Cherry MX switches

When selecting a keyboard, the first things to check are the switches. Many low cost keyboards are built with poor quality switches. If, as me, you spend several hours every day using a computer, selecting the right keyboard is as most important than selecting the right bedding for sleeping!

For the switches, don't look around, Cherry MX is clearly the manufaturer that matters. Cherry is a german company who design swiches for more than 30 years and is clearly the world leader for keyboard switches.

Not only for keyboards

The swiches are PCB mounted components. It can be used for keyboards, but also for many other electronics applications. The following picture shows the bottom face of a switch. The hole located on top of the picture is for backlighting. Depending on you switches, you can use:

• standard LED if the switch housing is black;
• surface mount LED if the switch housing is translucent.

Select the right color

The original Cherry MX switches comes in 6 original colors:

• MX RED: linear switching / 45cN / no audible click
• MX BLACK: linear switching / 60cN / no audible click
• MX BROWN: tactile switching / 55cN / no audible click
• MX BLUE: tactile switching / 60cN / audible click
• MX SILENT RED: linear switching characteristics / 45cN / no audible click
• MX SILENT BLACK: linear switching characteristics / 60cN / no audible click

Depending of the filling and sound you expect, you can select one of six models. For a keyboard, in my opinion, three options remains :

• I like the blue one for its strong tactile switching. You know exactly when the key is pressed, but unfortunalty, this is also the noisiest.
• The silent red is the quietest one and has a linear switching. It means that you don't exactly know when the key pressed.
• A good compromise is the BROWN, tactile without audible click. The felling under your finger is not as good as the blue one, but you fell a little resistance when the key is pressed.

Sound of switches

Not easy to estimate how noisy are the switches before buying a keyboard. I recorded the sound of each switch. Listen carefully the following video. The sequence is in the following order: RED, BLACK, BROWN, BLUE, SILENT RED and SILENT BLACK.

See also

• How to use logkeys (keyboard sniffer) on Ubuntu?
• How to install logkeys (keyboard sniffer) on Ubuntu?
• Review of the Nuphy Air75 keyboard
• What are the best websites to practice typing?
• Keycaps for French AZERTY keyboards

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