How to choose your first mechanical keyboard
Short guide that explain enough concepts of mechanical keyboards to help you choose the right one for you.
The world of mechanical keyboards is massive, at first, it seems simple to just pick one of the options of recognized brands. Or go into Amazon and put “mechanical keyboard” in the finder and pick the bestseller option.
But then after looking around, some terms start to came up, like TKL or Cherry MX Switches, and then you start to get confused.
This post is aimed to help you decide which mechanical keyboard is best for you based on your needs.
Some Concepts
The most important things that you need to consider when you are going to buy a new mechanical keyboard are:
Form Factor
This is referred as the actual size and the number of mechanical switches of the keyboard, the more popular ones are:
- Full Size or 100%: This is the typical keyboard with numeric keypad and all the auxiliary keys, like Print Screen and Screen Lock.
- TKL or 80%: This one is like the Full Size without the numeric keypad.
- Compact: Here is where the things start to get interesting, the more popular ones are 75%, 65% and 60%. The layout of those vary depending on the manufacturer, but in general, this form factors left some auxiliary keys, function row and arrow keys out (you need to access them using a combination of keys).
There are other form factors like ortholinear or split, but if this is your first mechanical keyboard you probably can skip those until you learn more about them.
Switches
The decision of the switches is crucial, if the keyboard is not hot-swappable (the keys could be changed without disordering) the decision of the switches is pretty much final, and you are stuck with those until you change the keyboard, so let’s look at the type of switches:
- Tactile: These are popular between writers, the main point of these is to return a bump when you press a key.
- Linear: Rapid actuation, not feedback in form of sound or bump. This is usually picked by gamers, some of them argue that this is an advantage in competitive gaming.
- Clicky: Noisy, the main characteristic of those is that the feedback is in the form of sound. Typing on this kind of switches is really fun, but could be annoying for people around you. There is something special about this type of switches, even that the main type is clicky, they are also going to be tactile. So, you are going to feel some bump when you are typing.
To have more context about this, go to YouTube and look for sound tests. Also ask your friends if they can let you try their mechanical keyboards so you can feel the switches, or go to a store and look for display keyboards to try.
There are some switch testers out there, but personally, I don’t think they are really worth it, you can put that money into your keyboard. I think with enough YouTube videos you could form a general idea of the switches.
The Decision
Now let’s decide which form factor is good for your needs and from there narrow down the options.
To decide which form factor is good for you, please take some minutes to analyze your typing behaviors. This chart could help you decide:
Once the form factor is decided, let’s focus on the switches. There are many switch manufacturers out there, but the most popular ones on pre-built keyboards are Cherry, Gateron and Kailh.
When you are going to buy a mechanical keyboard the type of switch is going to be given using a color, usually the brown ones are tactile, reds are linear and blues are clicky. Of course these are not the only ones, you can go here and find out more.
In general, there are more colors in the same type of switches, the color indicates the travel distance and the force that you need to put to make the switch actuate. For example, a Cherry MX Red and Black are both linear, but the black one requires more force to actuate.
Choosing the type, color and manufacturer of the switch could be overwhelming, my advice for you is to pick the type first and with that, you can narrow down the colors. The manufacturer of the switch depends on the options that the keyboard manufacturer gives you, so again go to YouTube and look for a specific sound test of the keyboard with that specific switch.
Based on the use, you can check the following table to narrow down your options:
Conclusions
- Choose the form factor first and then the type of switches.
- If the decision of the type of switches is too difficult, look for some hot-swappable keyboards. These lets you change the switches effortlessly, so you can experiment with different kind of ones, also this is a good gateway to get into the mechanical keyboard hobby.
- Once you have decided the form factor and the type of switch, explore different kind of manufactures of keyboards. Look at reviews of the specific keyboard and switch before purchase, this helps a lot to narrow down your options.
