hey everybody hittin Dingman here from PC world and I'm here to talk to you
today about mechanical keyboards the most thrilling subject imaginable you
might know me from full nerd where we put a bunch of keyboards in front of my
face and had me identify them blindfolded which I think makes me kind
of qualified to talk about this first up let's talk about switches we have a lot
of them here we have let's see six different keyboards in front of me six
different switches that is far from the total number of switches out there this
is just a small selection we tried to pull some of the most common switches
and a couple of non cherry switches what do I mean by that Cherry MX that is the
common switch that you will see in most mechanical keyboards especially gaming
keyboards it's a German company they go way way back they had a patent on a
specific kind of switch design switch being the thing that actually registers
the keystroke on your computer they had a patent on a certain design called a
stem it's this little crosshair shaped thing here that's the stem design that
they patented that patent ran out in a mid-2000s and ever since then we've had
lots and lots of knockoffs but proper Cherokees are still one of the favorites
among mechanical keyboard enthusiast they're durable they're reliable they've
made a name for themselves over the years so you will find their switches in
a lot of different keyboards they also have a pretty broad range of types of
switches so one of the most common for a games especially even though it's a
fairly new switch see this is a red switch what that means is it is a linear
switch and what that means is when you press it down the there's the same
amount of force from top to bottom so it's a very smooth feel great for games
because you don't have any like weird surprises bounces back really fast Reds
in particular a very light weight switch so there's not a lot of force required
to put them down so that is your most common gaming switch but Reds are not
exactly what you want for typing most of the time for that you would want more of
a tactile switch and that's the cherry blue here probably these they're loud so
we in here pretty clicky keep your keep your roommates annoyed all night just
type type typing away but blues are still my favorite as somebody who has
type a lot this is what I would would usually go for I have a lot of Cherry MX
blue keyboard at home a little more force required than the Reds also not
quite as gaming oriented but the nice thing about a blue is that clicky part
is actually at what they call the actuation point which is where the
keystroke actually registers on the computer and so you can actually
register a keystroke by just going half way down you'll notice as I go down the
click is actually right there and then there's a little bit more before you
actually push the key all the way down so when you get really good at typing on
Cherry MX blues you can actually type without ever bottoming out the keys very
good for your wrists the the repetitive stress injuries that most people get
from typing a lot of it comes from hitting the key all the way down to the
bottom so on a blue you don't have to do that you oh yeah we're like halfway down
you never hear that hit the bottom of course they're then they've partnered
with cherry they're actually one of the people that works with cherry the most
these days they partner with cherry to make the MX silver or speed switch these
are pretty much the same as Reds but even more lightweight still linear
switch also the actuation point on these is one point two millimeters so
basically as soon as you press this key down a little bit it registers that's
great if you're trying to do game stuff it can be pretty challenging if you're
trying to do any sort of typing you guys I've had even if I just like rest my
hands on the keyboard a head switch is suddenly start firing off it is like
having a hair trigger on a pistol very very oh yeah now you're now you're
typing so those are the main Cherry key keys that we're gonna cover there some
more MX browns are another popular tactile switch they're a little quieter
they have what's called a tactile bump so you feel the tactile feedback but
there's none of this like loud clicking noise and then blacks or the other like
fairly popular switch they were heavier read basically they've actually
kind of gone out of I mean I don't know if they were ever super popular but
especially after Reds they've kind of like fallen out of fashion but then
there's a bunch of knockoff switches we just pulled this is a really old razor
keyboard so apologies a razor for using one of their old ugly keyboards but it
does have a razor green switch you can see pretty much the exact same design as
the cherry switch has that same familiar stem design right here yeah this is what
happens when your patent runs out razor takes your ear switch and turns it
green razors got a couple others they have an orange switch also I think they
have a yellow switch that's their third and then your Logitech they just make
their own switch they have what's called a Romer G will pull the Escape key off
here you can see immediately a very different look to the bottom of this
this is the Logitech one versus this stem switch here when we bring the
keyboard over you can see it's just a big empty square in the middle so the
nice thing about Romer G's is LED is actually centered on the key so you can
see if you look at Logitech keyboard all the lettering here right in the center
