KNCkeys continues to expand their switch offerings. Now sitting alongside classics
like broken in MX blacks and JWICKs, very unique red jackets and their green jacket siblings,
are the SP- Star ube crinkle cookies. Obviously inspired by the difficult to obtain spud,
these boast a nice color but pretty typical looking spec list, with a few differences
that might switch things up a bit. But how much do these really differ from other linear offerings?
Ube crinkle cookies are linears with a 65 gram long spring. They have a polycarbonate top,
polycarbonate nylon blend bottom, and pom stem. These are long pole, 13.45mm to be specific.
They are 5 pin and factory lubed. Finally ubes are 65 cents a piece,
placing in the premium switch category.
Additionally, we do have a nice little unboxing experience with these.
They come in a little cookie box with a sticker on top.
They sound slightly deeper than Soras, which makes sense because Soras are very high pitched.
They also seem quite a bit louder. Compared to SOTCs, they’re also lower pitched,
but I think while SOTCs have more sharp plasticky noise, Ubes have just a little more rattly housing
noise and could benefit from films. They do seem to be on the same volume level though.
It is notable that ubes have a softer and poppier top out sound compared to SOTC’s topping out.
This is part of what makes SOTCs so high pitched, and I think the difference on the
ubes makes them sound much more mellow and rounded out. This means a more even sound
across the whole board, and also a bit more difficulty discerning individual keypresses.
As for smoothness these are actually pretty smooth right out of the box. Not exactly lubed SOTC or
stock CJ level, but it comes dangerously close. For actual consistency, there were around 8 out
of my 100 that had mushy bottom outs. And somehow, these were actually consistent with each other,
almost as if I had two different batches of switches mixed together.
Not a huge deal, but I would recommend cherry picking these out to make the batch more even.
The slightly shorter travel makes the bottom out feel less snappy and substantial than SOTCs.
But that’s just me being nitpicky, and overall besides the spring weight and smoothness,
they feel almost identical. I really didn’t expect the
materials to differ that much from the standard polycarb top nylon bottom and
POM stem we see so often now, and unfortunately I was right. Not really anything special here.
Reflective of the sound, Ubes have average to low stem wobble tolerance.
If I had to choose the biggest issue I have with the switches, this is it. If these switches felt
and sounded a lot more consolidated, I think they would pack a lot more punch for their price.
Admittedly, I haven’t tried a lot of SP star switches. But compared to the competition out
there, I think the whole long pole scene is starting to feel and sound really similar.
Most of my thoughts are super super miniscule differences.
It would be nice if we could see innovation in the linear space like we did with the SOTCs,
experimenting with the LY stem material which turned out to be both smooth and loud stock,
hence making them a great baseline for all my linear comparisons. At least a price drop would be
nice, since a lot of decent options tend to hover around 65 cents now. While these are objectively
a good switch, there’s not a whole lot of reason to get it over other, sometimes cooler options in
the same price point. Even staying on KNCkeys, I would recommend trying green jacket linears,
which have more interesting specs and characteristics. But in the end, especially
if you like this neat purple color, Ube crinkle cookies are not a choice I would disagree with.