Ducky Halloween Theme Keycaps - Long Term Review

 

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale for some mechanical keyboard content. Close to a month ago, I shared my initial impression of Ducky's recently released Halloween themed keycaps. Aside from its unique legends and bright colors, the Ducky Halloween set brought with it all the usual qualities that you would expect from a high quality set of PBT key caps. We found the Halloween set to be no exception then except except for dye-sublimation being utilized for the unique legends as opposed to double-shot injection. 

The big question is, how would these novelty/seasonal key caps hold up to the rigors of daily use? That was the question I set out to answer as I equipped the Halloween-themed key caps on my daily workplace driver, the Ducky One 2 SF (with Cherry Browns). Along with my personal opinions, I would also be sharing the feedback I have received from my colleagues, most of which are naive to the mechanical keyboard scene.

First things first, we have to address the elephant in the room which is the design and colors of these key caps. Without a doubt the combination of purple and yellow-orange certainly pop and they are the first thing anyone notices with the keyboard. Positive feedback all around from anyone who first sees the keyboard and it remained to be quite the talking point over the first few days that it was around my workplace.

While I was not a big fan of the green legends used for the alphabet initially, it was by no means a deal breaker. It would have been nice to see Ducky employ shine-through legends for the alphabets while maintaining a colored font similar to what Tai Hao has been implementing on its past few sets. If Ducky could have pulled that off, it would certainly added a great deal of depth to the key cap's presentation.

Moving on to the typing feel of these key caps, one glaring issue kept rearing its head throughout my daily use of this set. The notches/bumps on the F and J keys were a little too low and small to my liking. Since these key caps maintain an OEM profile, there is not much in the way of concavity for the key caps. This meant getting acclimatized to touch typing on this set of caps took a little longer than usual.

The Ducky Halloween set has a completely unique set of modifiers which has dye-sublimated artworks instead of actual logos or words. While this may not be a big issue for a majority of users, especially if you touch type, I did receive some feedback where some people have had trouble identifying which key is which.

So while the overall typing experience was far from perfect, this is certainly far from the worst set of key caps I have ever typed on before. Despite heavy daily usage, these key caps showed no signs of fade or wear whatsoever. The colors remained bright and vibrant while, the printed legends showed no signs of fade. It may only have been a month through but, this certainly is a good place to start and certainly a big factor as to why many enthusiasts prefer PBT key caps.

Using it on Ducky's own One 2 SF, the key caps felt right at home despite the lack of support for the One 2 SF's unique right Shift key and the triple modifiers (Delete, Page Up and Down) on the right side. In order to display the Halloween set in its full glory, a full 104-key keyboard would have certainly been preferential.

When I first ordered the Halloween set, it cost exactly the same as the rest of Ducky's custom key cap sets. Considering that this would be a limited release and the additional tooling required for the artwork, I would have been more than happy to pay a little bit of a premium for it. On top of that, the entire set also comes included with an alternate spacebar which makes for a real value proposition with all things considered.

Despite Halloween having long passed, this keyboard still feels very much at home in my workstation. Part of that can certainly be attributed to there being no mention of Halloween itself anywhere on the keybaord. The only thing which comes close is the little "Trick or Treat" line on the spacebar. Otherwise, this just happens to be a really nice purple and yellow key cap set with spook artwork for its modifiers. Stemming from Akko's Tokyo World Series, I had always wanted to give sets with unique modifiers a go. Now that I have, you can be certain that I will be adding the aforementioned set to my collection.

Now that Halloween has passed, we usher in a new holiday season of merry making. That also means it is time to celebrate with another new and equally jovial set of key caps. What exactly may this be? Stay tuned to Tiro Finale to find out as we bring the Ducky One 2 SF on even more exciting key cap adventures. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!