that's different from say this Cooper keyboard you can see all the letters are
shifted up to the top of the switch that's because on Cheri's design because
the way the stem sits in the middle the the LED underneath has to be shifted up
to the top and so you have this weird like oh it'll just push all of the the
lettering on the keys up to the top with Logitech they don't have to do that
however up until recently I was not a big fan of the Romer G they pretty much
only had an MX Brown spin-off the the tactile bump I was talking about before
but it was not great to type on it felt really chunky I don't know I just I
actually compared to a rubber dome keyboard which for those don't know
bottom two your keyboards that's the one that you find it like oh it's the $20
for this keyboard this kind of feels like that feels chintzy but they put out
a new version recently that's a linear switch and then they actual
put out a clicky switch after that both of those I like a lot more we're now
recommending romaji keyboards which is great because logitech's RGB lighting
usually some of the best in the industry so yeah that's a very quick primer on
switches as I said typing I still recommend the Cherry MX blue gaming
probably a cherry Amex red or a speed but honestly Razer switches have come a
long way in the past couple of years we actually this board that we have over
here this is their new optical switch which we won't do a whole bunch of
discussion about we have videos on the site but that actually uses lasers also
it's very loud their switches have come a long way in the last couple years they
are a lot more durable and a lot more reliable than it used to be rubber jeez
as I said always a durable switch but now they actually are pleasant to type
on as long as you get the linear or the clicky versions but yeah I'm still gonna
stick with Cherry for the most part they have the name they have a long long
history all their keys always feel the same I've used dozens and dozens cherry
boards over the you know ensuing years and every single one of them if I get a
cherry MX blue keyboard I know how it's gonna feel every single time it's a
great switch so let's talk design because that's obviously the other half
of this you want something that looks nice on your desk
I assume maybe want something to looks bad on your desk I don't know you do you
I'm a big fan of razors designs not so much they're all designs but they're new
ones got this beautiful lighting super vibrant they're pretty good with their
accents too you can't see it on this right now because we haven't lit up both
of them but there's actually a light ribbon that runs around the outside edge
of this if you're in the heart you'd be lighting raisers like top tier for me
right around Corsair also the problem with design is it's all a matter of
taste I'm a big fan of keyboards that look like not gaming keyboards we take a
look at this old razor keyboard it's got just this like horrible horrible gamy
typeface it's super blocky the caps lock is spelled L K for some
reason it's got these like awful symbols this is like every gaming keyboard
between 2005 and like 2012 looked like this garbage and
it was a terrible time for all of us and we're glad to put it behind us or at
least I am super glad to put it behind us for the most part though most
companies have moved over to this razor style like hey we're gonna make a really
thin Apple style keyboard we're gonna blaze it with like a very pretty
typeface try and keep all of our symbols minimalist definitely into that look
more but again that's a hundred percent year call I'm pretty sure that you can
look at a keyboard and know whether you actually like the way the keyboard looks
however there are some things that we can talk about in terms of higher end
features lower or design traits that you should be looking out for so for
instance you'll see here we have media keys Coursera is probably the best when
it comes to media keys still so you have a full range of stop play pause back
forward and then Coursera is great about having volume rollers so you can roll it
up you get the volume up you roll it down the volume goes down they have this
mute button over here super intuitive very easy to use I would recommend any
keyboard you buy has a volume roller it's absolutely my favorite design other
things great to look out for a braided fabric cable this is the you can see
actually I think every keyboard on this desk has a braided fabric cable it's
super durable it slides behind the the desk a lot easier always would recommend
it it feels more high-end I've got a few keyboards still that come
in with like a cheap rubber cheese cable it just doesn't feel as nice it doesn't
slide behind a monitor very easily definitely would recommend this so wrist
rests we have a couple of them here Corsair has sort of this like
wedge-shaped thing here not incredibly high-end but it gets the job done you've
got stuff like cougar here they obviously take after Corsair in a lot of
ways it's just like a thin piece of plastic but they do have this stepped
wrist rest here which I kind of like so if you're gaming it actually makes this
left one a more comfortable and be a little bit higher
you got some like this Logitech one this is just fused into the bore itself this
is a Logitech Slyke bottom budget to your keyboards so it's just like one big
piece of plastic and this is becoming more of a trend this is the one that
pairs with this razor keyboard razors doing this now Logitech is doing it with
the g5 13 very plush wrist rest this thing is I don't know about half an inch
