Thoughts on the development of MX switches

I’m not sure what key switches I like most, but I do find myself repeatedly coming back to my Gateron Ink Red V2 switches. It’s funny how over time I’ve come to appreciate lighter switches more and more. I initially preferred heavier switches, in fact chose to get Cherry Green switches in a keyboard as my second foray after Blue switches. More and more though I find using heavier switches more fatiguing and less satisfying than using lighter switches. It’s gone hand in hand with my move away from clicky, then to tactile, and finally landing upon preferring smooth, linear switches.

Much like my taste in foods has changed over time, my change in how I want my keyboard to feel, and sound have also changed over time. My first, modern, mechanical keyboard was a Razer Black Widow Ultimate, from around 2012, with Cherry MX Blue switches. As my first foray away from more than a decade of using membrane-based keyboards it was a lot of fun. It had so much better uniformity in feel and sound. The poppy clicking of the Blue switches paired with their decent tactility were noticeably better than the keyboards I had been using for years up to that point.

Cherry still had exclusive rights to the MX switch patent at that time. There weren’t any readily available clone switches, much less the sheer variety and quality of options we find ourselves with today. In fact, at that time, Cherry didn’t have as many variants available. So, as I mentioned, I tried a new board using Cherry MX Green switches, their heaviest clicky switches. I went from the relatively light 55g Blue to the much stiffer 80g Green. I still feel they are a fun switch to type on, very heavy and almost like fighting back a bit. But now I find them overbearingly heavy for extended typing or gaming sessions. They start out fun but ultimately become fatiguing, something that simply isn’t fun.

But I used that keyboard for several years, a Cooler Master Storm Quick Fire Stealth (a name I found kludgy even then) and continued using it until I started to further branch out beyond Cherry branded switches. In fact, I remember preordering it specifically for the Green switches, putting it back around 2013 when I got that keyboard. Next up would be a Ducky Shine 2 with Red switches that I ended up never enjoying very much. It felt too rough and light to me at the time, something that stuck around in my opinions of Cherry switches. I can’t say for sure that I would retain that as I haven’t purchased any of their retooled switches under the Hyperglide moniker which are on my list of switches to buy eventually.

I wanted to try something tactile, heavy, but without a click and my first deeper dive back into mechanical keyboards leading me to expand beyond what I had known to that point. That’s where I found myself using Cherry MX Clear switches. They were lighter than the Green switches at 65g versus their 80g actuation. Unlike the Cherry Brown switches I had tried multiple times up to that point I found them featuring a better tactility and a quieter actuation as I had hoped. I still have the PCB from that keyboard, and I need to salvage the switches as I did end up shorting it out during a bout of sickness where I lost control of a bowl of soup right onto the keyboard.

In any event, I experimented with several Kailh switches featuring click-bars after that, Pale Blue, White, Speed Bronze, and eventually Box Navy. I found their sharper tactility and the unique sound of the metal bar popping as an intriguing change from the clicky switches I had known to that point. The Box Navy in particular are phenomenally tactile, and loud, but also quite heavy and sharp. That thicker bar paired with the heavier spring leads to an even more fatiguing experience over the already weighty Green switches.

I ended up trying several other switches of various types during that time. Some are still in my regular rotation, like the Novelkeys Creams. Others were supremely disappointing, such as the Kailh Pro Plums which were simply too heavy for their light tactility, leading to a mushy feeling similar to the Cherry Brown switches I had been so disappointed with years before. Though heavier, that heaviness masked the subtle tactility making them just feel scratchy and unpleasant.

To that point, I had been disappointed in linear switches and thought I just didn’t like them. But then I tried those NK Cream switches and as I used them found them more and more enjoyable to type on. Though scratchy, especially initially, as I used them and broke them in, they became smoother and brought with them a delightful sound to my ears. Turns out I didn’t hate linear switches and instead simply disliked switches using Cherry’s worn-out molds that they had been using for over a decade at that point.

This all was happening around 2018-2019. That means I had been using those Green switches for nearly six years. At that point, I was right in the group re-finding mechanical keyboards right before the mess that was 2020. It was in the start of enthusiasts finding the resources to experiment with switch design and Kailh was one of the go-to partners for that. Novelkeys in particular brought to market their all-POM switches, the Creams, and one of the first click-bar switches, featuring a non-box stem design in the Sherbet switches. 

What all of this ultimately boils down to though is just how incredibly quickly the mechanical keyboard world has changed. Cherry had exclusive rights via their MX switch patent until 2015. We’re less than a decade into the transition from a very closed ecosystem to the veritable explosion of choice we’ve come to find today. When I was getting back into this world in 2018 there were a small handful of names to be heard in any regularity. There was Cherry of course, Gateron, Kailh, and if you were particularly into the hobby Outemu and maybe Zeal. Now we can count Akko, TTC, Durok, JWK, JWICK, Tecsee, and countless others. What’s perhaps most remarkable is that we still haven’t really reached saturation yet.

With the proliferation and explosive rise in popularity of hot swap sockets for keyboards the idea of being limited to a single switch for the life of a board has all but evaporated. We could already change keycaps of course but to have the same capability for switches has been nothing less than a boon for choice. That alone has been the single largest contributor to the hobby going mainstream. No longer do we have to buy expensive, custom PCBs and cases that we then must solder to experience new switches. Now we can simply pull out the switch puller and in a matter of minutes can completely change the look, sound, and feel of our keyboards.

It's frankly been phenomenal to see all of this happen in the span of a few short years. Sure, the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has been a large factor in both the utter chaos of manufacturing and distribution. It’s also a large factor in the jump in popularity. Suddenly people are spending even more time at home and want a new hobby. It’s an easy one to pick up, there’s no real mastery involved, and is simply about trying new parts and combining them in ways to be pleasant to use. Or perhaps strange enough to warrant sharing in a picture to one of the various keyboard hobbyist groups that has formed online.

Mechanical keyboards are fascinating in the sheer depth that can be found in them. For many, most I daresay, they pick up whichever board catches their fancy and use it. They don’t have any desire for changing things up. They simply wanted a nice keyboard, bought it, and moved on. But others, such as myself, get pulled into this fast-moving world that melds everything from materials science, to engineering, to haptics, to ergonomics, art, personal taste in tactility, sound, and aesthetics. I’ve come to learn about everything from the idea of self-lubricating plastics (the aforementioned POM) to the differences in wearing on different types of plastic (most notably the fiery arguments surrounding PBT versus ABS), to even learning to read force graphs.

I honestly never thought I’d fall so deeply into this rabbit hole. But in the end, I’m enjoying the digging. It’s absolutely fascinating to me as something that I previously never gave much thought about can be revealed to be so complex. But, not so complex to be obfuscated in the confusion of those details. I’ve always been both fascinated by the macro-level issues as well as the micro. It recalls the idea of comparing orders of magnitude. How I can pull back and get the broad, macro-level view to then zoom into the micro-level and see the effects at the individual level. It’s both very broad and incredibly nuanced.

Ultimately, I think that’s what brings me to my choice in switches today. Whilst today I still love my Gateron Red Ink switches I’ve come to appreciate all my switches for their own characteristics. Will I be using these for the next six years? I’m incredibly doubtful of that outcome. There are so many variables to be checked and so many options to try that I’m nearly as close to being completely confident that I will continue to explore and experiment. And that’s the beauty of it all. Choice virtually unlimited now. The sheer volumes of options are incredible for such a young hobby. And, perhaps, most amusingly this is all with one platform built on MX switches. It’s going to be really interesting to see how mechanical keyboards continue to evolve into the future.