Drop + The Lord of the Rings Black Speech Keyboard Overview
If you are used to mechanical keyboards from your typical gaming brands like Corsair, HyperX, and Cooler Master, then the Black Speech might be a bit of a shock to you when you first see it. This keyboard is decked out from top to bottom with menacing artwork including the Eye of Sauron surrounding the arrow keys, as well as the Black Speech text on the keycaps.
The black aluminum case, the same as the one found on other ENTR keyboards, has a nice satin look and feel to it, and adds to the overall sturdiness of this keyboard. Only available in a tenkeyless design, this keyboard offers that middle-ground between a full-size and 60% setup that I find to be my overall preference due to form and functionality. The top plate of the keyboard is plastic however, but doesn’t really detract from the overall quality of this keyboard, and color matched very well with the aluminum below.
Taking an overall look at the Black Speech keyboard, we see that most of the keycaps, which feature the very distinctive MT3 profile, are what I would call an “Ash Gray” color, while the rest of the keycaps are a darker gray color. I think this color scheme is great, as it is different enough from the other two LOTR designs. Not that you would be confused, especially with the menacing Tower and Eye of Sauron surrounding the arrow keys. There are some customizations you can make to this color scheme via the additional included keycaps, but we will cover that more later on.
As this is a pretty standard keyboard layout, both the left and right sides are free from any functionality, but you can see below how the MT3 keycap design differs from that of the more standard SA profile. The feet on the bottom of the keyboard also offer a bit of adjustment to suit both flat and tilted preferences.
Taking a look at the top edge of the keyboard, we see just the USB Type-C opening for connecting with the included Type-A to Type-C cable. No other breaks in the aluminum case are found on the body of the keyboard.
Flipping the Black Speech keyboard over, we see a prominent Drop + Lord of the Rings screen-print right in the middle. At the bottom corners of the keyboard are two rubber feet to keep the board in place.
At the top corners we find two adjustable feet. While closed there is still a bit of an angle provided by the some elevated pads and the closed feet themselves. When extended, the feet provide some additional grip via their soft-touch plastic finish.
Moving on to the functions of the Lord of the Rings Black Speech keyboard, Drop has outfitted this board with their own Holy Panda X switches. These in-house switches feature a tactile feel, but not as much of the sound that you would get from something like a standard Cherry MX Blue. The tinted body and yellow stem design allows for swapping out to different keycaps, but I don’t know why you would use anything besides the included matching keycaps on this board.
Additionally, these switches are soldered to the PCB, so what you see is what you get. The Holy Panda X switches do feature white LED lighting, though you will only be able to see that illumination below the keycaps, which I will point out below.
Now, what I consider to the star of this keyboard, the keycaps. Just like the previous LOTR boards from Drop, the Black Speech keyboard features its own unique lettering on the top of the PBT keycaps. And just like the name implies, this board is decked out with Black Speech lettering at the center of the MT3 keycaps. Now I enjoy LOTR just as much as anyone else, but I’m definitely not fluent or even vaguely familiar with the unique characters from the languages of this fantasy world. Thankfully there are small English legends on the bottom right of the keycaps for those instances where you need to get a visual que from the keycaps.
Regarding the MT3 keycap profile, it is definitely a change from the SA profile that most people will be familiar with. As you can see below, there is quite a bit of a difference in keycap height, angle, and top shape of the caps. MT3 caps have a very concave top that your fingers will sit in, and this definitely takes a bit of time to get used to.
The keycaps themselves are nice and sturdy, molded from PBT, and with a very slight hint of a texture on the tops. The sides are all much smoother, and I found their feel to be quite comfortable in use. Do note however, that these are single-shot keycaps, and that there are no legends that pass through any of the keyboard’s switch illumination. So while this keyboard can be adjusted between various lighting brightnesses, typing in the dark might be a little bit more of a challenge, especially if you aren’t fluent in Black Speech.
