Help buying first mechanical keyboard!

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(TL;DR go to bottom)
So i've never used/had a mechanical keyboard before, and hearing about how magically incredible they supposedly are i'm itching to upgrade from my rubberdome G15 which has served me well.

My main issue is what colour Cherry switches would be ideal? from researching I understand it's all down to personal preference but I have no idea where I could try out different mechanical boards since I don't know anyone who has them, figured it'd be best to ask people who have experience with them :)

I consider myself a relatively quick typist, averaging 128wpm on my G15 but I can feel it getting tiresome typing at that speed on it.
For games I mostly play RTS, i've heard conflicting opinions on which are best for typing on, Reds are too light and very prone to typographical errors, Blues tactile bump gets in the way etc so I find it impossible to make up my mind.

To me Blues/Browns sound the best, but a particular board i'm interested in, the Corsair K90 (multimedia keys + back-lighting do it for me) only has red keys - again I hear great and bad things about these so I don't know if it's worth it.

TL;DR

What Cherry keys/board do you think are best for an RTS/fast typer? what keys do you prefer and why?
 
Blue switches = hard push typewriter feel to them

red switches = soft very little pressure to push them down.

Brown is the hybrid of the two.

blues are the best for typing, red is the best for fps gaming.

take your pick, RTS gaming will work on all of them.
 
For fast typing and RTS gaming, Browns and Reds would be the 2 to look at. Feedback is then a decision, do you like to feel when you have activated the key? Do you just want to bottom out all the time? I would go for browns, they are very good for typing and a lot of SC2 gamers like the ZOWIE Celeritas, though that comes with reds as well, so there is lots of choice.

How big is your budget?
 
Build Quality / Switch Colour > Added Features

You want browns by the sounds of it, unless you are okay with the huge noise Blues make. I personally am not a fan of the gaming orientated keyboard with back lighting, multimedia keys etc etc as I think they are gimmicky and just another thing to go wrong.

As such I rock a Filco Majestouch II with browns + DIy O-Ring dampening to remove some of the bottom out noise.

Buyer beware with mechs - Some brands/models do not have mech switches on all keys and skimp out on Funtion keys etc.

If you are buying a mech for quality you pay your money and get what you pay for, backlighting and multimedia keys should take a back seat when spending this much in my opinion. You can still use Global Hotkey combos for Winamp etc and do you really need to see your keys in pitch black?

Quality, in your choice of switch colour with Full N-Key rollover. Anything else is not necessary!
 
I have the corsair k90, great board, great backlight that can be turned off if you want, great build quality, aluminum base plate, F keys are not cherry switches neither are the home and page up key area or the g keys, but main board is and arrow and number pad area is, the blue lighting is actually a different shade on the keys to distinguish them, overall it's a 10 for quality and feel, and a 6 for not all keys being cherry keys.

When I was looking at mechanical boards, it was the wrist rest that sold me the corsair k90 in the end, and I have not once regretted it, it's fine to type on, but you do need to be precise as just a small mistake will make typing errors quite easy.
 
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I have just recently moved from a G15 to a Zibal 60 mechanical Keyboard and am loving it, keys feels so much more solid and responsive.

Mine uses Black MX cherry switches which i find great for all round typing and gaming, some say the Black switches can feel heavy after long gaming sessions, but not to me, highly recommend, plus it has a nice green backlighting to it :)

Price may deter some, but if you have the cash i say go for it, no matter what mechanical keyboard you end up with it will be far better than a standard one anyday.
 
Thanks for the replies, very helpful :)

Well initially my aim was to go for the K90, so just under £100 though ideally i'd want to spend just over half of that. Backlighting isn't necessary, i'm just drawn to having a sexy blue-lit board.

It does seem like browns would be ideal as you suggested Sin, but I haven't seen many keyboards with them though I think I could get used to the noise of blues as they do sound somewhat rewarding (I watch a streamer who uses one with cherry blues).

As i'm using a rubber dome board I guess I bottom out a lot, so the lightness of the reds does sound daunting.. did it take long before you got used to them Tweaker?

Still not sure, if anyone knows some decent low-priced (£60-80ish) boards with browns/blues i'd probably take that over the K90.
Cheers again!
 
Sin_Chase said:
Blacks are actually the worst switches to type on as they are fully linear with no break away point.
Click to expand...

