deskthority

Wow, this is one heavy duty OLD thread. But evergreen, I suppose, so as a humble newb in this one, I'll contribute my own list:

• IBM beam spring: the king of swing and the emperor of click. Mercy! These are my grail switch. But they come in such bulky antique keyboards! So perhaps the mythical item they most resemble is the kind that melts your face off.
• Topre: the best switch (a lot of) money can buy today. As swingy as beam spring, and a joy to use for hours on end. I like them damped, Type-S style, and 30g is perhaps my favourite weight. But the whole family oozes class and is thoroughly welcome.
• IBM buckling spring: the heir to the clicky throne. Model F is hellishly good (served best in a Kishsaver) while Model M gets a lot more praise than it deserves, from people who are ignorant of its ancestors. The SSK is a strong attempt at the perfect keyboard, however, which always brings me back.
• Space invaders: chock full of tactility, from another world. The clicky black ones are my faves. These have such a fantastic chonky feel to them that I'm amazed they are so small. Laptops should be made with these! But no, they had their day.
• Montereys: fantastic mad wee clicky buggers. These could teach MX blue a thing or two, but Cherry isn't listening. Smooth, SHARP, clickety click. The best home for your Alps mount caps, or more if you've some adapters.
• Damped tactile complicated Alps: because good things are complex. Cream Alps in the AEK II are a nice treat. Subtle and reasonably quiet, they're a fair attempt at the smooth, fast, rhythm that Topre excels at, in handy modular form. But don't expect anything great out of them once they're dirty.

Those are the ones I've tried, and love. There are other likely greats out there that I just haven't encountered in a full board: Nixdorf blacks and Omrons among them.

But what about MX? Hmm. I don't hate them (well, most of them) but there's a lot of better stuff out there, and yet people forever forget about its existence! When restricted to MX, my rule is the linears are competent enough (though desperately need internal damping on topping out) and, yeah, I'm not really restricted to MX!

I responded to this back in 2013. Since then, my favorite(s) have not changed much. I still prefer Topre 55g and 45g along with IBM capacitive buckling spring (Model F) switches. The only difference is that I now prefer silenced Topre switches over the stock switches.

My first mechanicals were IBM membrane buckling springs (Model M). I liked these switches, but I started searching to see if there might be a contemporary switch that I liked. After trying just about every variety of Cherry mx switch, I was not at all satisfied. I wanted something with genuine tactile feedback that helped me to type quickly and accurately. I found this kind of feedback in Topre switches (contemporary) and in another vintage switch, the IBM Model F.

Runners-up include various Alps and Alps-type switches, including Matias Click and Matias Quiet Click switches.

For me, all Cherry mx switches as a group are in last place. Nevertheless, I have some Cherry mx boards, mainly to showcase some of the excellent keycaps that are available in abundance for this type of switch mount.

I haven't tried too much at all:

- buckling spring in model M / SSK / F
- MX blue
- MX black old and new
- white Acer switches

So far, I just like the typing experience on the model M - the F I tried about ten years ago had a very pingy sound and the layout was a bit weird so I didn't experiment further with it. Nowadays I would MX blacks were OK, just nothing special, and MX blues are a bit too light for my taste, nice for gaming, I think. The Acer switches feel like they are defective. Well, let's not talk about them.