ers like Razer, Coolermaster and Thermaltake have jumped into the mechanical keyboard market.
Modern mechanical keyboards don’t use the buckling spring mechanism of days gone by, rather they all use switches from German manufacturer Cherry. So important is the role of Cherry’s switches that keyboards are marketed around the type of switch used, which directly correlates to what it feels like to push a key.
To understand modern mechanical keyboards, one first needs to understand these switches and how they are differentiated. Switches are specifically drawn from the Cherry MX range of products, and models are commonly referred to by the colour of the stem.
Each of these models has a slightly different design, which in turn affects the feel of the switch and the noise that it makes. This is down to the way in which these switches register keypresses as well as other factors like the type of spring used in the switch. The anatomy of these switches is surprisingly well documented online for those who want to go further, but at a base level the ‘feel’ of a mechanical switch is down to a few key features.
Most Cherry MX switches use a similar internal design. The Key sits on top of a stem, the colour of which is commonly used to differentiate between models. This stem has a spring at its base and a plastic tab on one side. This tab holds two metal contacts apart when the key is in its normal position. However when you depress the key, the tab moves downward and allows the metal contacts to join, which registers as a keypress.
The complexity of a mechanical keyboard is pretty astonishing, with hundreds of individual parts going into each one.
Unlike a rubber dome keyboard, where the point at which the keypress is registered is at the base of the key’s travel, the Cherry switches allow the keypress to register before the key bottoms out. The point at which this happens is known as the actuation point.
The actuation point is important when looking at one of the major means of differentiating between mechanical switches. Generally speaking switches are referred to as linear or tactile in design, with some also being given the moniker ‘clicky’.
A tactile switch is one designed so that there is a noticeable feel when the key passes the actuation point. This is achieved by adding a physical bump to the tab that holds the contacts apart. In practice this means that the amount of force needed to actuate the key will change, depending on where in the travel the key is. This is of particular benefit to typists as it provides feedback that the key has registered without having to consistently bottom out the key. Tactile switches include the Cherry MX Brown and Blue models
Linear switches have no such bump, and the amount of force required to depress the key increases the further the key travels. The Cherry MX Black and Red switches use Linear designs, and are rapidly becoming the go-to switches for gaming.
Clicky refers to switches designed to make a noise when they hit the actuation point, there is only one such model of Cherry MX switch, the Blue, which uses a two part stem design to achieve a distinctive noise when it actuates. The inherent nature of this design means that only tactile switches can be clicky.
While this information is just scratching the surface of mechanical keyboards, it is likely more than a mere mortal will ever want to know. However it is important to keep this information in mind when looking at the new crop of mechanical keyboards. Unlike rubber dome models, which largely feel the same to type on, each type of switch imparts a different feel when hitting keys.
Take for example Razer’s keyboard, the BlackWidow. It comes with the tactile and clicky Cherry MX Blue switches, however as a very distinct nod to how annoying some people find the noise, there is now a Stealth Edition, which uses the tactile but non-clicky Cherry MX Brown models.
As a corollary Thermaltake has decided to go with the linear Cherry MX Black switches for its Meka line of keyboards. Similarly Corsair is using the linear Cherry MX Red switches