There's an entire world of beautiful, vibrant colors hidden inside your keyboard, and the new HyperX Pudding Key Caps just want to let it out.
It makes sense when you think about it. Those bright RGB LEDs underneath each keycap create so many beautiful patterns and lighting effects on your keyboard...but you only see a small fraction of that light through the keycaps. Normal keycaps have their letters and numbers etched out to let the light shine through. It's the standard and it's been good enough for years, that is, until you see what pudding caps can do.
It's a strange name, but pudding caps are undeniably the superior keycap for RGB LED keyboards. Unlike traditional keycaps, pudding caps dual-layered. They look like normal keys on the top, but the sides of each key are completely opaque. The effect is that the light inside each key can shine through, making any keyboard brighter, more colorful, and the effect more cohesive and natural-looking.
HyperX has refreshed their line of pudding keycaps using double shot construction with PBT material for increased durability and performance. The keycaps come in either black or white and can fit on all Hyper X keyboards, as well as any keyboard with Cherry MX-style switch stems (the + kind).
HyperX set us up with a set of white pudding caps to take for a test drive and I can't stop gushing about them to anyone that will listen. The keys come in a small box packaged in 3 shrink-wrapped trays and arranged in a way that makes it easy to keep them organized. The included plastic tool used for removing caps makes replacing the old keys incredibly easy, even if its a bit of a tedious project to make the switch.
I replaced the keys on my SteelSeries Apex 7 with the white version of the keys because I was hoping for the maximum amount of light reflection, but I don't think the color of the keys would make much of a difference. All of the keys fit perfectly as advertised and the difference they make is night and day.
The default rainbow pattern that most keyboards have is one of my favorites and the pudding caps add so much color and brightness to the keys. The left-to-right wave pattern is much more fluid and continuous under the pudding keycaps because you can see the color shift smoothly across the keyboard, as opposed to traditional caps that tend to give a lot of patterns a choppy, staccato effect.
HyperX pudding keycaps are such a simple and inexpensive way to upgrade your gaming PC. Adding these keys feels like unlocking the true potential of your keyboard. However, there is one downside, and it will depend entirely on how your keyboard is designed, so mileage may vary: the longer keys like the spacebar only have 1 LED inside them on my keyboard, so the pudding key only illuminates in the middle.
It's a bit of a nitpick, but when all the other keys are brightly illuminated, the space bar stands out because the light isn't bright enough to light up the sides of the key. Again, different keyboards may have a different configuration for the LED lights, but in my case it takes away from the total experience.
Overall though, I'm totally smitten by these HyperX pudding caps. They have a bit of texture to them and they aren't as glossy as the keycaps I replaced, which I prefer, and they're a bit more rounded at the top to create more space between each key for the light to come through. The effect is absolutely mesmerizing. Anyone who likes beautiful RGB light (everyone) should treat themselves to these HyperX pudding keycaps.
The new HyperX pudding keycaps are available in either black or white for $24.99. Learn more about them on the HyperX website.
A set of white HyperX pudding keycaps was provided to TheGamer for this review