Best Silent Mechanical Boards

[RBithrey]

Hey everyone,

Hope all is well.

Just a question for you all, what would you say are the best silent mechanical boards that people can buy these days? Just talking off-the-shelf stuff - a mate of mine is wanting a keyboard for some day-to-day and gaming work and just wanted some advice.

I'd recommended him some of the more gaming-grade options but he wanted to go a little bit deeper down the mechanical rabbithole - any ideas? Also, despite writing reviews of the gaming-grade stuff, I'm a tad out of touch for the enthusiast space myself, so cheers for the help.

All the best,

Reece.

[Muirium]

Apex: Realforce R2, factory damped PFU edition. Assuming you like Topre. Which you should, or you will be judged!


viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23130

A cheaper choice is something with MX silent switches. I've a Filco with MX pinks, which is mechanical and pretty quiet, but not nearly as smooth or quality feeling as a good damped Realforce.

[RBithrey]

Cheers Muirium - Thinking of picking up a Topre at some point myself in the near future if I can cobble funds together...

Would Realforces under their normal conditions be considered 'silent' as such? I wasn't necessarily aware of the fact that they could come dampened from the factory - that's interesting. Is there any more info on that anywhere?

Cheers again!

[Muirium]

Topre comes in regular undamped and "Type-S" factory damped versions. My HHKB is the latter; while I after-market damped my Realforce myself. The damping turns a pretty quiet keyboard into a profoundly quiet keyboard. Regular Topre is about as loud as MX black. Type-S is comparable to MX silent.

[Dikkus]

Personally I never found Topre *that* quiet, even their silenced models. It's not loud but it's not really worth of the term "silent" IMO.

Depending on how much you really value silence, I would look into a MX Silent Red or, perhaps more trendy if you want tactile, a Gazzew U4 Silent switch and stick them in a custom or desolder a board you already have. Put them in an aluminum chassis if you want even less sound. Lightly lube them if you think it's not smooth enough. A bit of a faff, maybe, but the results are ultra silent. Here's me typing on some very lightly lubed silent reds in an aluminum chassis:
https://files.catbox.moe/elcnx5.ogg

[RBithrey]

Thing is, I've always found the term 'Silent' a little bit subjective when it comes to keyboards - I've been using MX Blacks and MX Browns for years and they've never been the loudest at all, even if I am a pretty hard typist. It's strange.

[Dikkus]

Thing is, I've always found the term 'Silent' a little bit subjective when it comes to keyboards - I've been using MX Blacks and MX Browns for years and they've never been the loudest at all, even if I am a pretty hard typist. It's strange.

Yeah I think that's probably the same for most people. Most people I know don't really find switches outside of clickies particularly loud. Unless it's like Alps or something, wherein even their non-clicky models are quite musical.

[Muirium]

Depends on the caps and the chassis. Believe it or not: even linears can be very loud. Plate and chassis ring is definitely a thing: Apple M0110 original Macintosh keyboard I am looking at you! Honestly, that board is as loud as a Model M. Stabilisers can make a racket too, including on my HHKB in the video I linked, which really needs lubed.

Get it all right, though, and boards can get very quiet indeed. Some ship closer to that condition than others.

[RBithrey]

Thing is, I've always found the term 'Silent' a little bit subjective when it comes to keyboards - I've been using MX Blacks and MX Browns for years and they've never been the loudest at all, even if I am a pretty hard typist. It's strange.

Yeah I think that's probably the same for most people. Most people I know don't really find switches outside of clickies particularly loud. Unless it's like Alps or something, wherein even their non-clicky models are quite musical.

Absolutely. I remember being down at an office for work experience and I was handed a Blackwidow to review (the joys of getting work experience in the tech press) and within literally 15 minutes of it being used, I had immediate complaints. The day before I'd used Alienware's horrible gaming board with Brown clones (think they were Kalihs but I'm not sure) - no complaints at all.

Still never tried Alps, buckling springs or otherwise - again, thinking of picking up one of Unicomp's new Ms just to try it out. Then I might go a little more vintage.

[Go-Kart]

Topre Silenced boards are pretty damn quiet. Volume is fairly depending on your typing style though, as I'm sure someone will have already mentioned.

I have gotten my hands on a RF R2 PFU Silenced board just this afternoon for work. I didn't need it to be silent but just quieter than my White Alps or Buckling Spring board I would otherwise be tempted to take into the office and potentially upset co-workers with.

[Muirium]

thinking of picking up one of Unicomp's new Ms just to try it out. Then I might go a little more vintage.

Great starting point. If they were making them 10 years ago, I'd have grabbed one for myself and could* have been quite delighted. Compelling price.

*Depends how janky it is when hooked up to a Mac. I have my doubts about their needlessly hacky controller.

[RBithrey]

thinking of picking up one of Unicomp's new Ms just to try it out. Then I might go a little more vintage.

