Pros and cons, but still very deserving of 5 stars among producers of custom keycaps
If you want a set of truly custom keycaps, Goblintechkeys is probably your best bet. I have some thoughts about going through them, but I still believe they deserve 5 stars. Let me run you through my journey.
Let me preface by saying it took almost a month from the final design submission to arrival in central USA, so be prepared for a wait.
I wanted a fairly basic set of aqua blue keycaps with centered white letters. Beyond that I also wanted the four sides of the keycaps to be a different color of blue. They sent back an email saying that they can't guarantee accuracy and that the color of the top of the keycaps might be off center and print partially on the sides. Okay. Well then I decided to nix the different colored side decision altogether and to make the keycaps from top row to bottom row a gradient of blues. They okay'ed my design and in their words "Goblins had forged your precious items with the intensity of a thousand suns! With haste, goblins had sent out your items with our secret goblin-tech black-powdered rocket to travel across rugged terrains and through the mystic valleys to your doorstep! Bwahaha-snort!" I've got to say that I appreciate their commitment to the role of goblin keysmiths and I always enjoy the unbridled enthusiasm. Anyway, I received the keycaps and here are my thoughts...
*The picture is as close to true color as I could make it with Photoshop*
The overall color is a very good color. Irl, you can notice the gradient much better, but the colors are much duller than in the design image, even though I had the color scheme set to CMYK (this is the color Goblintechkeys print in, not RGB). However, I couldn't find a single keycap color online that was even close to this color of aqua. Even when they were, I really wanted centered letters that were in white for easy viewing and that seems to be rare since the majority of keycaps have offset, black letters. I bought a set of Glorious GPBT Rain Forest V2 and the colors were so far off (very green) compared to the photos on their website, I had to return them. The colors that Goblintechkeys produced were much truer to image.
Next up, the letter centering. I read on a review someone else made that their centering was way off and that they had Goblintechkeys remake a couple keycaps because some were so bad. I looked through other photos of keycaps people have on here and some are a little off. I looked at mine, and most of mine are close enough that I'm happy with them. The worst one that I have is my "6" if you want to look at that, but it doesn't bother me enough to get it redone. After all, no one will look that close at the letters under normal use. Some people don't even have letters on their keycaps for crying out loud.
The final thing that I think I have to say about these keycaps is the feel. I had a set of ABS keycaps for ten years, and moving from those to the Glorious PBT keycaps I wasn't a huge fan of the paper-like feel, but I was willing to sacrifice feel for looks, and who knows, I might've gotten used to them. BUT. Goblintechkeys keycaps are waaay smoother. They still have a papery feel to them, but as someone who prefers a smooth feel and even tried finding custom ABS keycaps, I'm still very happy.
All in all, if you're looking for a unique set of keycaps and nothing out there is striking your fancy, Goblintechkeys is one of the best choices out there and if I or someone else needs another set of custom keycaps someday, they'll be the first ones to pop into my mind.
