Blue

Hello, and welcome to Tisha Talks Switches. I'm Erez from ZSA and with me here today is Tisha, our resident switch expert and support lead. How are you, Tisha?

Hi, I'm good. How are you?

Pretty good.

Good.

It's kind of drizzly here today. Not as nice as yesterday, but I make do.

Yeah, it's been kind of wet here as well.

[laughs] All right. So this is our Blue episode.

[laughs]

Cherry MX Blue.

Yeah.

A clicky switch.

Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Okay. So I guess a good starting point is what is a clicky switch? I mean, MX Blue is not the only one, right?

Right. There are a lot of clicky switches. I think people who like them, like them a lot. And I think people who don't like them dislike them a lot. [laughing] But it's one of the three, I guess, kind of main classifications for switches, clicky.

Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And so you said it's, it's, it's interesting. It's one of the more controversial types, right? I mean, I can't really think of anyone saying, "Oh, I hate linear switchers." Right. But you definitely get that kind of feeling about clicky switches. Right?

Right. Yeah. I think the more, uh, let's say the more senses that are involved, maybe, the stronger the opinion.

I hear, yeah. Good thing there's no smelly switches.

[laughs]

So if I'm just kind of getting started and I'm thinking, "Oh, do I want to go clicky? Do I want to go maybe tactile," when is a clicky a non-starter or who might be a good fit for a clicky switch of any sort?

Right. Well, and I'm sorry, I didn't really answer your question before, which is that a clicky switch is, um, you can think of it like a tactile switch with an added click.

Hmm.

So there is just another, depending on the switch, another little mechanism or just another one or two little pieces inside the switch that make a clicking sound, kind of an extra clicky sound in addition to whatever noise you get from typing on a tactile switch.

Right.

So it's noisier. I think a lot of times it just comes down to the fact that some people like that, you know, that typing on a mechanical keyboard, click, click, click sound, and maybe they like that extra sensory feedback. So you're getting visual from seeing what you're typing if you're looking at the screen and typing along, you're getting tactile because clicky switches have a tactile bump and you're getting auditory feedback because you're hearing that click.

Right. So in a sense, if that sort of thing kind of helps you get into a state of flow, it's more immersive in a way. Would you say that?

I think that makes sense. If it helps you to hear yourself working, you know I guess immersive is a, is a good word to surround more of your senses with, with the work that you're doing, for lack of a better phrase, right. And the people who might not want to consider a clicky switch are, people who for instance, need to type or take notes while on Zoom calls.

Oh, yeah.

[laughs]

You don't want to be that guy.

Right. Unless you want to be quick with your mute button a lot. Or if you share a workspace either, you know, in an office, you have an office mate, or you're in an open workspace and the people you share your office space aren't into, to noise. Um, or if you work from home and the people you live with don't want to hear you typing.

Right. Because, yeah. I mean, just as you get into the flow and kind of get into this, you know, burst of typing and, and, and thoughts just pouring out for somebody else, your work becomes incredibly distracting. Like, "Oh no, he's at it again."

Right.

Right. So then speaking of flow, would you, and, and, and this immersiveness, would you say clicky switches in general typically have some sort of an impact on typing speeds?

I don't know. I think that something like that would completely depend on the individual. I think for me, it probably doesn't. I do think that I'm more comfortable or maybe the right way to say it is just that I prefer to type on a tactile or clicky switch.

Right.

But I can't necessarily say that they affect my typing speed. Now that could be really different for, for someone else who maybe relies more or gets more benefit from the, the sound, the auditory feedback.

Mm-hmm [affirmative].

It would be interesting to hear from people who, who do think that something like that affects their typing speed. I would love to hear how and why they think that is.

Right. I can say I kind of, I had a super clicky switch, Kailh Thick Gold.

Mm-hmm [affirmative].

And, uh, also known as the Bronze and I switched to a linear one, Silver, and I don't think that made any difference for my typing speed personally. Like the clicky one was fun, but really it does not work on calls.

[laughs] Right.

And so, okay. So I guess really the focus today is MX Blue. What, what is that switch like?

I tend to compare switches to Cherry MX Brown because it's one, it's a switch that a lot of people are familiar with, even if they don't use it as their every day switch, a lot of people have tried it at least. So it's kind of an easy base for comparison.

