Mechanical Keyboards: Nonfiction 2020
Aggregating some of the best articles, essays, and reviews on mechanical keyboards.
Introduction
Giving credit to where it’s due, a lot of mechanical keyboard enthusiasts got into the scene thanks to Taeha, a popular streamer who builds mechanical keyboards. In that sense, I’m a deviant in that I got into mechanical keyboards in 2020 without ever coming across Taeha. Living under a rock for the past decade is just one reason. The other is that I prefer to process information via the written word.
If you’re a fan of mechanical keyboards, the reality is that this community isn’t the most accessible. Aside from the costs involved, there’s lack of public information about the subject — at least as far as text coverage goes (there’s no shortage of videos on YouTube). I’m grateful for websites like Keyboard University (which is a “recent” thing) and Deskthority but because this community is relatively small, a lot of information is hidden behind forums, subreddits, and Discord channels.
And for the most part, I’m still an outsider in those communities, so don’t expect recommendations from me about comprehensive but obscure posts. Rather, I’m interested in what’s publicly available and not behind a paywall or a forum registration. I don’t think there’s any shortage of good videos that discuss the how-to’s and reviews of keyboards, switches, cases, etc., but when it comes to nonfiction, finding ones that have a distinct voice and personality are rare.
In an ideal world, I would edit my own anthology, pay the contributors, and somehow find a way to market and distribute the book, but given existing financial and marketing constraints, this Medium post will have to do. The best I can offer is to make you aware of these texts and direct you to their respective author/publisher. And just as the best mechanical keyboards are down to personal preference, so are “best of” lists like this.
Without further ado:
“A Complete Guide to Mechanical Keyboards” by Ben Frain
“If you spend 8 hours a day working, and maybe half of that typing, for a 5-day week and 48-week working year, that’s 960 hours of typing on your keyboard every year! Despite that sobering figure, most of us just use whatever keyboard is shipped with the computer.
“Look down at the grubby, unloved implement beneath your fingers. When was the last time you actually sharpened that sword? How often do you use each of the keys you press? Are the most used keys within easy reach? What about the tactility? How do the keys themselves feel? Is the travel of the keys helpful? Do you wish the travel was greater? Do you wish it was less? What about the sound? Does it annoy you? Does it annoy those around you? Do you have helpful shortcuts to adjust your volume? Skip a music track? Perform an oft-used set of keystrokes? Or what about an easy way to toggle between typing on your computer and typing into your phone?
“Mechanical keyboards exist to answer as many of these questions as possible.”
There are a lot of articles out there that will try to convince you why it’s a good reason to invest in a mechanical keyboard. Unfortunately, most of them, pardon the pun, approach it mechanically and lack that personal touch.
Smashing Magazine is geared towards designers and Frain’s writing style reflects that. They compare their meticulousness for typography to their passion for keyboards and why the two go hand in hand.
The second half of the article morphs into your typical introduction to mechanical keyboards, but Frain explains it in an accessible manner that’s neither condescending nor too technical. There’ll always be something to nitpick, but in this case, the first half reels in the reader and answers the integral question of why.
“Glorious Panda Switch Review” by ThereminGoat
“Now, as for the tactile bump of this switch, the nuance is a bit more interesting. With virtually no linear pre-travel, the tactile bump in these switches starts at the very beginning of the downstroke, in similar fashion to other highly tactile switches. The bump, itself, is not particularly short nor extended in any fashion, and very much fits a reasonable ‘mid-ground’ bump length at something I’d imagine is around 1.0 to 1.5 mm in length (for a 4.0 mm travel distance). As well, the bump can easily be imagined as ‘snappy’ in a literal sense of the word, feeling perfectly sized for the reasonable amount of force it gives back. Overall, in terms of the tactile bump, the Glorious Pandas feel exactly how I would imagine a good representation of a highly tactile switch should feel. While some of the more recent “Holy Panda clone” attempts have tried to shoot for the maximum finger breaking level of tactility, these switches fit perfectly into the high tactility range without suffering in performance trying to shoot for more.”
In a certain sense, I’m cheating here, as I want to highlight two of Goat’s blog posts. If Frain’s article is geared towards the reader who knows nothing about mechanical keyboards, Goat’s is the opposite: it’s articulate and technical to the point that even long-time fans of mechanical keyboards have something new to learn by reading their reviews.
