Which mechanical keyboard should i buy?

Balthezor wrote:

Also, G710+ has a lot of broken keys review, any experiences here?

Yes -- after about 10 months of use, a keycap (one of the CTRL keys) cracked right where the switch fit into it.

Logitech agreed that the warranty covered it and replaced the entire keyboard, with the whole process taking about two weeks.

My question is, what's the best between the MX Brown with the G710+, MX Blue or Red? I don't know if I can handle loud clicks...

If your focus is gaming, Reds are a good choice. I haven't actually typed on Browns, but I've heard them described as feeling like dirty Reds.

If you have reasonable quality keycaps, bottoming them out shouldn't be any big deal. But I don't know how to tell keycap quality.

I've had or spent time with all the non-clicky switches at this point and have settled on browns as the best middle ground between typing feel and gaming, IMO.

Reds are excellent gaming switches but I always found myself making a significantly higher number of typing mistakes in general use.

Again you need to try them all out. I though I was going to go for browns since I'm more of a typist than twitch gamer, but after trying them all out I found I liked typing on the reds the best. I still frequently bottom them out when using key combos (ALT-F4 etc.) but when I'm really typing fast I find I can just glide over the keys and it's almost like tickling the computer into putting my words on the screen. It does take getting used to though. Keep in mind when you're using them in the store that they actuate about half of the distance down the full travel before you bottom out. The browns and blues can give you an idea of about where that is.

AnimeJ wrote:

I had whichever the MMO emphasis model of the Vengance keyboard. I liked it well enough, it was big and heavy and didn't move around a bit. Never had any electrostatic issues with it, and the only reason I don't still have it is due to multiple beverage related issues. Currently rocking a G710+ and rather like it, but then, I've always been kind of a sucker for Logitech stuff. $170 does seem a bit steep, although I'm sure that the price is pretty in line with the cost of those switches.

Wanna trade? I've had the K95 with o-rings installed for a while and think I would prefer to stay with brown switches at this point.

misplacedbravado wrote:
Balthezor wrote:

Also, G710+ has a lot of broken keys review, any experiences here?

Yes -- after about 10 months of use, a keycap (one of the CTRL keys) cracked right where the switch fit into it.

Logitech agreed that the warranty covered it and replaced the entire keyboard, with the whole process taking about two weeks.

6 months for a broken key cap is pretty quick. I own a G10 keyboard for the past 4 years with no issue.

And wow, thank you all for the suggestions. I think I'm going to pull on the K70 MX reds. The MX browns are sold out anywhere and the MX reds are $110 on Amazon right now.

$110 does seem like a nice enough price to pull the trigger instead of waiting on the RGB K70, which will be probably $150 at the cheapest within 2 months. Newegg has a brown switch gunnmetal k70 in stock, but it's $129. If they dropped that bad boy down to $110 ...

It's probably about as good as any other you're likely to find.

The Duckys seemed quite comparable, though, when I tried one, and they're usually cheaper.

So Goldendog, you do prefer the Brown over the Reds?

I looked into the new RGB. I am tempted, looks really cool. But is it worth the extra $40? Not too sure about it.

Malor wrote:

30-hour time investment: lifetime payoff. Short of courting someone who will become a spouse, I don't think there is any other use of such a short span of time that can have more of an impact on your life.

You clearly don't have any illegitimate children :).

For my money, the best bet is still the Leopold tenkeyless. I think it was ThinJ that turned me on to these years ago, and now I absolutely can't tolerate a full-width keyboard on a gaming machine. I can leave the keyboard in a nice, centered typing position all day, and I don't need to do the "slide everything left" switch when I go to play a game in order to produce a straight-armed mousing angle.

Mr Crinkle wrote:

For my money, the best bet is still the Leopold tenkeyless. I think it was ThinJ that turned me on to these years ago, and now I absolutely can't tolerate a full-width keyboard on a gaming machine. I can leave the keyboard in a nice, centered typing position all day, and I don't need to do the "slide everything left" switch when I go to play a game in order to produce a straight-armed mousing angle.

Can confirm, Leopold tenkeyless rocks balls.

I have two of the Leopold's. And a Ducky. And two Coolermasters.

The Coolermaster/CM Storm boards I think actually are equivalent on build quality but much lower on price, generally, vs the Leopold boards or even the Ducky. Some people dislike the font they put on their keycaps, but other than that, they tend to be hard to beat.

If you're a stickler about the font on the keycaps then your choices kind of get complicated and you end up looking at Ducky/Leopold/Corsair/Filco and so on and so forth. There's a fair amount of choice out there now. Although, again, CM Storm has an option that may work for those people in the Quickfire Stealth that doesn't have any font on the keycaps to be annoyed by anyway. It's not down at $80-$90 like the Rapid board is, but it's still cheaper than quite a few other alternatives.

