Thanks for the heads-up. I had trouble finding these. If anyone’s looking, these are labelled as “QX GMK” rather than “QX SA”.
My QX SA Fishing set arrived today.
It’s easier to judge the quality on this set vs the black set I bought earlier.
The finish on these - a satin semi-gloss - feels and looks great.
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Womier released another profile called Box, no real pictures https://aliexpress.com/item/1005005892669410.html
I think Womier is the one behind the different XVX profiles but I could be wrong
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After years of hearing manufacturers complain about how hard it is to make new molds and JTK struggling with HSA for three years and NK profile dying before protos were ever made this parade of new profiles feels comical!
But cheers to diversity and given what GMK and others have in store there will only be even more to explore 
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seems like it’s most likely a reflection of how easy your access to an injection mold machine is (and whatever machine they use to make the molds). If you can do it after-hours on a machine you own it’s probably pretty easy.
That doesn’t explain HSA though, I would assume that’s mostly indifference mixed with personnel turnover.
Looks a bit like marshmallows, or maybe beach-stones.
@rpiguy9907 Right? I think part of it is that some of these are dye-sub PBT, which is inherently less complicated than doubleshot on the tooling front. I think another part of it is widely varying quality standards. One more factor that I think is likely is manufacturer experience, and how much a given project they’re working on falls within it.
More waxing about profile development time
For example, RAMA has been iterating on the CAPS profile (being manufactured by Mastars) for quite some time now, which looks to come down to some respectable perfectionism in terms of legend consistency across the set and across different colorways. This goes to the point where some different colors are getting different molds in the service of visual consistency. At the same time, clones of that profile shape appear to have already been out in the wild for more than a year now. Maybe it’s a dye-sub version, maybe it’s product for the Chinese market being produced with tooling rejected by RAMA, maybe it’s another factory that’s quicker with tooling development. Who knows.
Then again, there’s JTK HSA - it took a long time to come to fruition and does look stunning at first glance, but honestly I think it still needs time in the oven. Legend line consistency is frankly pretty rough, especially on the Brown on Beige set.
In the beginning, that was something of an issue for MT3, too (manufactured by Tera Plastics) - though I think that was more down to injection than the tools themselves. Early BoW / WoB sets had lots of iffy examples - I’ve returned 4 or 5 in the course of doing customer builds - but I haven’t seen a reject set in maybe a year and a half, so they figured something out. By the same token, though, MT3’s legend consistency still isn’t perfect. At least as good as standard, on par with stuff like Signature Plastics - but not perfect. Variance across a single set and between sets is definitely a thing.
From the same manufacturer (Tera Plastics), DCX does not appear to have any of these issues, and Drop even mentions in their marketing that they spent some extra time on the tooling to ensure legend consistency was within a certain defined tolerance. I don’t know how long they spent on that, but it does appear to be a lesson learned from the time already spent developing MT3.
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These are MOA profile, which is all over AliExpress now.
I don’t usually like keycaps without a sculpt, but the shape and size of the keytops makes these quite nice to type on.
They’re very nicely dye-subbed too, so I’m tempted to get one of the more decorative sets as a Christmas gift for someone with kids.
EDIT: of course, typical AliExpress QC, my semicolon key has a homing bar.
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They do look interesting, but very specific to the board they were created for. I think something similar would smack on Alice/Arisu layouts!
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Sounds pretty cool, especially being wider makes me interested
Some nits after having used MTNU WoB for a few weeks:
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QWERTY row fits too well, leaving little or no typing room above the keycap. When fingers on the home (ASDF) row reach for the row above, keycaps are already there like keycaps are coming to greet your fingers. While I can get used to that, sound suffers from reduced downstroke force, making sound whimpy.
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Combination of aggressively curved top surface and low height nerfs sound when keys are pressed off-center. Cherry sounds more consistent. With SA profile, top surface is not as aggressive and extra height adds to the sound.
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Hi, which profile even the new ones has a widest surface but sculpted but not low-profile? I checked out XDA, it’s wider than the usual Cherry or OEM but it’s uniform not sculpted. Perhaps there’s an even wider surface but sculpted but at Cherry height (OEM is too high, the fingertips would bang onto the keycap sides).
God bless.
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Also a reply to this question;
If I understand right, it does sound to me like Melgeek’s MDA might be the closest to what you’re looking for, if not an exact match. It’s kind of like sculpted XDA. Its top surfaces are nearly-flat with a very mild scoop like EMA, and they have the widest tops of any sculpted cap I know of. I believe all the rows are shorter than their OEM equivalents, but not sure about Cherry - I know some of the rows are.
I love Melgeek’s MDA, but the down-sides to that one are few color options and not much to shop around with in terms of prices.
I say Melgeek’s MDA because there’s another subsequent knock-off MDA that is at this point more common, and what you’re more likely to find if you search for the profile anywhere outside of Melgeek’s commercial bubbles. The knock-off profile has some things in common with Melgeek’s, but is different: the scoop is more a little pronounced (tops are less flat), the tops less large, and the caps are shorter / lower profile - so kind of a mixed bag for your use-case.
You might also consider XVX. It’s another short, spherical profile that’s closer to flat than scooped. It has deeper scoops than Melgeek MDA, EMA, MA, or XDA (all nearly-flat) - but more shallow scoops than knock-off MDA, DSA, DSS, MT3, MTNU, etc. These are usually available for very low prices so maybe worth a try.
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I have two Melgeek MDA sets - they are indeed very large and quite “flat” although the set has a very obvious sculpt, much more so than Cherry profile for instance. So F-row for instance can be almost as high as SA, while mid-row is about as high as regular XDA. I love that profile but if someone is looking for a uniform profile (like DSA or KAM) it’s very far from it.
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XVX would certainly be the easy bargain choice here. I had a set that was quite nice to type on, but the shine through legends were centered and, when not illuminated, were almost indistinguishable from the lavender plastic used for the rest of the keycaps.
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I’ll throw up a non-sculpted one that’s a bit under the radar. I bought some “DSA business” keycaps on AE that turned out to be old stock (or copied molds… I dunno… something) of a Dolch-like set of Vortex’s “VSA,” which seems to almost exactly split the distance between DSA and XDA. I really like them quite a bit.
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Sounds interesting, is it the first one in this listing? 9.39€ 70% OFF|Design pbt Keycap Dye Sub Dsa Profil Key Cap personal isierte minimalist ische bunte Kirsche Keycaps für mechanische Tastatur| | - AliExpress
Or do you have a picture of them?
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I should also mention “XDAS” which is a “XDA Squared”, with larger keycap top (and indeed a more square shape), usually thick dye sub PBT, available on some AliX stores. Same height as regular XDA, but much thicker so they have a better sound, probably a solution for someone who wants a flat/uniform profile.
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That looks like them, even down to the striated double shot. The larger keycaps even have “VSA” molded into the white near the stem. Inconsistent legend thickness on the mods reveals the worn and/copied molds, but the price is certainly right.
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DOYS Keycaps Series by Deadline Studio seems to be a new profile. Reminds me a bit of a cross between RAMA Grid keycaps and SLK Dessau.
They have opaque white and five colors of transparent in PC and black caps in PBT.
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