of padding its foam inside it's got this nice leather right on top Razer has like
this one which has this this edge on it which I don't really love logitech's is
just all edge to edge padding either way super nice way nicer than the rest that
used to come packed in obviously props today razer logitech i think they're
really pushing this forward this is the thing to look out for in the next couple
years people putting more effort into the pack and wrist rests other than that
RGB lighting that's the big one to look out for not a whole lot of change in
between keyboards as i said most of them are
using one of a couple of switches so if you get a cherry keyboard it's always
gonna look like cherry lighting cherries is good the only thing as i said is it's
all offset but that hasn't stopped Corsair from being like really great
with their lighting the k95 is just brilliant looking quite literally it has
like a whole string of lights along the top edge yeah other than that Razors is
pretty good there's as I said top tier for accent lighting the top of the
keyboard lighting is fine and then Logitech that Romer G design is great
for lighting it looks beautiful it shines right through the center so you
get a much more even light than something like the cherry keyboards RGB
lighting it's kind of whatever you want not huge differences either way I
wouldn't recommend going for like a cheap bottom keyboard with no name brand
on it they usually are using knockoff keys and
very bad lighting as long as you're buying from a reputable brand including
this cougar as I said this is a hundred bucks for full RGB lighting a pretty
great deal actually a spectacular deal up until recently a hundred and fifty
dollars was like the bare minimum for RGB lighting so which I guess brings us
to price that's the last consideration when you're looking for
mechanical keyboard go as cheap as you can and get the features that you want
we've been heavily recommending this cougar attack x3 RGB keyboard as I said
it's like $99 on Amazon all the time now that's for a full RGB keyboard that's
unheard of up until recently $150 minimum for an RGB keyboard most of the
main manufacturers razor a Corsair they're selling you $170 for an RGB
keyboard so $100 almost half the price for a full RGB keyboard pretty amazing
there are a couple more in that same tier now fanatic streak that I mentioned
earlier that's a hundred and thirty I think for a full RGB keyboard looks
fantastic but if you want to pony up the money for
a nicer keyboard you can Logitech will sell you 150 our keyboards Corsair I'll
sell you 150 our keyboards razor is almost exclusively 150 to $170 keyboards
these days and you can also skip out the nice thing is if you don't care about
RGB lighting you can now get mechanical keyboards for cheaper than they've ever
been I think razors entry-level Black Widow
is around $70 that's a full mechanical keyboard but it just has no backlighting
logitech we've been recommending the g6 10 for a long time
that's Cherokees it's one of the only Logitech keyboards it actually uses
Cherokees still single color backlighting so you're not gonna get
full RGB but I think those come in around like seventy eighty dollars
usually these days pretty cheap I remember back when I was getting into
this you know eight nine years ago cheapest keyboards that you could find
at a time we're still like a hundred dollars and that was for single color
backlighting just a rubber cable a lot of those were ten keyless meaning this
number pad is not there that was the cheapest you get at the time so seeing
full cherry keyboards and stuff like that for under $100 and like well under
$100 pretty amazing it's never been easier to get into mechanical keyboards
and I do recommend that you get into mechanical keyboards especially as I
said something like a cheerio makes blue if you type a lot it's really gonna save
your wrist over time I as somebody who uses a
keyboard for like 1215 hours day at times doing game reviews whenever typing
for my job obviously yeah it's been a constant struggle against carpal tunnel
repetitive stress injuries all of that stuff I'm pretty sure if I didn't have a
mechanical keyboard I would have a lot more problems than I already do this has
saved me a lot of wrist stress over the years definitely worth looking into if
you are at an office whatever but yeah that's me keyboards in the shortest
nutshell that I could do it is a huge topic there's a ton out there you're
looking to learn more I highly recommend the mechanical keyboard subreddit
otherwise yeah I think that we have a ton of great reviews on the site I
highly recommend checking them out we have a great make a little keyboard
primer where we recommend which keyboards we think are best all about
what your budget is and what you're looking for there's a ton of options
that's the great thing about mechanical keyboards I would recommend if you have
a friend that has a mechanical keyboard go to their place type on it a little
bit if they have an x-ray up mechanical keyboard I ask them to borrow it type on
it for a week see how you feel I think that you're really gonna like mechanical
keyboards it's just a question of which switch is right for you which design is
right for you what stuff you actually need do you need a volume roller I would
say yes but you know some people might disagree so we do try and inform you as
best as we can through our reviews they're all up there on the site I am
hinting man for PC world and I hope this has been informative