Great starting point. If they were making them 10 years ago, I'd have grabbed one for myself and could have been quite delighted. Compelling price.

Cheers - haven't they also done an SSK version too? I'm someone with a short desk (80cm width, kill me) and so space-saving is king.

[Muirium]

That's the one I'm on about. But look at those links I added to my post. It has issues. And I have issues with issues!

[Chyros]

thinking of picking up one of Unicomp's new Ms just to try it out. Then I might go a little more vintage.

Great starting point. If they were making them 10 years ago, I'd have grabbed one for myself and could* have been quite delighted. Compelling price.

*Depends how janky it is when hooked up to a Mac. I have my doubts about their needlessly hacky controller.

I haven't tried to use it on my mac (as that one's at work), but on my PC it refuses to recognise it at first every single time. My mac at work seems to have issues with keyboards anyway, as it randomly forgets one is plugged in from time to time, so I wouldn't know how well it would stand up xD . To be honest, it's a pretty annoying issue, and it doesn't get less annoying over time. They did say it was something with their controller, yeah, but I don't really know how easy it is for them to work around this sort of thing (and knowing them, they'd be slow to in any case).

The build quality definitely feels like an improvement over earlier Unicomps, though, and so do the keycaps.

[Muirium]

I just wish Unicomp actually let us (or others in the keyboard community of their choice) beta test these things for them before final production. Controller issues are ****super annoying**** and tend to show up straight away. Unless you don't have any people outside the building testing for you at all, of course…

[an_achronism]

I haven't tried to use it on my mac (as that one's at work), but on my PC it refuses to recognise it at first every single time. My mac at work seems to have issues with keyboards anyway, as it randomly forgets one is plugged in from time to time, so I wouldn't know how well it would stand up xD . To be honest, it's a pretty annoying issue, and it doesn't get less annoying over time. They did say it was something with their controller, yeah, but I don't really know how easy it is for them to work around this sort of thing (and knowing them, they'd be slow to in any case).

I've been trying to get them to definitively tell me what they're going to do about the issues with mine for nearly 3 weeks. They are apparently extremely understaffed and it's taking then over 7 days to reply each time I message them about it. They just responded recently again saying they'd send the PS/2 controller problem with Pause/Break to "the" engineer (just the one?) but also said it would take "a while" as he's "overworked". They also told me they should be able to replace the case since my New Model M has a big dark line running through its chin below the space bar, but said it might be "an argument" to do so unless I was buying something that would have the same band of shipping cost at the same time, and paying for the shipping. Re. the poor alignment on loads of keycaps, they said they could do a custom printed set to scrutinise more carefully, and that it was not only possible but "likely" that mine was not subjected to particularly careful Q&A because they were having to fly through orders at the time due to Mini M launching and the aforementioned understaffing. But they didn't actually confirm clearly what I'm meant to do on the terrible website to achieve exactly what I've now laid out in multiple messages, and they then closed the ticket even though things obviously remain unresolved. And they keep underplaying things: I had to send two photos of the dark line on the case because they claimed they couldn't see it in the first one, for instance, and even after I took a horrendous one with flash that makes it blindingly obvious I still got something along the lines of "I think I can sort of see it" as if it was some barely-there subtle difference. Here's the first photo, and yes, it was circled like this when I sent it to them:


I'm not particularly thrilled, honestly. Had they been more local, I'd probably return it altogether because all the cosmetic issues along with the controller problem are incredibly annoying to me, especially considering how much it cost me. I spent a fair bit on keycaps on top of the core cost of board and shipping but the vast majority of the keycaps are unacceptably poor imo so I'd never use them. But I don't really fancy paying return international shipping because they seemingly rushed a board out to me without the requisite QC being done. Not really sure how to proceed, frankly.

I did a huge long writeup of all the gripes I had with it, if you're curious what the problems were with the keycaps and case and so on, includes photos. I've since got and tested a classic IBM Greenock M from 1990, which overall has a remarkably similar key feel but also had some issues of its own, probably owing to it having arrived absolutely filthy, and potentially having been subjected to water ingress, though I'm speculating. Apart from keys that are obviously messed up and not buckling correctly (some actuate early, before the spring buckles, including the damn space bar), the 1990 one mostly feels much like the 2021 Unicomp. Writeup from before I got the older board is here for the time being, though I wonder if I should rework it and stick it on DT itself, maybe after Unicomp actually confirms what they're going to do about the problems I had: https://link.medium.com/spAzVzoOYfb

The main noticeable non-cosmetic difference between the 1990 IBM and 2021 Unicomp is sound: the Unicomp is a lot more "pingy". The 1990 one is also scratchier but I'm mostly blaming that on deeply embedded dirt from negligence by the previous owner, which I'll have to do a full teardown and bolt mod to fix. The Unicomp springs also feel perhaps a touch heavier but this could also be down to age and neglect on the IBM I have to hand.