Yupe it's the same thing you see at Drop/Massdrop. Mechanical keyboard...... think of it as like watches. Way back in time all watches were mechanical watches (same with mechanical keyboard), then one day manufacturer found a way to make things cheaper to produce! Here comes Quartz watches (here's comes rubber dome keyboard)!!!
Then some peaceful time has passed and no one complained. Until one day, the empire strikes back...... errrrrr........ wrong forum, uhhh the retro strikes back. Now mechanical watches (mechanical keyboard) are the new luxury items to have.
LOL ok maybe I'm going too long with this but in short, mechanical keyboard feels nicer to type on. It has taller travel than the typical chiclet keyboard but it's also cleaning and less mushy in feel. Function wise yes it's exactly the same as any $10 keyboard. But because we spend so much time on the computer these days I find it's nice to have a good keyboard that feels nice. The Drop/Massdrop stuff is on the extreme, like if you want to customize. But you could perfectly fine get away with a normal $100-150 mechanical keyboard for to get that nice typing feel.
You can read about it in depth here:
https://keyboard.university/
Oh and yes the keycaps as long it's "Cherry compatible", it will just snap on the "+" mark on top of mechanical switches.
Anyway long story short, I like them because they feel nicer to type on. But I didn't go as far as customize my keyboard. Hope this explains a little bit.
EDIT: They usually have demo units on the shelf at computer stores, you can go to one and just try it out yourself to see the difference.
