing, which again adds to the compact nature of this keyboard.
This is a 65% keyboard with a total of 67 keys. If you are not familiar with 65% it is a more compact version of a tenkeyless keyboard, where you still get your arrow keys, but you do lose your entire function row. Unlike a full-on 60% keyboard you also retain the Del, Home, Page Up, and Page Down keys.
This keyboard has a sort of floating keycap design were the keycaps sit on top of the mechanical key switches. Drop does offer a “high profile” version that has a thicker casing. For the keycaps most of the keys are dark grey, with the outer keys on each side being black. This gives a cool like a nice contrast to the keyboard.
The keycaps are double-shot PBT keycaps with shine-through legends in an OEM profile. Once you use a keyboard with double-shot PBT keycaps you won’t go back to using standard ABS keycaps. They feel better and don’t wear or carry shine.
Under those keycaps we have Drop’s Holy Panda X Clear mechanical key switches. These switches are produced by Gateron, come pre-lubed, and are a tactile switch. They have a MX-compatible stem so you can easily add custom MX-compatible keycaps to this keyboard. This is a hot-swappable keyboard so you can easily swap the switches out and there is support for both 3-pin and 5-pin switches. It is worth noting that you can also buy this keyboard as a barebones unit without any switches or keycaps.
Looking at the top-edge of the keyboard we can again see that floating keycap design. There is also a diffuser bar that goes all around the outer edge of the keyboard. This is going to light up with RGB lighting, more on that on the next page. You’ll actually find two USB-C connections on the top-edge of the keyboard. One can be used to connect to your PC, while the other can act as a pass-through for other devices.
If we look at the keyboard from the side we can see that it has a pretty flat profile by default. Using the two included magnetic feet we can set it at more of an angle. These magnetic feet can also be used in a reverse fashion giving the keyboard a negative tilt.
Flipping the keyboard over to the back we can see that all-aluminum design of the casing with the Drop logo in the center. It is worth noting that Drop has added PORON foam and IXPE foam to this keyboard for added dampening support. One thing that was very apparent on their first gen keyboards was “pinging” on certain units, which could get very annoying over time. The foam solves this problem and gives you a better typing experience overall. The included cable that comes with the keyboard is a pretty simple rubber USB-A to USB-C cable.