The first aspect I want to highlight is Goat’s discernment, and more importantly, the ability to convey that knowledge to the reader. If you asked me what makes a switch like Zilents work, I wouldn’t even know how to describe it; I simply don’t have the vocabulary or the proper qualification. If you want to intimately know how a specific switch works, you don’t need to look further than one of Goat’s reviews. Additionally, the end of each review compares existing switches to other switches, leading the reader to rabbit holes that they hadn’t considered before.
The second aspect is Goat’s willingness to provide context. The reason I selected the Glorious Panda Switch Review and not the “Gazzew’s Boba U4 Switch Review” (which is just as comprehensive and technical) is because of the lengthy historical context provided in the article. (The Boba U4 review also provides context for Gazzew’s switches, but that’s a relatively shorter history than the controversy surrounding Holy Pandas.)
This review is sort of a prequel/sequel to Goat’s succeeding article, “The Pandaverse”, which documents, explains, and breaks down the lengthy and controversial history of the Holy Panda switch.
“Being announced roughly around the start time of the GSUS Panda groupbuy in December of 2018, these switches were not only the first factory assembled Holy Panda switch to be sold to consumers, but also the first community-made frankenswitches to receive a factory-made release in their original format. The most interesting advertising note surrounding the initial release of these switches was in regards to Massdrop claiming that they had obtained “original Panda tooling”, which as discussed above, has been rumored to be destroyed and/or damaged beyond usage long ago in the past. Pushing this controversy aside under the ‘potentially conflated advertising’ tent that Massdrop likes to camp in quite often, the release details took the community by storm given that the initial price point was lower than the cost of any Panda switch and Halo switch needed to make Holy Pandas at that time. Ultimately, this price was only an initial release price, with future iterations jumping up to roughly equivalent in cost to the two switches required in making Holy Pandas. As well worth noting, this decreased initial pricing was believed by many in the community to be an attempt by Massdrop to combat SuperVan’s GSUS Panda groupbuy which would be competitive to their monopoly on Panda switches.
“Continuing in the drama laden fashion of Massdrop, future iterations of this switch featured even more drama with a release in September of 2020 claiming to have housing made of “100% POM” as opposed to the normal Polycarbonate top housings / Nylon bottom housings of previous releases. Experiments conducted by the community at large quickly determined this to be a lie and caused an uproar that coincided nearly perfectly with the Glorious Panda switches, discussed below.”
In a small community where not a lot of things are documented — or at least publicly accessible outside of locked forum threads or videos that the YouTube algorithm hasn’t recommended — it’s important that someone documents such history.
The closest was Seth Colaner’s coverage of mechanical keyboard news for Tom’s Hardware back in 2017 (such as “Massdrop, Input Club Feuding Over ‘Halo’ Mechanical Keyboard Switches” — which incidentally ties back to the history of the Holy Panda) but his extensive reporting hasn’t been seen since (or at least to my knowledge — although I am aware of his position as editor at sites like VentureBeat and KeyChatter).
That’s not to say Goat’s writing is flawless; their conclusion regarding packaging of the Glorious Pandas in the corresponding review is off the mark (and I attribute this to lack of business knowledge due to them still being a student) and occasionally erroneous (Goat notes that Glorious PCGR only has Tenkeyless and Full-sized keyboards, so the Glorious Panda packaging was anti-consumer, but they don’t realize that Glorious PCGR actually sell a 60% keyboard, providing a better context for the 36-switch pack) but this is a minor flaw in an otherwise lengthy and well-researched piece. I even want to recommend “A Beginner’s Guide to Force Curves” as a good article that provides us with a framework on how to gauge switches — and how inadequate our tools are.
“The Twitch Streamer Behind Tfue’s Custom $3,500 Mechanical Keyboard” by Nick Slatt”
“But it wasn’t until Kim built his first serious gaming PC in college, at UC Berkeley, that he began “to look seriously into what kind of options there were for a nice keyboard.” That led him to researching various mechanical keyboard communities on the internet. “I was a computer science engineer before I quit to pursue this full time, and I knew ahead of time I would be typing on a desk for most of my life. So I kind of fell into the rabbit hole,” he says. “What really opened my eyes was the mechanical keyboard subreddit. And I just kind of fell in, maybe too deep, I guess.”
