These are good quality keycaps if you don't want to spend too much money. The dye sub legends are crisp and seem well aligned, and there doesn't appear to be any warping on the longer keys. I do wish that the keycaps had a little bit of a rougher texture, but the smoothness of the caps still feels nice. I'll echo that the keycap fitting on the stems of the switches was a bit tight, but it wasn't anything that I have not experienced with more expensive sets either.
These keycaps are very nice. Enough keys to cover about any type of kb you're needing. I put these on a 65% that I was putting together. I may buy a second set just to have on hand ~ can't beat the price
Finally, a decent set of keycaps that's affordable
The manufacturer behind the Artifact Bloom series, at least the "Vintage," has the right idea.
Back in 2018, even 2019, it was hard to find a set of decent entry-level keycaps to recommend to someone. All of the sub-$70 stuff seemed to have weird profiles, bad dye-subs, thin construction, limited coverage, or some other flaw. Especially warped spacebars and such.
But a set like this one chose reasonable goals and achieved them. It's a classic, tasteful colour, resembling the Muted colourway, and the dye-sub resembles real Cherry/GMK production.
Some people have reported slight warpage on some keys, and also tight stems. I can confirm the tight stems, they're hard to remove from even stock Cherry switches. And they scratch easily. But these are minor inconveniences for a $45 set of keycaps. They should function fine, and match lower-end kits like the KBD67 lite, NK65, and others.
The largest point of contention for these switches is the surface texture. It's very smooth and non-grippy. Feels kind of like ABS. So you wouldn't want to buy this for a textured PBT feel. However, they will probably take longer to shine (no guarantee, though) and take longer to discolour than ABS would.
Overall, this is what we need to see in the keyboard space. Sets that are 'good enough,' and are priced at what a normal person would think is reasonable. I would be willing to pay a little more to get some optional accent keys [though they should be included for free], and any other enhancements. Especially if they can protect their key surfaces against scratches, that would be worth more.
What sets like this should offer in the future are more accent key options, maybe in a fashion that's interchangeable. This is a gray-ish set, and they have a 9009 beige set, so these kind of 'base sets' could be mixed and matched with various appropriate accent sets. Interchangeability like that, with bases and accents offered as modular kits, could set Aritefact Bloom apart from other sets.
I like my keyboards to be "elegant". I'm not a big fan of the super flashy, but I do like a little bit of character. These provide a simple but vintage look I enjoy.
Nice to use, but I find the finish to be almost silky. Sounds great, but in practice feels a little weird and took some getting used to. Perhaps I'm just used to Drop's MT3s which are great - and also much sturdier feeling given their increased weight and size. But then again, MT3 is like 3x the price of these, and I think for the money they are great value.
these keycaps are some of the better keycaps that I’ve tried. They’re extremely smooth topped, with little to no texturing on the top. However be warned they are shallow to the point where ringing them may lead to “squish”. Other than that, highly recommended budget cherry profile.