Drop has just brought to us something I didn’t know I needed, but will forever be grateful for the existence of: Elvish and Dwarfish Lord of the Rings mechanical keyboards. Like a twinkling white star above the dark mountains of earth, the beauty of these glorious tenkeyless keyboards has truly smote my heart.
With a refined, muted green facade, the Elven keyboard (opens in new tab) is adorned with custom Two Trees of Valinor artwork from Oshetart (opens in new tab) above the arrow keys. The broken blade of Andúril sits upon the enter key, surrounded by Tengwar (as well as Latin) glyphs, and Sindarin phrases such as “speak out loud” for the caps lock key (thanks for the spot Golem.de (opens in new tab)).
The Dwarves (opens in new tab) have been graced with shades of rock and stone, and Doors of Moria artwork from Matt3o (opens in new tab) sits in the space above the arrow keys, so you can feel like a king under your mountain. Cirth and Latin legends, as well as Khuzdul phrases, are littered across the keycaps, and the left Windows key is marked by the One Ring.
Both are built around the ENTR anodized aluminum case as a base, and come with Holy Panda X Switches (opens in new tab), tactile switches designed by Drop and produced by Gateron.
Some things to be aware of: while the switches are MX compatible, they aren’t hot swappable. The Elvish and Dwarvish lettering doesn’t really correspond to the Latin lettering either. And just so you know, the artwork sadly doesn’t glow with under-key lighting as if touched by the last light of Durin’s day.
Each keyboard does come with some novelty keycaps and a few from each one’s respective orange keycap set: a scorching Durin’s Forge orange for the Dwarves, and an airy Autumn in Rivendell orange for the Elves.
I can’t decide which one is more beautiful, but I’m sure either will go exceptionally well with the One Ring artisan keycap (opens in new tab) or these handcrafted Smaug wrist rest (opens in new tab), both of which are also a part of the Drop x Lord of the Rings collection (opens in new tab).
Pre-order prices are $169, down from $199, and the boards are expected to ship in mid-October 2022.
Henceforth I will call nothing fair unless it be these keyboards.
