Hey everyone, today I’m going to be reviewing the Durock silent linear switch, manufactured
by JWK.
If you’ve looked into premium mechanical keyboard switches at all, you’ve probably
heard of switches from JWK as being many of the community favorites for their extreme
smoothness. There are plenty of JWK switches out there in a bunch of colors, like the Alpacas,
Mauves, H1s, Tangerines, and the new Silk and Dry series from Novelkeys.
The ones that I have are in the daybreak colorway. It has this nice blue stem and a smoky gray
housing. They also have a Dolphin colorway that uses a clear housing and the only difference
between the two are that the daybreak uses 67g springs and the dolphin uses 62g springs.
In terms of materials, this switch is pretty standard for JWK switches. The bottom housing
is made of nylon. The top housing is made of polycarbonate. The stem is made of POM.
The spring has a 67 gram bottom out and is gold-plated.
The way JWK achieves the silent aspect of this switch is actually quite interesting.
On the stem rails, there are ridges cut out so a silicone dampener can sit inside. That
dampener has larger pads on the top and bottom to negate a lot of the sound from the bottom
out and return when you press on the switch. One thing that I don’t like is that if you
accidentally knock the dampener off, like when taking apart the switch to lube it, it’s
actually pretty difficult to put the dampener back on without some really fine tweezers.
The durock silent linears do work differently than the silent switches from Zeal, like the
Healios, Sakurios, Roselios, and Zilents. They actually inject the dampening material
so it is a part of the stem itself. This dampening rubber is a good bit firmer than the silicone
JWK uses so it is actually a little bit louder and also less squishy feeling for the bottom
out. I’m going to make a detailed comparison video between these durock silent switches
and the silent linear switches from Zeal so be sure to subscribe so you can see that when
it comes out.
For all the sound comparisons I’m going to be using this decibel reader app on my
phone. Decibels are essentially units for measuring how loud something is, so we’ll
be able to get some actual metrics on how much quieter this switch is. My room has an
ambient sound in the 30s to 40s, which is just a touch under what this app rates as
a quiet home. Now, let’s see how these sound stock with just a tiny bit of factory lubing.
As you can hear, they’re still pretty scratchy and decently loud, even with the small amount
of factory lubing that they have. I’m going to lube these with some krytox 205g0 and add
some films. Then, we’ll compare that with some non-silent switches. I’ll use the the
silk yellows, which are also made by JWK and are the non-silent version of this exact switch
as well as the Drop Holy Panda V2s, which I consider to be quite loud. Then we’ll
have a final typing sound test with them all lubed up and filmed.
So after a nice lube job and some added films, these sound incredible. To be honest, I think
the sound of my nails tapping the keycaps are louder than the sound of the switches.
If you do plan on getting some silent switches, I would highly highly recommend that you lube
and film them to get the most that you can out of them or else they just won’t sound
as good. They are meant to be quiet after all.
Silent switches are great if you need to be quiet like if you work in an office or the
people you live with just don’t want to hear the sounds of you clacking away on your
keyboard. I really love these switches and will definitely be using them in my silent
builds for when we’re all actually able to go back to offices in the future. If you
liked this review, please consider subscribing to my channel, it really does help me out
immensely. Then you can also be able to see my future reviews when they come out, like
the head to head comparison of these switches versus zeal silent linears, which should be
coming out in the next few weeks. Anyways, thanks for watching and I’ll see you in
the next video.