Mechanical Keyboards

I have just taken delivery of a mechanical keyboard switch tester.

It has the following switches:
Cherry MX: Brown, Clear, Blue, Green, Red, Black, and Milk
Gateron: Blue, Brown, Clear, Yellow, Red, and Black
Kailh: Blue, Brown, Red and Black

Currently I’m liking the Cherry Clears.

The delivery was supposed to include some dampener o-rings which I wanted to try out.

Who has mechanical keyboards? What switches do you have?
Anyone who has tried different switches, what are your preferences?

Also, anyone in Gloucestershire in the UK is welcome to try it out if you’re considering getting a mechanical keyboard and want to feel the switches for yourself.

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I quite like my browns with o-rings, prefer it to reds or blues but never tried clears or most of the other key types. maybe i should look around for one of those testers.

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I love my WASD V2 with MX Clears and Red O-Rings.

At work i use an Cherry MK3 with MX Browns. They are much softer and easier to type with but I often bottom out with them.

Good choice to invest in a Test Board. Definetly get O-Rings, they make the occasional bottoming out not too painfull. Don’t go too thick though, shouldn"t restrict the travel too much.

I made a thread on here:

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Yes I followed your project back then.

I’ll see if I can find some O-rings.

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I have Cherry browns, and they’re OK. I had blues in my last keyboard, and I liked them a little bit better, but the silence of the browns was a reasonable trade-off. Personally, I would kill for some greens, but that gets right back into the spongy vs clacky debate which led me to browns last time around, so…

Could it be that they are allready fitted inside some of the Keycaps?

The O-Rings do add some sound dampening and a slightly softer bottom out. It isn’t much though and paying like 25$ extra for that, like I did, is questionably worth it. If you want the maximum experience though …

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just get some o rings for a few dollars on amazon, put on something to watch while you install them.

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There were supposed to be some included with the tester for $0.75.
A colleague is going to bring some in to work for me.

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I have the Aorus Thunder K7 which uses Cherry Red keys. This is my first mechanical keyboard so it’s the only type I’ve tried so far but I’m enjoying them.

They have very little resistance so you have to treat them like a touch interface so even resting your hands on the keys will trigger the key press. I like that but some people may prefer a heavier feel.

I got a corsair K70 with cherry red keys. I really like it, but as selbie said, the red keys got a low trigger resistance, so if you don’t like that you might want to use something different.

If you switch between using a mechanical and a membrane KB, eg at work etc, how do you feel about using the membrane?

What I’m getting at is, beyond the obvious difference in feel of individual switches, how does the overall usage experience differ?

I find it MUCH more fluid to type with mechanical versus membrane. I only wish we had them at work too :stuck_out_tongue:

It also feels satisfying to be able to adjust your typing style from a noisy clack-fest to just barely depressing the keys and it all gets registered.

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I mean, the membrane keyboard is still a keyboard, and works fine. I type faster on my mechanical keyboard than I do on my membrane keyboard, though, and I type more accurately on my mechanical keyboard (now – this was definitely not true at first). I can type longer on my mechanical keyboard without my hands getting tired (a function I never imagined would be important to me even 10 years ago, but has become a pretty big deal since actually using mechanical keys). Also, I’m surprised to say this, but I notice the build quality even just in casual, daily use. I can brain someone with my mechanical keyboard, while the membrane one, while weighty in its own right, feels… kinda chintzy in comparison.

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I like Cherry MX: Brown. It’s a good cross between tactile feedback and noice.
A mechanical keyboard takes some getting used to, but once you have it’s superior in almost every way.
The only thing I miss from membrane keyboards are the slim design.

Das Keyboard jockey here. I have a Blue switch model at home and a brown at work. Both excellent keyboards and nice switches.

I hate going back to a membrane keyboard. The only thing worse than that are those nasty super slim keyboards on Apple devices.

Its not really an advantage of all membranes in general, but my old membrane had very unusual flat narrow keys which let you press more than one with the same finger quite easily(this is very useful for 6dof space games, incidentally), doing the same requires a little more dexterity with my k70. On the other hand, you get all the advantages @kichae mentioned which i think way outweigh that small feature.