If you just want a basic tenkeyless without backlighting, IMO, the CM Storm Quickfire rapid is still the best board out there for the money. It's build quality is just as solid as my Ducky that cost over twice the money.

The only problem I'm finding with it right now is it seems to be out of stock on Amazon other than the green switch model, which nobody here probably wants for a gaming board.

Balthezor wrote:

So Goldendog, you do prefer the Brown over the Reds?

I do, but it's totally a personal preference. There is no right or wrong there. Browns and reds are the exact same switch aside from that small bump. They have the same amount of force to activate. I also plan on using the board for more than gaming and need 10-key. I do accounting work so 10-key is a requirement.

There is a Quickfire TK Stealth that had caught my eye, but it is only available outside of the US... The TK merges 10-key with the arrow keys to keep the board size down. But then again, I use the arrow keys a lot in spredsheets and QuickBooks so I need them too.

The RGB would only be worth it to me if it was another $20, since the other feature is every key can be macro. I like being able to assign multiple actions to a single key. For instance I have a Logitech G600 macro mouse and the buttons can be used to launch different programs, toggle shift (good for autorun/sprinting in games), enter passwords, pre-programed chat dialogues, and such. Like a button can open the chat and type "GG", all with one push.

But with an MSRP of $169, the RGB wont be on sale much until the Holidays or Black Friday. Even then, maybe that $20 off. It's pretty apparent they're trying to drop the remaining prior k70 stock. That $40 difference is a nice mouse to go with the new board.

I certainly can't speak for certain on the actual sale price of the RGB (aside from the announced MSRP), so I was going to wait and see where it comes out at. I run the risk at the old stock drying up, but meh.

Been playing around with my new Corsair Vengeance K70 with Cherry MX Reds. I like it so far. It is a beautiful piece of equipment. I really like the switches compared to a a Thermal Take Poseidon with Blue Kahlil switches I bought from Walmart. It is just a lot easier to type for me. I felt like the tactile bump on the blues was annoying, but then again, it is new to me. So far, the red switches feels like the membrane keyboard I am used to. We will see with more use.

What do you guys think of the Ducky DK2108S with Brown Switches? I see one for $120. $10 more than reds or blues.

Well, the Ducky keyboards are well-built; as far as feel goes, that's something you'll have to decide.

I troll around the mechanical keyboard reddit thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKe...

They really love the Ducky Shine 3, but a lot of them build their own boards as well.

GoldenDog wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:

Currently rocking a G710+ and rather like it, but then, I've always been kind of a sucker for Logitech stuff. $170 does seem a bit steep,

The MSRP on the G710+ is $150, so it's only a $20 difference. I am not expecting it to sell at MSRP with the amount of online retailer competition, although there won't be a "decent" sale until Winter.

What funny is I don't use backlighting. It's mostly the construction, angle, and where the wrist rest is that interests me. Sure I can buy an aftermarket rest (haven't found another mech with good wrist rest reviews), but then I am just at the same price point anyway, and it won't attach like the factory rest and angle to the keyboard properly.

I understand wrist wrests are not supposed to be used and I try not to use them when typing, but when I am just using WASD and 1-6 for a couple hours, it sure is nice to have a properly positioned and resting arm.

I looked at the ducky, quickfire, logitech, razer, and corsair. My opinion is:

Ducky gets the most praise for build quality, hard to find in NA and price is average ($150)
Quickfire wins on price to performance (cheapest, with decent build quality)
Logitech has the macro and factory O-ring, non-standard size keycaps make replacements tricky if broken
Razer is junk... ?? lol. It felt alright at the store, but low reviews for the software, non cherry switches
Corsair has a backlight shorting problem, good wrist wrest, average cost

Thoughts on my interpretations for reading reviews?

Yea, I haven't paid MSRP or anything close for any keyboard. Closest I've come was a Razer, and even then I was 20 bucks under. Think I paid just over $100 for the G710+. Even so, $170 MSRP puts it in the $130-$140 range which is a good bit more than I've paid for anything to date.

As for the keyboards themselves, I haven't used a Ducky or Quickfire, so no real opinions there. I do like the Logitech a lot, probably my favorite of the three I've had in the last couple years. The Logitech and the Corsair are about the same in my eyes; both are really well built and not uncomfortable to use. I'd give the edge to the Razer though; Corsair was using non-mechanicals for most of the keyboard vs all mechanicals in the Razer.

