Keyboard Builders' Digest / Review
Drop Holy Panda X
u/ThereminGoat reviews Drop's Holy Panda X switch, manufactured by Gateron.
Published March 2, 2022
For those interested, Drop's Holy Panda X switches (HPX) are available for preorder.
I'm not into switches at all, and marketing slogans like "the holy grail of tactile typing" turn me right away anyway.
Nevertheless, Drop has started the design with a discussion with the original Holy Panda team. According to Quakemz, who "discovered" the legendary tactile frankenswitch by putting a Halo True or Halo Clear stem into an Invyr housing, shared his opinion about the HPX too:
Personally, I prefer them to Glorious Pandas and previous Holy Pandas. They all feature a similar tactility, but these are much smoother, more stable, and more consistent than the others. At the end of the day, it's preference, but these do feel much more refined than previous versions.
In contrast to the traditional off-white housings with peachy tan colored stems, the Holy Panda X switches feature opaque, dark grey nylon bottom housings, translucent black polycarbonate top housings, and golden-yellowish colored stems.
Read ThereminGoat's review if you are interested.
At the highest level, the Drop Holy Panda X switches do not appear anything like that of what their name implies, as so many people have astutely pointed out in their initial announcement thread – ThereminGoat.
Featuring a raised "DROP" nameplate, these Gateron-made switches are interesting as they are only the third time in the history of Gateron's public switch releases in which they’ve had switches not featuring exclusively "GATERON" nameplates. (The other two are that of Zeal's Clickiez switches and Rantopad Oranges.)
A quick remark at this point on the controversial naming: these switches don't look like Holy Pandas, and Gateron has never made any Panda switches before either.
Regardless, "the high set and forceful but rounded tactile bump these switches possess is perfectly in line with canonical expectations of Holy Panda switches."
Goat concludes that Drop did a good job at hitting the performance points they had openly targeted for, and scored some points by involving and compensating the original designers, however, the naming of the switch has done "more damage than one could have possibly imagined".
Full article: here.
Published on Wed 2nd Mar 2022. Featured in KBD #68 (source).
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