Awekeys Antiques Metal keycaps are Viking-themed luxury for your fingertips

As an occasional keyboard reviewer and dabbler in the vast, deep waters of the custom keyboard hobby, I regularly find myself wondering about the latest (tactile) switches and perusing the seemingly endless spectrum of keycaps. On that journey, I've occasionally encountered Awekeys, a company that takes a step up from the typical ABS or PBT plastic, and crafts its keycaps from metal. So when the company reached out about its latest offering – a Viking-inspired metal keycap set with a distressed or antique finish – my fingers couldn't resist trying them out.

Awekeys' sent me the "Thor Copper" set with traditional legends and some Norse-inspired accent keys, but the set will also be offered in "Frigg Silver" and "Odin Gold," as well as with runic sublegends corresponding to the alphabet used by Germanic tribes before they adopted the Latin alphabet. As someone whose living room has several copper accents and who has also visited several Viking-era sites in the far north of Scotland, this keycap set felt like it was made for me. So I removed the wood-themed keycaps I'd been using on the Keychron K2 HE Special Edition for the past couple of months and began installing the Awekeys keycaps.

What exactly goes into a metal keycap set, and how much does it cost?

The Viking Antiques keycap set may come in copper, gold, or silver, but the metal at the core is a copper and nickel alloy that gives the caps an extremely solid and hefty feel – arguably too hefty, at least when it comes to the space bar, but I'll get back to that. An Awekeys representative tells me the antique copper set I typed this review on is plated with real copper along with a protective nano-coating. The texture is somewhat slick and smoother than it looks in photos, but the extra weight and coolness of the metal give the typing experience a unique and premium feel. And barring something disastrous like a house fire, they do feel like they'll last forever – as you might expect from keycaps made from a similar alloy as the U.S. nickel.

How much coin do you have to throw down to own a set of coin-like keycaps? Well, that depends. As the company has done in the past, it's launching these keycaps via Kickstarter with significantly lower prices if you order early in the process (the first 24 hours of the campaign or throughout if you pledge $2 to become an Awekeys VIP). A kit for 60% keyboards is $139 at the reduced price, or $209 MSRP if you miss the early window or aren't a VIP. An 80% kit will start at $149 for VIP members or first-day pledgers (also $209 MSRP), and a 100% kit will be available at $179 for VIP or first-day orders, with a $279 MSRP.

The above prices are for the copper set I tested or the silver colorway. Gold, which the company says is more complicated to produce, starts at $189 / $299 for the 60% base kit, and jumps all the way up to $299 / $499 for the 100% gold kit. These prices don't include the five accent keys (the world tree, Odin's ravens, Viking ship, warrior, and wolf) which are $79 extra for copper and silver and $99 for gold. There are various other add-ons, as well as a third early bird pricing tier if you miss the first day of the campaign but pledge before those kits sell out.

There is no denying that the price of these keycaps is high – especially if you don't get in early. But unlike previous kits, the company is at least offering lower-priced options for sub-100% keyboards so you don't have to pay for keycaps you won't use. Language support now goes beyond ANSI QWERTY layouts, with legends available in German, Nordic, Japanese, and Korean. The rune sublegends, runes-only, and blank keycaps are also options. The company says if they get enough interest in other languages, they may expand the legend options further.

As always, we caution that pledging to a crowdfunding campaign is not the same as buying something. There is no guarantee in these situations that you will get your pledged items as described – or at all, particularly if the pledge goal isn't met. But the $40,000 goal seems reasonably modest, and the company has completed four previous campaigns in the past. Still, pledge at your own discretion.

Installation

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The custom-cut foam packaging of the metal keycap set is arranged in two layers, and, once I set them both out on my coffee table, finding the right keys was easy thanks to the clear legends (a major issue I had with the above-mentioned wood-themed keycaps). Installing the individual metal keycaps is a similar experience to plastic caps, lining up the stem holes with the switch stems, and I didn't run into any major issues getting all the Awekeys keycaps on the Keychron K2.

That said, there were some oddities. Many of the switches didn't press all the way down on the stem at first, even though they felt like they did. Once all the keys were covered with the copper caps, I noticed about a third of the keys were slightly taller than the rest. So I had to methodically go through all the keys and press them down harder than I've had to with any other keycaps, and most of them snapped down further onto the switches with an audible sound.

You also might notice that the stem attachment points don't have the typical circular enclosure as is typical with plastic keycaps. But if anything, the metal keycaps seem to fit more snugly on switches than most plastic keycaps. And while there is some keycap wobble if you go looking for it, it wasn't enough that it bothered me and it didn't make the caps feel cheap at all.

In the end, with my Keychron setup, a few of the keys were shorter or taller than those surrounding them, though the issue is clearly with the non-standard layout of the Keychron keyboard I used. The delete key, pushed over one spot from the right corner by the dedicated lighting key, was shorter than the caps that surround it. And the home key, normally near the top of the keyboard, was taller than the other keys surrounding it because Keychron chose to move it three rows down from its usual spot. These are issues you're likely to encounter to some degree with aftermarket keycaps and any non-standard keyboard layout, so Awekey isn't at fault here. Still, when you pay this much for metal keycaps, it's the kind of small imperfection that can sometimes be hard to ignore. If your keyboard's software allows for it, you could of course reassign keys to better fit the kaycap layout, but personally, I'd rather live with a few taller or shorter keys than try to re-train my muscle memory about where keys are "supposed" to be.