Corsair was using non-mechanicals for most of the keyboard vs all mechanicals in the Razer.

Well, if you get a mechanical Corsair, they're excellent. One downside, though, is that they use a slightly nonstandard key layout. This doesn't matter at all for typing, but if you want to get a replacement set of keycaps (some people like PBT, for instance, as it's a nicer-feeling plastic), they won't fit on a Corsair board, where they will fit on a Ducky and probably most of the other offerings.

After a year of reading this thread and sitting on the fence I finally pulled the trigger on the Corsair K70 with Cherry Brown switches. Should hopefully be in my hands in a few days.

Curse all of you enablers.

Carlbear95 wrote:

After a year of reading this thread and sitting on the fence I finally pulled the trigger on the Corsair K70 with Cherry Brown switches. Should hopefully be in my hands in a few days.

Curse all of you enablers.

Where did you purchase it at?

Balthezor wrote:
Carlbear95 wrote:

After a year of reading this thread and sitting on the fence I finally pulled the trigger on the Corsair K70 with Cherry Brown switches. Should hopefully be in my hands in a few days.

Curse all of you enablers.

Where did you purchase it at?

Newegg. Had an amex deal spend $150 get $15 back... so bought that and a few other doohickeys.

EDIT: Love living in CA. 1-day delivery from Newegg despite using the cheapest shipping option. Keyboard is great. It "feels" alike the keys are more crammed together vs. a standard keyboard. Not sure if that means the keys are narrower or something else is going on. If I line up my old keyboard the width of the set of main keys is like 0.5" longer on the old. Something to get used to, nothing that affects my use though.

I did some research on the release of the K70 MX RGB and it has been delayed for an indefinite amount of time. It was supposed to be out by now, but they've found issues with the board and are repairing them before shipment. This was from Corsair's Forums and only came from an email one of the users sent to customer support. There wasn't an official release as to the delay at this time.

Also on the Corsair forums is a post estimating that 10% of the K70s (K95s) have grounding issues that cause the lights in the switches to get shocked and stop working. Of course Corsair offers replacement of the board due to LED issues while under warranty (two years).

Of course Corsair offers replacement of the board due to LED issues while under warranty (two years).

Since it's a known defect, they really ought to fix the LED problem forever.

Malor wrote:
Of course Corsair offers replacement of the board due to LED issues while under warranty (two years).

Since it's a known defect, they really ought to fix the LED problem forever.

They did fix it on the new K70 MX RGB. They shielded the LEDs by building them into the switch itself, then got exclusivity on the switch from Cherry MX (for awhile at least).

General LED Switch
IMAGE(http://cwsmgmt.corsair.com/media/catalog/product/k/7/k70-brown-mx_1.png)

New
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/5Uwwx1f.jpg)

They did fix it on the new K70 MX RGB.

Well, it's not like they're supposed to be praised for manufacturing new keyboards sans a known defect.

I need a mechanical keyboard for work. I have a Corsair K65 with reds at home right now, and while the light keythrows are great for gaming, I feel like the keythrows may be a little light for work use. I have a tendency to rest my hands on the keyboard, and occasionally with the K65 the weight of my hands is enough pressure to trigger a key. I know, I know. I'm weird.
I'm thinking that means I should be shopping for something quiet (because work) but with heavier keythrows than the reds. That probably means browns, right? I honestly don't have a preference on tenkeyless or not. Since it's in a business environment, I'd also strongly prefer something without LEDs or backlighting. I found this Rosewill. Is my reasoning sound?
I'm also looking at this Corsair K70, but it's quite a bit more expensive. The volume controls would be nice, but probably not $40 nice.

Well, if you want a board that has a similar feel to Reds, but requires a much harder push, the MX Black switches are basically that -- they're more or less Reds with stiff springs. (quite stiff, you have to hit the keys pretty hard.)

If you want Reds plus tactile feedback, I think that's Brown switches.

If you want both tactile plus stiffer springs, I think you'd want the MX Clears. Those are rare, and hard to find; the only keyboard I know that has them is the CODE.

Monoprice has some nice cheap low-frill mechanical keyboards, but their availability is spotty.

The Table of Cherry MX Feels

Linear: No physical feedback | Tactile: Quiet bump feedback | Clicky: Loud bump feedback

Medium(45/50g)
Red | Brown | Blue

Slightly Stiff(55-60g)
Black | Clear | N/A

Very Stiff(80g)
Dark Grey | Light Grey | Green and White

http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKe...

You can install O-Rings on the switches as well to dampen the sound if it's an issue.

I agree with Malor that Black/Clear would be good. You can also buy a sampler and test some of the switches out.