The Problem with Mechanical Switch Reviews

[matt3o]

you are beyond insane @Hataa... would you adopt me?

[seebart]

Wow, this is really fantastic stuff. I poked around in your graphs, HaaTa, and I think I finally understand the main differences that make the Model F and Model M feel so different: starting force and key travel before actuation. Membrane BS starts around 40g of force, and has about 1.9mm of travel to actuation, while capacitive BS starts closer to 30g and has somewhere around 2.75mm to actuation. So the Model M's higher starting force, plus a quicker ramp-up of the force required to actuate, combine to make for what to me is a heavier, more sluggish-feeling switch compared to the Model F. Super cool and interesting. I'll have to spend a lot of time poking around there later.

While this may be true, I would argue that another obvious main difference are the physical components themselfs and the construction itself. For example anyone who's looked at an F XT and any Model M side by side will agree.

[zuglufttier]

Unfortunately, there won't be a way to do objective, universal acoustic measurements.

Actually, it's not that difficult!

You need:
- a calibrated microphone, like this (can be had even cheaper but these are available and seem to be reliable): https://www.minidsp.com/products/acoust ... ent/umik-1
- a nice measurement software (free): http://www.roomeqwizard.com/
- a defined distance and direction between keyboard and microphone
- a bit of nature

You need the last bit to perform a free field measurement. The main problem with recordings are acoustic reflections, those don't exist if there is no room. You could go further and find an anechoic chamber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber

A free field measurement is a pretty good and cheap alternative to the anechoic chamber. Some background noise is not that important because the sound that is to be recorded is hopefully louder than the noise floor.

@HaaTa: This is a pretty insane project by a lot of people's standards but I like it very much!

[Menuhin]

Haven't visited this post for a while.

However due to this piece of "disturbing" (good) news and my trust in the accuracy of HaaTa's creation.

Please forgive my cross-posting to raise the awareness of the recent revision of Cherry's stem, allegedly rendering the key press experience much smoother:

new switch on the left, old switch on the right:


Some claim that the stems of the new cherry mx silent and mx speed are identical to the new cherry mx black.


I believe a graph can show us better evidence / counter-evidence. And perhaps we can after all these years welcome Cherry with our open arms again.

[Khers]

That's an interesting development, but I think vintage blacks will be both cheaper and better.

[HaaTa]

Yeah, texture analyzers work. The software tends to be a little bit painful to work with, but usually workable.
eBay prices can be good though full price is usually painful.

[gianni]

I've noticed that there is a big variability among the model m keyboards. I've used a nos keyboard, and an heavily used one. The difference was incredible, the used one was much lighter. I don't see such a difference among model Fs. What's the cause? Quality control and different spring batches, or do model m springs became softer/ lighter with use? Possibly the material hits the yelding plateau where the stress is higher (in the points where the curvature due to buckling is greater), and a small portion of the spring's wire offer less resistance due to the cyclic loading.

[malsyned]

@Haata, I notice you don't have a graph for the Kailh BOX Pink. I have some spares here, are you interested in receiving one or two to test?

[HaaTa]

I'm a bit stuck right now with graphs.
Plotly removed their paid accounts so I don't have an option to post any more plots there...
So I need to come up with another option (and sadly I don't have time to build something right now).

[malsyned]

Oh I'm sad to hear that! Your plots were super helpful in deciding which switches I wanted to try out and which I could rule out early. Thanks for putting so much work into them.

[webwit]

HaaTa, my main man!

Last posts:
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I think this fecker has a notification set on updates of this topic. If you want to contact HaaTa, just spam him here.

[HaaTa]