Mechanical Keyboard switch BRANDS (and recommendations)

heiso

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Mar 1, 2011
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Hi,

I have been looking at mechanical keyboards recently and I decided I want to buy my first one. I want to know the difference between the switch brands:

  • Cherry MX
    Kailh
    Romer G
    Razer switches
    Ducky switches
The reason I am asking is because i wanted the Corsair K70 (non-rgb) browns. I was looking at amazon during the week of Black Friday and it was CAD$108. I waited until Friday thinking the price would drop even further but it went up instead so I didn't buy it. I came across the Azio MGK-1 which looks very similar to the k70 but they use Kailh switches. Is there a difference? I am guessing MX is better because they are the most popular.

If anyone has recommendations besides the k70, I would love to hear them.

I need:

  • Budget: CAD$150 (but obv less would be better)
    Full Keyboard with tactile/non-clicky browns (with numpad), I would say I do 50/50 game and office work.
    Nothing too "gamey-looking", just a normal, professional-looking keyboard (think das but less expensive)

Nice to have:

  • USB passthrough (I bought a new mouse but the cord is just a bit too short. It's usable but the cord has to pass in front of me)

Not neccesary:

  • Macro keys on the left
    RGB/LED
 
Solution
There are some great tenkeyless keyboards that fit your description. If you can sacrifice the numpad, the Das Keyboard 4C Professional (Greetech Brown) is $143 (last I checked), and I dug the Nixeus Moda v.2 (Kailh Brown), and that's under $80.

Hopefully I'm not starting a flame war here, but as far as switch types go, don't sweat Cherry/Kailh. You'll never notice a difference between them. (There's a lot of FUD about Kailh. I've never seen anyone substantiate those claims with testing, and I certainly can't tell a difference between them anecdotally.)

Razer switches are super clicky, a lot like Cherry/Kailh Blues. You probably don't want that in an office environment.

Romer-G switches are really different, though. Very quiet...

scolaner

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Jul 30, 2014
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There are some great tenkeyless keyboards that fit your description. If you can sacrifice the numpad, the Das Keyboard 4C Professional (Greetech Brown) is $143 (last I checked), and I dug the Nixeus Moda v.2 (Kailh Brown), and that's under $80.

Hopefully I'm not starting a flame war here, but as far as switch types go, don't sweat Cherry/Kailh. You'll never notice a difference between them. (There's a lot of FUD about Kailh. I've never seen anyone substantiate those claims with testing, and I certainly can't tell a difference between them anecdotally.)

Razer switches are super clicky, a lot like Cherry/Kailh Blues. You probably don't want that in an office environment.

Romer-G switches are really different, though. Very quiet action (although the springs are a little loud IMHO), kind of a soft feel. I just wrote this up for today: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/logitech-g810-orion-spectrum-mechanical-keyboard,31130.html

TBH, I think you can hardly go wrong in your approach: Figure out the features you want/don't want, go from there. Which you've done. You know you want Browns, too, so you're 99% of the way there. I wouldn't stress too much about the switch MFR. :)
 
Solution