Okay.

So the Cherry MX blue is a bit heavier than the Cherry MX Brown. I tend to consider it kind of a medium weight switch as opposed to the Cherry MX Brown, which I wishy-washily call a light-medium switch. But the blue, you'll notice that it's heavier. You don't need to pound on it. It's not super heavy, it's not sluggish feeling. But there's more weight behind it when you type on it. And the tactile, a tactileness, tactility, I'm not [laughs] sure.

I say tactility. But I don't know.

Okay. Right. Is sharper and firmer than the Cherry MX Brown. Just a few minutes ago, I was experimenting a little bit with two Brown switches, Cherry MX Brown and Kailh Box Brown, and the Cherry MX Blue. Pressing each of them really slowly. And if you do that with the Brown switches, it's still pretty easy to press through the tactile bump. You feel it, but it doesn't really stop you. If you're pressing a Blue slowly and gently, the tactile bump is a, a little more of a stop. It's kind of easier to be, it's uh, firm enough that.. it's like, oh, you F- you feel this, this thing, that you have to push through. It is a more, a more tactile, tactility?

Firmer. Okay. So then...

A firmer bump.

This, this kind of brings to mind if I'm one of the people who likes to rest my fingers on the board as I'm thinking.

Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Am I less likely to actuate an MX Blue? Is it kind of safer in that regard?

I think so. Um, yeah, I think it would be. You can't just lightly tippy-tappy on it to type so just resting your fingers or, you know, just lightly kind of brushing against the keyboard is probably not going to result in key presses.

That's good.

Yeah.

And so what about the sound profile, like, compared to other clicky switches? What does an MX Blue sound like to you?

It is, it's a high pitched click.

Like annoying? High pitched sounds kind of annoying, I have to say.

Right. You know, I mean, honestly, I think some people do find it annoying. I don't, because , it's not like someone [laughs] screeching in a high-pitched screech, which is a continuous sound. It's a, um, a series of discrete short sounds, if that makes sense.

Mm-hmm [affirmative].

So, um, on one hand, I would say that it's not really a shrill sound.

Mm.

On the other hand, not very often, but I have heard one or two people describe it as kind of shrill. So it really depends on your tastes, your preferences for sound. Sounds are, can be hard to describe without comparing them to something else. And I'm trying to think of something to compare this to. It's kind of the click of a small plastic piece.

Plastic? Interesting.

A little bit. Yeah. Maybe a better term would be the click of something that's lightweight. It sounds like the piece that's making the click is something that's lightweight, not something that's heavy and more thuddy.

Right. Which is something that some people look for. I mean, that, that substantial thing. So it doesn't feel very substantial.

I would say that the switch feels medium-substantial, but sounds light. If that makes sense.

Yeah. That's, that's what I mean. Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, it doesn't sound substantial, like it feels, yeah, that's, that's an important distinction to make with a switch that you type on.

Right.

And I guess, I guess one thing I've noticed with clicky switches in general is that most typists, I think, certainly I, don't just hear the click itself because it's not like, you know, I very carefully type just until it clicks. I, I tend to bottom out. So I do get like a plastic-on-plastic thwacking as the keycap bottoms out onto the switch. And then when I release, you know, like the, the click kind of adds to that auditory landscape, if you will, it's not like an isolated series of high-pitched clicks. It comes together with all the other sounds that happen anyway, when I type, even if I'm using linear switches.

Right. Totally. It's not the only sound that your keyboard will, will make most likely. If you're actually typing at kind of a standard typing speed, I don't think you're going to hear separate sounds. It's all kind of going to be one sound, but that one sound is a mix of different things. It's the click that the switch makes, it's, if you bottom out, it's the keycap hitting the bottom of the case, plus whatever resonance your desk and room make. So yeah, when we talk about the sounds a keyboard makes, it's... a lot of things go into it.

Right.

Um-

Right. Yeah, definitely like the resonance is a good point because the ErgoDox EZ, it has a bit more of an echo chamber than the Moonlander or the Planck EZ, right? Which are slimmer boards. And so the same switch will sound different. I guess we touched on this a little bit in the introduction as well.

Right. Yeah, definitely. And how you type on a keyboard will make it sound different. If you're kind of really in the groove and typing quickly, your keyboard is probably going to sound different than if you're kind of struggling or thinking hard and typing kind of slowly and hesitantly.