Awekeys also included the five Viking-themed accent keys in the box. I chose the standard-sized Yggdrasil cap for the lighting control button in the upper-right corner, and the dual-width Huginn and Muninn (Odin's ravens) key as a replacement for the standard backspace key. To balance those accent keys on the right side out, I eventually replaced the caps lock key with one with a picture of a Viking ship (possibly Naglfar). There's also a wide accent key depicting a warrior with an axe and shield that looks like it could replace the enter or left shift keys, but as of this writing, that one and the wolf cap are still in the foam packaging, along with the 30 or so extra keycaps that you'll need if your keyboard is full-sized.

Typing experience

Because the copper/nickel keycaps weigh so much more than typical plastic caps, they add a surprising amount of weight both literally to the heft of your keyboard and to the overall typing experience – and some of that takes some getting used to. Keychron lists the K2 HE Special Edition I used to test the Awekeys caps as weighing 966 grams. With the Awekeys metal keycaps installed, the keyboard weighs 1,433 grams. That's a 48% weight increase for this keyboard, or a little over a pound for the installed keycaps. And keep in mind that's without the 30 or so keys I didn't use. Adding the full set will likely add about a pound and a half to your 100% keyboard.

And while the added weight isn't necessarily a bad thing (unless maybe you often travel with your keyboard), it does change the typing experience. As you might imagine, the heavy metal keys change the sound that the keyboard makes when you type, adding a deep, authoritative thock that sometimes (but not always) sounds metallic. With this Keychron keyboard, I found the spacebar sounded the most metallic when I thumbed it. It's not an unpleasant sound and could probably be lessened by upgrading the stabilizers.

But depending on your switches, you may want to do that, and change the switch for the spacebar. The large spacebar keycap in particular is so heavy that I frequently found myself entering spaces when I didn't intend to. My thumbs have a tendency to rest on my spacebar when I type, it seems, and because the metal is so heavy, even the slightest brush of a thumb would insert a space (or ten) when I where it didn't belong. After a few days, my thumbs got used to this issue and it happened a lot less as I learned to hold them above the spacebar, but at least in the 10 days or so I've been using these keycaps so far, my thumbs would still occasionally "forget" and I'd have to delete a few extra spaces.

Even picking the keyboard up quickly off my desk caused the spacebar to press, at least with the Gateron HE switches that shipped with the Keychron K2 HE review unit I'm using. Keychron says those switches have a 40-gram starting force, and an Awekeys rep told me the company recommends "starting with a 60gf spring for the best balance." So it seems the switches I'm using aren't the best fit for these keycaps, but I really only have an issue with the space bar. The problem for my situation specifically is that because this is a magnetic switch keyboard that only officially supports Gateron's HE switches, I can't just drop in some random mechanical switch I might have lying around with a stronger actuation force. And from what I can find online, the Gateron HE switch with the highest starting force tops out at 50gf. So if you like light switches or your keyboard uses hall-effect (magnetic) switches, make sure to check your switch options before buying. And considering HE switches are the hot thing in keyboards right now, that's likely to be an issue that many users with recent keyboards might encounter when using metal keycaps.

In the meantime, I'll be here trying to get my thumbs to stop brushing against the spacebar a few times a day. Or maybe I'll eventually disassemble the switch under the spacebar and insert a stronger spring. I wouldn't say the spacebar weight issue is a deal-breaker, but it probably isn't something most people think about when considering buying luxury keycaps. Since I didn't have this issue with any of the other metal keycaps in the kit, Awekeys might want to look into tweaking the spacebar to make it a little lighter.

Also a note for gamers, particularly those already using HE switches. While I didn't have any major issues as a casual gamer, if you've trained your fingers and fine-tuned your magnetic switches to very specific actuation tolerances, you're probably going to have to re-adjust your settings after installing these keycaps, because they definitely weigh substantially more than the plastic caps you're probably using now.

Bottom line

After considering Awekeys metal keycaps over the last couple of years as I stumbled on them in social posts, emails, and ads, I was intrigued to try them out. And after spending a couple of weeks using the company's antique copper set, the experience has been very positive. I like the way they feel, love the deeper sound, and of course they look like noplastic keycap and should last for several years – if not decades. If you're after "endgame" keycaps for your "endgame" custom keyboard and you like the way these (or the silver or gold variants look), then these caps might be exactly what you're after.

That's not to say my experience with these copper caps was perfect. Unless you never leave your thumbs near the spacebar when you type (or maybe your switches of choice have a heavy actuation force), you may find yourself dealing with several accidental spacebar presses per day. I certainly did, and while the issue did happen less as my thumbs adjusted, it never went away completely. And due to the extra weight of the keys, serious gamers will likely have an even bigger adjustment to deal with.

Mostly though, I think if Awekeys could just find a way to lighten the weight of the spacebar keycap in particular, that would eliminate the vast majority of the frustrations I had with this metal set. Of course, pricing will also be a frustration for many. I could see myself spending around $150 for a set of metal keycaps. And if you get in on the ground floor of the company's Kickstarter, that's around what you'll pay for the 80% kit. But the full $209 price for the 80% kit feels like a lot. And the $279 MSRP for the 100% (or $299 for the gold model) makes it feel like the kind of thing that Vikings used to raid monasteries to acquire. For those who already spend several hundred dollars on high-end custom keyboards, dropping $200-$300 (or more) on keycaps that may last longer than the fingertips you use to press them might seem reasonable. For the rest of us, plastic keycaps still get the job done, even if they don't feel or sound as nice as metal.