I am honored to be reviewing
Tai Hao caps, as I got a surprise set today from Elton (his red caps). I was super excited and immediately put them onto my Filco. The red is perfect: a cold medium rich shade; goes very well with a red MKC aluminum OEM-profile spacebar and my Ducky wrist rest.
Without further ado, I present to you... the Red Set
These caps come in a set for a full-sized keyboard, but numpad caps are not shown, as I only use TKL keyboards. There is currently no standard 6.25x spacebar for these sets, and mine came with a 5x spacebar, but there is a
group buy under way for 6.25x sizes.
Function and OS caps are blank, as I believe Tai Hao does not have the molds for those legends.
(Note: the "5" and "4" number cap switch is a placement error that I did not immediately notice as I touch type without looking. It has been rectified, and there is no error in legend printing.)The caps are satisfyingly thick--significantly thicker than SP doubleshots:
And all of the legends are very nicely and evenly made. This is the only defect I have found
The legends are nice and resemble Cherry legends. The cap surface is matte and grippy.
The caps have a snap-on mechanism, not unlike Ducky Shine caps, where to get a Tai Hao firmly onto the stem, you need to push down until you hear a pop.
I would exercise caution when removing Tai Hao caps off MX Clears.There are also single caps of green, yellow, black, and blue in my bag. The blue is a medium royal blue. Yellow is a darker yellow, a neutral shade. Not too orange, not too green. The green is a colder shade--I want to say emerald green.
A more accurate color representation of the yellow cap:
All of the colors except black have a slight translucence to them. The red is the most opaque, followed by yellow. Green shows some of the white plastic through. At least in my sample, black and red are the most even-toned caps, followed by yellow, then blue, and finally green.
Something interesting I have discovered is that cap thickness seems to vary by color. Red, green, and yellow are quite thick, whereas black is very thin, as is blue (click to enlarge):
I'm not sure how to classify the feel of typing on these caps. They are of a mostly standard OEM profile as far as I can tell, and I don't really have anything to compare them to, as my main sets are PBT (thick and thin) as well as Ducky Shine caps, which differ from everything else. I think I prefer them to thin ABS sets I've tried as far as the feel and sound. I have them on a keyboard with Jailhouse Blues, so I can't test how they accentuate clicky switches.
All-in-all, I have to say these Red caps are great, especially for the price. They deserve to cost many times their group buy cost, and I would definitely pick them over SP caps if color combinations were not an issue (SP is great about offering a huge range of colors and custom legends).
So big
from me!
And thank you again,
elton5354, for the opportunity to use and review these caps!