Massdrop is now DROP

The product is good (or, might be, since it’s not out yet), it’s not what I meant.
I own a CTRL, which is a very qualitative product, but it suffers from massdrop quality control.
Let’s just see how it goes with the sales.

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I think Merlin’s review does a great job of making it clear what his interest is in the board, and I think it’s pretty reasonable to say that the board, by all of his metrics, deserves the rating he gave it. I don’t really consider keyboards to be a thing where we’re going to make much headway (or where it would even be productive to try) in creating some kind of objective rating system that every reviewer could reasonably follow (since everybody’s interest and experience is going to be subjective).

That being said, a few of those reviews seem a bit “juiced” the way you describe but when I read through most of them (and don’t really pay attention to the particular score they gave) I get the impression that the ones I disagree with are primarily due to my subjective interests not aligning with those of the reviewer (which is fine) with maybe a tinge of “I’d like to run a group buy through Massdrop eventually” on some folks’ part.

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Is it just me or is the new website unusable?

@iaman @cijanzen @Zyrophr

I can guarantee that I wrote that review up Sunday morning in preparation for the Monday release while I ate some eggs for breakfast =).

I think for a board in its caliber, it’s definitely a 4/5. If you want to talk about comparing it to my boards that I use every-time, then I’m going to have to give it a much lower score. This is one of the things you need to watch out for as a reviewer, do you compare it to EVERYTHING or think about its audience, and what type of keyboard it is.

As a metaphor, if I were a food reviewer and McDonalds asked me to review their newest Big Mac. I wouldn’t compare it to the fancy French restaurant I went to last week. I’d compare it against the backdrop of other fast food. If you feel the reviews were “drummed up”, well you gotta put it in that frame of reference.

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I think that’s all extremely fair, and gets at the core of what I was trying to say!

It’s such a mixed bag. Some of it feels like improvements, but some things are so egregiously bad that it hurts. Some of the text is so tiny I can barely read it!

If a sliding scale is used for review based on ‘teir’, the numbers become meaningless; there would be no possible comparison. To me, I cannot think of a single 5/5 board, that would be absolute perfection. A 3/5 would be acceptable, but too many people see that as a poor raiting.

Coming up with a bracket in which the board scores well does not accurately portray its relative strengths or weaknesses - or give consumers a real idea of its quality. Sure, its way better than a oem membrane, but why is not held in esteem by the community at large?

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People should adopt bell curves

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as long as it is not forced, like certain companies do for their performance evaluations.

I actually don’t think its fair to give a rating. This is the first board I’ve ever had to give a rating on.

But let’s talk about this. There are quite a few factors a board can be reviewed on. At the very top level, I can think of Price, Comfort, Build Quality, Software, and Aesthetics.

Each of these can then be divided even further as an example these are what I can think of off the top of my head

Price: Availability(Do I have to pay extra to import it), Taxes, Shipping, Did you buy it during a sale, or retail, where did you buy it, etc etc etc.

Comfort: Size, Angle, Layout, Plastic Feel, Switch Feel, etc etc

Build Quality: Manufacturing Quality (PCB, Case, Keycaps, Cable), Design Quality (Did you put cable port on the bottom of the keyboard? Did you properly use the correct amount of resistors/capacitors/whatever to make sure a user doesn’t burn out their board), Material Quality (Did you use scrap aluminum for your case? Did you use thin ABS?) etc etc

Software: Is it software that a customer interacts with like QMK/BMC etc etc, or basically just firmware like your Dell rubber dome. Is it documented? Is there a user guide? Is there customer support available? Does software randomly crap out? Are there regularly released updates? What can the software do?

Aesthetics: Is the board beautiful? Does it look like a design was actually done? Are there chamfered edges lol? Are the stock keycaps a good match to the board? Is the company logo emblazoned proudly on the front? Is it low pro or hi pro? etc etc etc

On top of these you also have features like rgb underglow/backlight, solenoids, software lighting integration, oled displays, knobs, USB hub, speakers, analog, topre, etc etc etc.

The point I’m trying to make is that there are so many different kinds of keyboards that come in all shapes and sizes with all sorts of features, software and build material that it’s impossible to have a scale rating of 0-5 that fits ALL of them. It’s like if we were to review animals and say we are gonna find the strongest swimmer out of all of them, and you pitch a dolphin against a chiwawa in the middle of an ocean lol.

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To me, the SHIFT is like a (subjectively) really ugly car with a lot of weird features. Like, yeah, you don’t really need butt warmers and a space for spare windshield wipers, but there are people who like the style of the car and want butt warmers on everything. And it’s still a car and the car still drives really well, but that doesn’t change the fact that people with tuned-up hot rods and fixed up ancient wood grain minivans will loathe the thing.

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I dont think numerical values should be used at all really, but not much we can do about that.
You have the right idea of breaking down each facet of the keyboard and assessing it that way, only real way to do it when so much is subjective - giving people an idea of what the board is really like to live with and own.

They took the Cherry g80-1800 layout and just… removed the top cover and added RGB.

The worst.

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If there werent that big gap between the function and the alphas it would look…ok? maybe? I think sandwich boards look great lo-pro but for some reason the massdrop ctrl-alt board and this board look so cheap

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For Search Engine purposes I would have thought Massdrop would be a cheaper brand name to maintain. This rebranding to DROP feels very 2012

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can’t wait for them to report a DROP in profits but hey we gotta be COOL right boys

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Does DROP actively flag some posts and hide content like Youtube does (allegedly)? Or is there a delay before posts are approved?

I posted in the Mech keys/photos section and while my post was initially displayed, it has now disappeared… I tried logging out and viewing from different accounts. Same result.

I know this isn’t the place for official support. I’m just wondering if anyone has had a similar experience.

Edit: I contacted Drop support and it seems to be resolved now. Thanks!

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Huh, seems like they pivoted to make the SHIFT a compact 1800 instead. Still not sold on the floating keys design on this thing, but this does seem like at least a slight improvement.

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I also don’t like floating keys on any of these boards, but this version is way superior to the previous one.

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Not nearly as bad as it was. Still not a fan of their overall keyboard design they use for all their low-profile boards, but this is a huge improvement over what they originally released for the SHIFT.

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