This is a really annoying topic lol. I’ve seen many people encountering this issue, but as of now there isn’t a solution.
So as we all know, south facing LEDs are an unusable gimmick, if you want to actually utilize the RGB and have shine through keycaps. 2-3 years ago, the solution was the centered legends LTC Lavacaps white. But those were discontinued, no longer manufactured. Then we had Womier providing the XVX profile with centered shine through legends, but now they stopped manufacturing those as well - although they still have the same look, just opaque, non shine through keycaps of the old variant.
So this is 2024, what other solution can we use? I was thinking about Pudding ones, or transparent, or maybe having the legends on the bottom left side (although these are also quite rare), or even the super ugly side printed ones - but for those either I highly dislike their look (ehm side printed), or do not actually solve the issue. It seems like the solution must be the Lavacaps style. But I couldn’t find anyone manufacturing them.
The only readily available ones I know of are side-printed
I will say not all of those are the same, though - plenty of them have bad, inconsistent fonts or cheap production methods like laser-ablated paint, but the occasional “non-gamer” double-shot set exists, and I think those are pretty decent.
I think XVX actually makes one under their sub-brand HITIME in double-shot PBT OEM profile; normal key shape, normal letter shape, just on the front to make use of South-facing LEDs. Comes in a handful of colors and is on Amazon for about $23.
I’d love to see more bottom-centered options but they’re quite the rarity for the time being.
Thanks for the reply, I just got a message from Womier saying they’ve stopped manufacturing them due to people saying the shine through effect wasn’t great (I’m assuming it’s ppl with north facing LEDs? Idk). Kinda sucks. And yeah, I suppose the only current solution is to get side lit keycaps (not interested personally though), or pay like 100$ for Etsy custom made ones lol
I had a set of XVX, with north facing LEDs. I did send them back, because not only were they not ideal for north-facing LEDs, they were using fairly muted PBT for most of the sets and the shine-through was sort of grayish and cloudy, so legibility was a serious problem if you turned off the LEDs. If you turned north facing LEDs on, it was okay for use but obviously off center. Pretty small overlap for people into shine-through but needing south-facing.
Translucent and even transparent keycaps seem to be having a bit of a moment right now, and something like this or this might be useful.
