Drop Carina Mechanical Keyboard Kit Review

In this blog post, we will be reviewing one of the best RGB keyboards —the Drop Carina Mechanical keyboard kit. It is a great product for those who are looking to upgrade their typing experience. The mechanical switches on these keyboards provide a satisfying feel and feedback that many people prefer over other keyboards. If you’re interested in finding out the features of the drop carina mechanical keyboard kit, keep reading! 

Lighting (LED)

When it comes to the LED lighting feature, the Carina is undoubtedly an option. You get to select from many color options for each key; you can also set the keyboard to circle through the entire spectrum or choose a single color to fit your space. The possibilities of what you can achieve with the Carina LED lights are endless. What’s more exciting is that the LEDs are placed toward the middle of the PCBA, which makes their appearance even more fashionable under typical lighting conditions. The LEDs display can be seen at a high frequency of 100 hertz for any time of the day. 

Design

The Drop has different keyboards beneath, but none of them stand out to Carina. The Carina features a 60% footprint, brass plate, plate-mount stabilizers, transparent frosted acrylic case, and aluminum. 

Unlike most barebones kits, the Carina also comes completely decoupled., which makes it extra work for most people.  

Drop Carina Mechanical Keyboard

One notable stand-out feature of the Carina is its fully assembled frosted acrylic case, which looks beautiful when enabled RGB, and it also provides a deeper profile sound. 

The Drop has somehow got me astounded in that the Carina bares two USB-C connectors. This added port allows for clean cable management.  

Assembly

As mentioned earlier, the Carina does not come in any way assembled. Fortunately, there are plenty of guides that explain how to build a mechanical keyboard. 

Typing Experience

Typing with the Carina felt homey; the Holy Panda switches Drop plus the Carina felt smooth though it gives off clack sounds, which of course is fitting for tactile switches, especially one combined with a brass plate.   

The acrylic case on the Carina gives off a deep-sounding profile at the expense of hollow-sounding keystrokes. The designers could have done away with this effect, as they should have created a specific sheet of suds to fit the PCBs back without covering the SMD LEDs. Or perhaps, a silicone layer could have been a better alternative. 

It’s no news that the Carina comes as a tenkeyless board. It also misses some dedicated arrow keys, which can be inconvenient for most people who are not completely used to working with layers. This downside somehow takes away the fun from working with this beauty. 

Gaming

Elite gamers usually prefer either the TKL or full-size mechanical keyboards as they allow for macro and media keys, and dedicated arrows in the best compact gaming keyboards on the market. The difference here is that most people receive parts with the Carina not built with gaming functions in mind. However, you can use your switches. 

Final Thoughts

The Drop Carina seems very attractive on the outside, but the wear-out remapping process, the cheap stabilizers, and the steep price tag leave it tailing back by competitors. It’s of great concern a company like Drop is yet to decide on creating its software for keyboard configuration because, at this point, it has so many. Unfortunately, to remap keys and adjust the per-key, you must still check first on their website, then implementation would occur on your PC via a slow solution that would require you to write your code. Keys remap on Drop’s site is quite exhausting, but to see the actual implementation of your changes, you need to put them all together and then move into Windows Command Prompt and get some coding going.