Fair point, but unless you are typing a novel or 100 page essay i cannot see much difference apart from the Blacks been the fairly quiet to type on, i managed to type this without an errrrorrrs :)
 
Sin_Chase said:
Blacks are actually the worst switches to type on as they are fully linear with no break away point.
Click to expand...

i'm starting to get accustomed to blacks after more than a week of constant use. once you suss out the activation point, you end up not pushing the buttons down very far, thus getting a much more comfortable and speedy typing experience. i think you do need a good period of getting used to blacks to get anything out of them
 
I play a lot of Starcraft 2 and I use a Filco Majestouch 2 TKL ninja with Cherry MX brown switches.

It's pretty much perfect for this game, as well as typing and any purpose tbh. There's nothing that brown switches are bad at.

It won't increase your APM but it will make everything feel 100x more satisfying :D
 
If you can't find a brown switch keyboard at a price you're willing to pay, then I'd recommend going for reds instead. They have the same actuation force as browns (very light) but they just lack the little bump. The bump is very subtle on the browns anyway, so the reds wont feel massively different. I'd go with a CM Storm Quickfire rapid. It is the same OEM as my £120 Filco. The K60 would be my 2nd choice.
 
Hmm i'm torn between Blues and Browns from opinions, but I feel the Blues might be more for me since i've grown accustomed to the sound of them from the people I skype with/listen to on streams (couple of friends have Blackwidow keyboards).

Been thinking between the Q-pad MK-80 and Ducky shine, they seem to be well regarded but what's your opinions on them? reason being is they have media keys and backlighting (I don't need it, but I love the look of it + I play in the dark frequently). From what I saw Filco's don't have either of those so I might pass on that.
If I were to get one of the two i'm thinking the Q-pad since I can't find the Ducky at any European retailers :confused:
 
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Personally I like the clears best but hard to find and even harder to find good keyboards that use clears.

Blacks which I use extensively are very bad for typing, very bad for pretty much anything except hardcore FPS gaming which they excel at.

Browns/reds as mentioned are the best compromise between all the different styles but personally I hate the noise they make.
 
I really liked the IBM mech keyboards a lot better than the corsair k90. I have it and dont like it. Typing accuracy is almost nothing, feel of the keys are not very good like a smooth chalk board so i make sure not to get a nail on it. The non-mech keys pretty bad, mainly due to the mech keys being sooo very easily pressed, then when you use the non-mech keys you really need to change the way you hit the keys, you have to press all the way down.

Anyways plenty of people think its a great keyboard, i dont but if you can try a keyboard before buying one.
 
I use a Filco Majestouch with browns at home and now also have a CM Storm Quick Fire with browns which I use at work. The CM storm (which was an import, ANSI layout) is 10keyless but otherwise its a great typing experience (and I write on it for a large part of my slightly endless working day). I find they are both very quiet and it doesn't take long to get used to where you have to press them to to get a fast and quiet experience. The Storm is also built really well but unfortunately they don't sell the brown or blue versions in the UK currently, as far as I am aware. If they did I would recommend one, a very good board for the money.

I started with a Black Widow with blues and I like the browns better, not just due to the noise but they feel faster to type on (I touch type). I also found I hit the macro keys by accident and although it doesn't feel cheap it still didn't feel as solid and good to use as the ones I use now. The blues were good but the browns just suit my slightly lighter typing style a bit better I think.

If you are interested in an old IBM board (which are a different sort of switch) you could take a look at the Unicomp boards..they produce the models now and so you can pick up a new one without having to try and find one second hand.
 
Could I also hijack this thread too, I'm in a situation where in I purchased a Microsoft Sidewinder X4 a few months back. I needed a new keyboard at the time and this had good reviews. Whilst I have got used to it I use it predominantly for gaming however other people use it too and have mentioned it isn't comfortable to type with other time. I understand what they mean since it is quite uncomfortable to type this reply.

This has now become especially apparent when typing up a business model and my wrist hurts! I think it's because of the wrist rest angle and the low flat keys.

Given the keyboard is used for typing mainly, probably more so now, say a 3/4 to 1/4 gaming ratio would you say the blue switches are the best or still best to go browns for a hybrid feel?

For anyone who has blue switches is it still ok to game on them? Let's assume most of my gaming is mainly FPS.
 
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