Never thought that rubber domes could possibly be this good.

[keycap]

I just got a BTC dome with sliders keyboard in the mail and... let's just say that I'm highly impressed. I didn't really know what to expect, but these blow away every single rubber dome I've ever tried by a huge margin.

There is no doubt in my mind that these are the best switches I've ever tried. And I've only been typing on them for 5-10 minutes now. I'm sure they're going to grow on me even more as I use them.

Seems like Topre isn't such a bad consideration after all.. it's just the price that gets me

Anyone else a big fan of BTC domes?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I couldn't say now — the rubber in my BTC 5149 has stiffened to the point that I miss keystrokes from not hitting the keys hard enough. It's curious how rubber seems to go either way: harder, or softer. The keyboard is still very tactile, but it's too stiff now, while my Apple keyboards mostly turned to mush. As I recall, the 5149 has horrible rattly stabilisers. It's not a prestigious keyboard, but it was adequate I guess.

What confuses me is that I had ghosting problems with it, but after Chyros called out this claim, I can't reproduce this fault now. One two-player keyboard-sharing game suffered definite ghosting, while another had a problem that could have been ghosting (brake pedal key unintentionally pressed) or blocking (accelerator pedal key being ignored). (This is the actual keyboard I've had since 1994, the year it was made as I recall.)

It's not even a pale shadow on a Realforce. The Realforce is just solid and smooth and quiet in a way that you just don't get with a cheap keyboard, and the keycap legends aren't lousy pad printing.

[Hlogooo]

I just have a BTC-5100c

233.png (1.37 MiB) Viewed 2664 times

I love its case and layout , but prefer to replace its switches to MX

[seebart]

Glad to hear that keycap. Quite a few of us have come to that conclusion, I know Chyros likes them for what they are. It's like Topre without the really high end build quality at a fraction of the cost.

keyboards-f2/btc-5100-t15129.html?hilit=btc

There is no doubt in my mind that these are the best switches I've ever tried.

I wouldn't go that far, let's just say Topre is in my top 5 favorite switches.

[keycap]

I wouldn't go that far, let's just say Topre is in my top 5 favorite switches.

I'm sure they're not the best switches out there, but they are definitely the best that I myself have tried. I expect Topre to be quite better, but these domes are very good. Probably because I got my BTC 5100c in mint condition and it's the 5-pin DIN variant.

[Chyros]

On multiple occasions in my videos I've been extremely positive about BTC dome with slider keyboards. In my dome with slider megareview I ranked them second, score 9/10, behind only Topre (later I found Scorpius dome with slider as well, which is roughly on par with BTC). I think they're good proof that rubber domes can be great as well, the difference in quality between these and a normal rubber dome keyboard is ENORMOUS. Unlike Hlogooo I actually much prefer these to MX switches. Even the boards themselves tend to be pretty well-built, and they're even MX mount.

During the BTC review I did I had a long think, and I concluded that it was about 85% as good as Topre. Because of how cheap and common these are they're an excellent try-before-you-buy-Topre option, I think. If you love these (and you've got an enormous amount of money) then it might well be worth the buy.

[keycap]

I guess I'm just going to have to find a really cheap Topre board second-hand, then. $250 is a bit too much for me.

But at least I now know that I'll like Topre. A lot.

[seebart]

I guess I'm just going to have to find a really cheap Topre board second-hand, then. $250 is a bit too much for me.

But at least I now know that I'll like Topre. A lot.

If you have enough patience you should be able to find one for 100-140 used. Probably not be the nicest Realforce TKL or HHKB but you should be able to find one for sure. It's really kind of ironic that there is a switch available that is not rare and not expensive but very much like Topre. Personally I'm still looking to get a regular full size BTC dome over slider keyboard since I only have two quite unusual examples with the small BTC 5100 and the BTC 8120 ergo.