In this post, I’ll share my experience and knowledge to help you on choosing the perfect keyboard for yourself. With the variety of mechanical keyboards nowadays, it can be overwhelming for a beginner to find the right one. Below are a few tips when choosing a keyboard:
Feels
How a keyboard feels is arguably the most important thing when choosing a keyboard. If you use a keyboard that doesn’t make you feel good when typing, you will toss it away quickly, or you will reluctantly use it.
There are many types of switches available on the market (Kailh, Gateron, Cherry MX, Logitech Romer G, etc.), but the most common is no doubt the Cherry MX switch. They are used commonly in mainstream keyboards and dominate most of the market share
There are 3 kinds of Cherry switches:
- Cherry MX Red: a linear switch, doesn’t have a “bump”. The deeper you press down a button, the harder it’s pushed back against your finger. The feeling is similar to when you push down a spring. This switch is perfect for gaming, when you need to travel between keys quickly, it can register a keypress even with just a light touch. It’s also very quiet
- Cherry MX Blue: a clicky switch, with a tactile bump. It produces some sort of sound when activates. This kind of switch is very good for typists, though it can be quite annoying sometimes, due to it sometimes produces very loud noise on certain keyboards.
- Cherry MX Brown: a tactile switch has a “bump” when it is pressed. You can usually feel the bump after the switch has been pressed past the actuation point, after which the switch will depress fully with very little resistance. This kind of switch is good for both gaming and typing. I personally have you all 3 switches, and this one is my favorite.
Here’s a video that I think is very at comparing various Cherry MX switches:
Layout/Size
The easiest decision to make when choosing a keyboard is the size. When choosing between a full-size and something more compact, it generally comes down to what you’re going to use the keyboard for versus how much space you have to play with.
I was a full size user in the past, I thought I could never live without the number keys, but I was wrong after I tried the compact size.
- Full size: features either 104 or 105 key. They are standard layouts for the U.S. and most of the rest of the world. To the right we have the number pad, arranged in calculator fashion. How much do you need that number pad? if it’s an everyday element then you should stick with full size boards.
- Perfect For: Accountants, players of demanding keyboard-based games, people who want as many buttons on hand as possible.
- Not Great For: People with limited desk space, people confused by the “Numlock” key, folks who think one set of numbers is enough.
- TENKEY LESS: The easiest way to trim down the length of a keyboard is to hack off that number pad, creating an 87 or 88-key layout, commonly referred to as tenkeyless. For most keyboard users, the tenkeyless is the sweet spot. For everybody else, or at least everybody else just getting started with mechanical keyboards, tenkeyless is the perfect choice.
- Perfect For: Most people. No, really. You can let go of the number pad.
- Not Great For: Accountants, people with very large desks with very few things on them, those that need dedicated multimedia keys as there’s no room for those here.
- 60%: If you’re new to mechanical keyboards, the 60 percent is as tiny as you’ll want to go. The smaller they get, the more complicated it is. Because you no longer have the arrow keys. In order to access arrow keys and all the normal functions you need to memorize shortcuts. The main benefit of a 60 percent board is, of course, how small they are. They are excellent travel companions, easily tucked into luggage or a backpack. I moved to 60% for the last 2 years and I never looked back. I love how much space I could save with 60% boards. Even though the shortcuts are little bit hard to remember at first, I got used with them shortly.
- Perfect For: Frequent travelers, programmers, people want their work space to be minimal looking.
- Not Great For: People with trouble remembering keyboard shortcuts.
RGB
To be perfectly honest, RGB looks great on keyboards. They offer a sense of atheistic that non of the other customization can offer. However, should you pick a keyboard solely because its RGB looks good ?
From my experience, you only play around with the RGB lighting options the first couple of days. After that, you either set it to rainbow effect or just a single color, or maybe just turn it off entirely. Then just barely ever touch it again.
As you see above, a keyboard without RGB doesn’t look bad at all, if not better, compared to a RGB keyboard.
In terms of manufacturing, RGB costs very little. Companies could squeeze a lot of money out of your pocket with very little effort. A keyboard without RGB costs much less (maybe half) than a keyboard with RGB. When you are gaming or typing, do you look at your keyboard all the time? Probably not, and I don’t either. I mean, it’s a nice addition to your setup, if you care about aesthetics, but it should never be a reason why you pick this keyboard over the other
Frame/Case
There are 3 main types of frame: Wood, Metal , Plastic
While all of the top-tier keyboards have metal frame design, it’s easy to have a misconception that metal is better, and plastic feels cheap. While it is true that metal makes the keyboard feel super sturdy, heavy and premium, but plastic doesn’t make a keyboard bad.
Disadvantage of metal frame is that you need to do maintenance frequently, otherwise it will be covered in dust, and your keyboard looks super bad. Well, plastic frames require maintenance too, but the cleaning requirement is much less, and we can usually ignore the dust
There is just no clear advantage for metal frame in practical use when gaming, i.e. how can you feel the key smashing when you just put one hand on the keyboard? Though, durability matters if you plan to stick with a keyboard for years (talking about 3+ years). Metal clearly wins over the plastic in that case.