Right. Right. I think there was a customer recently told us that think his assistant or something, they always know when this person is in the flow because the typing sounds so drastically different.

[laughs]

Like they would walk in their office and say, "Oh, you're angry typing again."

[laughs] Right.

Right.

I think the last time that I worked in an office and, uh, the wall between my office and the one adjacent was not a very thick one, and my desk was kind of up against the wall. The person in the other office could hear when I was agitated. [laughs]

Right. For sure. So then obviously Blue isn't the only clicky switch.

Mm-hmm [affirmative].

What other switches are we going to cover?

Wow. There's, [laughs] there's a big range. Um, a couple of, or I guess some of the switches that we'll talk about in the future are, um, a couple of them are speed switches, which I think is something we briefly touched on in the introduction. This is a slightly different type of switch. And we carry two Kailh switches that are speed switches, and that are clicky. And, um, a couple others, one Cherry and one Kailh that are clicky, not speed switches, but have a... kind of different sound profile than the rest. The White switches are clicky but I don't know, different, they sound different.

Mm-hmm [affirmative].

So things that you might want to look for in a clicky switch, well, aside from all of the things that you're already thinking about with a switch, "Do I want something heavy or light, is my keyboard backlit? Do I need an RGB switch?" Is "what do I want it to sound like? Do I want kind of a light click, just a, kind of a tippy-tappy click? Do I want a bigger sort of low-pitched boom," which is not a great word to describe this, none of the switches sound like a boom, but, I don't know, maybe.

Or a "thock".

Right. "Do I want a tap or a crunch?" Maybe. "Do I want a tick or a tock?"

Right.

[laughs] yeah.

So then, I guess, I guess to, to end off on the Blue, where would that fall? So a Blue would be more of a tick, more of a, on the, on the higher end of that spectrum?

Yeah, I think so.

Which can, you know, I'm, I'm just rethinking what I said about it being irritating. Yes, I think it can be irritating, but I think another way to read it, which is just so subjective, it's also in a sense maybe refined, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

It can be a gentle sound as well. That again depends on, on, on your room and your typing style and so on, but it can be a fairly gentle sound, maybe.

Right. It's probably, um, if you imagine a very kind of stereotypical tick-tock of a mechanical clock, not a big one, a small clock. So you get that tick, tick, tick.

Mm-hmm [affirmative].

It's, maybe something like that. And some people, I think find a rhythmic ticking to be soothing or to help with concentration, it can help drown out other maybe distracting noises that are going on. It really is a matter of taste and preference. There are people who love the sound of a Blue and people who don't like the sound of a Blue, but like the sound of something like a White switch. So it's a hard, it's not something, it's not a case where I can say that one is better than the other. Only that some people would prefer one type and some people will prefer another.

Yeah. I think that's part of what makes switches such an interesting rabbit hole, because it's not like you can just clearly say, "Oh, this is a bad switch, this is a good switch." Like, "this is the best", you know, it's, it's so variable in a subjective.

Right.

It's like half the fun, for me.

And you do see that. I mean, I am sure that pretty much everyone has seen, uh, you know, posts on social media or, you know, blog posts or reviews saying, you know, "Well, this switch is terrible. This one is bad. And I use something else and it's good." It's like, well, you know?

Right.

Um, it is for you, you, you kind of have to qualify all of these things that obviously, unless you're talking about something that actually doesn't function like it's supposed to, that's a different story, but, um, opinions, you know, it's kind of like music. Opinions on switches vary widely and are strongly held. And I think that you have to take anything you hear about switches, including from me, as opinions, you know?

Yep. Absolutely. I agree. Well, great. This was super interesting. I hope this episode gives people a sense of what we... our entirely subjective opinion [laughing] about Blue switches.

Right.

And yeah. Thank you for sharing your, your thoughts.

Sure. And it may sound like... I kind of get the feeling that it might sound like I don't like Blue switches, but that's not actually the case. I do like them.

Oh, okay.

I just don't type on them every day because I share my home working space. Um, [laughs] it's not just me in the house, so I use a tactile and not a clicky switch for my sort of everyday typing.

Yeah. Makes sense. Great. Well, thank you so much, Tisha.

Yeah, sure. Thank you.