“Kim began Twitch streaming his assemblies while working at IBM in the San Francisco Bay Area. But after six months or so, he had gained a big enough following to begin opening his Taeha Types platform to commissions. Last year, he was earning enough money to feel comfortable ditching San Francisco for Southern California and creating keyboard content full time. He currently lives in Corona, outside Los Angeles, where he has access to a major nexus of Twitch, YouTube, and gaming personalities.”
How can we not talk about Tae Ha Kim, one of the more prominent personalities in the community? Despite the headline, this article is actually about Taeha, and delving into their motivations for doing what they do.
This isn’t exactly the most hard-hitting interview, but it does demystify what exactly a streamer (who builds keyboards) does, and what their business model is like. I do think personality spotlights are important, as they humanize the people behind the media we consume (in the case of Taeha) or the products we use. Which brings me to the next recommendation in this list.
“Behind The Scenes: The Magical Keycaps That Caught 50 Cent’s Eye”
“Some folks didn’t like the idea of a femme set existing on the market, even though there was clearly demand for it. And there’s definitely room for more than one set!
“Magic Girl was TKC’s best-selling keyset at the time; now Infinikey Pastel PBT is another one of TKC’s top sellers.
“My work was pitted against DSA Astrolokeys in a false narrative. One of the creators of Astrolokeys, sailorhg, is a friend of mine of many years. It so happens we’re also collaborating on a Cute Keyboard Club jacket right now.
“At this point, I’ve talked to most visible womxn creators in the keyboard community. There’s few of us in number. I hope over time, we’ll have more creators in this space who represent different identities, backgrounds, and regions.”
Whereas the previous recommendations are well-written articles, there’s less “writing” involved here and more of a transcription of an interview. And thankfully, Mintdolica, the person being interviewed, is an interesting subject.
I enjoyed this piece because it showcases other people involved in the community that don’t necessarily get the limelight. I’m currently reading various nonfiction on the development of video games and it’s surprising to discover that a lot of video game developers, during their childhood, don’t realize that making video games can be a career. This piece is a similar wake-up call: do you like keycaps? You, too, can make them, if you put in the time, effort, and research!
Additionally, my opening introduction here might give you the impression that I’m mocking the writers of this piece, but I’m not. While the text in this piece are transcriptions of an interview, there’s a lot of editorializing involved, from the choices of questions to ask, to the narrative flow of the photos and captions used in the article — a narrative art form in itself. Whereas the previous articles rely on text to carry most of their message, here the images/captions play a secondary role in telling another story.
I also want to take this time to highlight Keyboard University’s dual role (admittedly self-serving as The Key Company is in the business of selling keyboards and keycaps) of providing a detailed, basic guide to mechanical keyboards for beginners, as well as articles like this that would easily fit in a lifestyle magazine.
“How To Silence Your Mechanical Keyboard (With 6 Easy Mods)” by Jake Harrington
“Similar to modding your stabilizers, lubing your switches is another awesome way to reduce the sound of your keyboard.
“Lubing also greatly improves the feel and reduces the scratchiness and spring ping of each switch. This is hands-down the best way to improve the sound and feel of your keyboard.
“Caution: This process can be time consuming, about 2 hours depending on how many switches you have and how experienced you are.
“When you enter a keystroke, the spring and stem of each switch rub against each other and create a lot of friction. The frictions creates vibration and noise.”
If I’m being honest, this is less an endorsement of any specific article and more of a recommendation for the Switch and Click, a site initially dedicated to mechanical keyboards by couple Jake and Bett that over the past few months, has morphed into a magazine-style publication with guest contributors.
There’s little fluffy content here and most of the articles are reviews and how-to’s. While there’s your usual fare of ‘Best X Keyboard” or “Best X Switch”, there’s also guides like this article that provides practical insight on how to modify your keyboard. A frequent question I see on Reddit is asking how to silence their keyboard, and this article (or the corresponding YouTube video by Betty) is where I direct them to.
While the articles itself don’t have much flair, Switch and Click’s direct and blunt approach has a place, especially when you’re eager to get direct answers to your questions.
