Nuphy Canopus keycap review and pics. A south-facing shine-through keycap

Maybe this will help someone. First the facts.

I got these keycaps to try on my Keychron q5 HE keyboard. A few pics:



My impression. They’re cherry profile abs double-shot keycaps. They’re plenty solid, no key rattle or shake. Did NOT have the 2x 0 key my board needed, and of course the esc and skull key are not from the set. They’re a pretty wide, square top with a mild dip, easy to type on.

Appearance wise, you can be the judge. I find the light gets through very well in dark or poorly lit rooms, which is nice for my area, but the lettering and font…isn’t my favorite.

I do NOT like that the keys have the size imprinted on the tab, caps, shift, ctrl, alt, win and enter key. Seriously, we can tell, we don’t need to look at that allllll the time. If I’d have noticed that going in I’d not have ordered them, it’s like a bad typo or a misprint.

All in all, between the ugly overblown font and the garbage printed on all the outer keys, I’ll be packing this set up soon and trying the Next set.

I’m probably giving up on shine through, some caps have enough contrast I can see it well enough without attempting shine-through.

BUT, If you’re Really Really wanting caps for a south-facing led board, this is by a long shot the most visible I’ve found yet. It’s more a function of the lettering being HUGE though, than the actual color getting through much. It shows color though a lot in the photo because the camera is upping contrast/hue a lot, it’s not nearly as colorful to the eye.

Oh and a sidenote for via/keychron launcher, i REALLY wish you could control the color fades better, maybe a Range of brightness for breathe, so it doesn’t go completely dark, maybe a range of colors, not just “rainbow” or one color. But whatever. individually addressable etc etc etc but bad interface.

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Thanks for the review and pics! I’d been considering this set for similar reasons (south-facing legend visibility) but definitely agree with your points (especially about the size/rank labels, wtf).

For letting RGB effects be visible, the main solutions I’ve found for south-facing LEDs is either:

  1. “Pudding” style keycaps with a base that’s clear but the top (and sometimes front side) of the keycap is opaque for the legend.
  2. Getting a north-facing PCB :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

lol, the best south-facing rgb effect is to not have south facing.
really though i just want to be able to see the lettering in low visibility. Most good keycap sets are visible enough for me. correction, a few keycap sets are visible and not trying to look like some anime character or some such bs :wink:

Yeah, the contrast between the letters and the background when the LEDs are off is definitely an issue. Some sets are definitely better than others – the shine-through material is usually either grey or translucent. White and light colors seem to do better than dark, especially if the shine-through material is closer to grey, but not in all cases.

Examples from random shine-through sets from AMZN/Ali. Note how the legends get more invisible as the color gets lighter toward the top of the green set, but remains mostly visible for the white/beige set.

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