Most people understand the importance of good peripherals. Having wrist pain from your mouse? Try a trackball or vertical mouse. Getting eye strains from your monitor? Invest in a better and bigger one that lets you sit back further (or just… take a break you know). Are your stock earbuds from your phone crappy and uncomfortable? Invest in a solid pair of headphones. But amongst the recommended upgrade paths, the keyboard is often neglected despite it being the core method of interacting with any computer.
Why is this? The keyboard is arguably as important as, if not more than, other desk peripherals. Most people either use disappointing and unsatisfactory laptop keyboards, or are using the lowest tier OEM keyboards such as $5 Dell or HP ones that come bundled with office machines. If you’re willing to cash out over $1K for a good chair or display, you should be looking for a keyboard upgrade. This article goes into detail of why you would want to invest in one, and the key differences between mechanical and typical keyboards.
What is a mechanical keyboard?
In my opinion, the best way to explain mechanical keyboards to someone completely unaware is to show how they differ from ’typical’ keyboards and start by briefly explaining how the latter works.
The typical keyboard - rubber domes over membrane
If you aren’t aware of what type of keyboard yours is right now, chances are that you’re using a ’typical’ keyboard. This kind of keyboard will be referred to as a ‘membrane keyboard’ from now on. Here’s how a membrane keyboard works: inside of a membrane keyboard are two thin, bendy plastic sheets with some circuits printed on it, these are the top and bottom membranes. On top of the membranes is a sheet of rubber domes. This layer of plastic and rubber is encased in a plastic shell, which is the exterior you see. When you press a key down, you push a rubber dome onto the top membrane, make it touch the bottom membrane and activate a circuit, which alerts the keyboard that you pressed a key. The keyboard then tells the computer that you pressed x key. Here’s some traits that membrane keyboards exhibit by their design.
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They’re simple and dirt cheap to make so build quality, usability and durability is terrible
There’s no metal in a membrane keyboard. All you have is a plastic sheet, some rubber domes on top of it, and those two are encased in more plastic. The materials cost and design simplicity means that mass production is easy and is why a cheap keyboard can be found for less than $5 online.
Since everything is thin plastic and rubber, these keyboards have low build quality. You can easily bend them out of shape, they weigh less than a bottle of water, and develop problems with relatively little use. Because you’re disforming rubber domes millions of times by squishing them to use the keyboard, the rubber will wear out and the material’s natural tendency to stiffen causes tearing, brittleness, and an unpleasant typing experience. This is very noticable with old and heavily used keyboards found in public spaces that really need to be mashed on to type anything. Sometimes the height adjustment legs at the bottom will snap off from being low quality and now the keyboard wobbles or rattles everytime you type. The membranes will also see some wear, such as the circuit traces becoming oxidized and less effective at registering keypresses so you end up with more typos. You also see problems with wearing keycaps like becoming extremely greasy and shiny, or legends fading out that may negatively impact typing.
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They’re all the same
All membrane keyboards feel virtually identical. The biggest difference you would see are features like bluetooth, media control keys, or other gimmicks but all membrane boards feel the same at heart because they all use the same design. There’s no variety, unlike every other product type out there. All chairs and mice feel different, headphones sound different, displays look different, but all membrane keyboards feel the same. In simpler terms, no matter what brand you buy your membrane keyboard from; whether it’s the free Dell keyboard you have or a $100 scam from Razer (yes, this exists), they all feel similar and will end up in the same condition: worn out and needing a replacement rather soon.
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They have a big design flaw
To activate a key on membrane keyboards, you need to press the key all the way down, or ‘bottom out’ as it’s also called. Because of the membrane keyboard design, to activate a key the rubber dome needs to contact the membrane circuit. The only way to make the layers touch is to press the rubber all the way down until it touches the membrane. As the rubber stiffens and membrane loses sensitivity, this becomes harder and you start to type harder and mash your fingers. This leads to using more force to type and can cause discomfort, not to mention the more frequent typos you’ll be dealing with. From personal experience, this is the biggest problem I have with membrane keyboards; as they age, typing physically becomes harder and uncomfortable: This downside will make more sense once you read the advantage list for mechanical keyboards, but if you encountered this problem, you would also understand immediately.
There are a lot more flaws that could be said about membrane keyboards, but they don’t make a lot of sense until you try a mechanical keyboard. So let’s move on for now and explain how mechanical keyboards avoid these problems.
Enter the mechanical keyboard
Important term to know:
- Switch
- An individual unit used to activate keys. Each switch activates one key, so a full-sized mechanical keyboard typically has 104 switches in US ANSI layout.
Below is a list of the reasons why mechanical keyboards are appealing to people.
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They’re well built and are durable
Mechanical keyboards tend to use a lot of better materials. For instance, instead of a membrane with electric traces drawn on them, most mechanical keyboards use PCBs with proper copper traces; this solves the membrane oxidation problem. Most mechanical keyboards use a decent amount of metal in the assembly which increases weight and therefore perceived build quality, but also physically enhances properties such as rigidity, toughness, i.e. actual build quality. Unless you intentionally attempt to destroy the keyboard, it’s going to be functional for a very long time; treat it well and it will probably last for life.
And if something does go bad, you can fix the keyboard! Mehchanical keyboards, unlike membrane keyboards, are possible to repair and swap broken parts or even enhance them. Because each switch activates one key, you can swap it out if it breaks and you’re capable of it. No need to throw away broken mechanical keyboards, repair it if you’re comfortable with that. -
They feel nicer to use
This is one of the biggest selling points for mechanical keyboards: they feel nicer to type on. Membrane keyboards tend to get more unpleasant to use as they age and physically degrade, such as the rubber stiffening or membrane oxidizing.
Remember the ‘bottom out’ problem I talked about membrane keyboards having? Mechanical keyboards don’t have this problem because (1) they’re better built and wear never becomes this big of a problem, and (2) mechanical keyboards use distinct designs that activate keys before bottoming out. This means that you can type in a more relaxed manner and with less force, making typing easier. However, feeling nicer doesn’t mean that you’ll suddenly start typing faster with mechanical keyboards or improve in games. