Heresy, right? I’ve had a mechanical for the last couple of years, and while it’s served me well enough, I still don’t like the feel or clickety-clack compared to a membrane switch - and my current one is the Razer Blackwidow Stealth w/ rubber o-rings added to the base of each key, which I think is as non-clackety as a mechanical gets.
Anyway, the Blackwidow is starting to have issues - F5 key died months ago, and lately it’s been doing this annoying thing where I press a key and it registers the downstroke, but not the release, of the Tab and D keys until I pull it from its USB port and reinsert. It’s time.
…but the initial search for a replacement all I’m seeing are either mechanical or mimicking mechanical (like a membrane switch but with the big blocky keys that mechanicals use).
My favorite keyboard ‘feel’ 100% is an oldschool laptop style keyboard. Like the IBM T60 - flat, light to the touch, and no dead space in between the keys like you see in a lot of today’s laptops (the ‘island’ style… not a fan).
I don’t think my entire wish-list exists in a single product, but what I’m after is:
-
That T60 style described above
-
Programmable keys (remap / macros)
-
Corded… unless cordless options have really improved in the last decade or so: I recall a noticeable delay, and constantly running out of battery.
-
Extra keys specifically for binding macros like the Blackwidow
-
Backlight. Low priority, and I don’t give a shit about RGB (or aesthetics in general), but it is nice to be able to be able to see which key is which when the room is dark.
…is anything even kind-of like that on the market, or should I just shut up and get another mechanical?
IT’S GOT THE RUBBER MOUSE NIPPLE AND EVERYTHING! Fucking lol, that’s amazing. I’m tempted to go that route just for pure nostalgia sake… I should probably avoid anything that’s long-discontinued though, as I probably wouldn’t be able to repair it if it stopped working, and then I’d be back at square one.
The actual post in the center of those is brown, right? I popped a key off, and the ones in mine are kind of a yellow-orange color like the Helios v2 ones you posted, but with a black housing. The noise they produce is pretty much entirely from the bottom of the keycap hitting plastic when it bottoms out (which is significantly dampened by rubber o-rings I added to it) and then another plastic-on-plastic sound on release… which maybe that is the components of the switch hitting itself? Most of the noise is from release. Slowly depressing a key until it bottoms out, then slowly releasing it so that all of the plastic-on-plastic collisions are super gentile, a keystroke makes virtually no noise.
If you like that, you should see Tex. (This comment was typed on a Tex Shinobi)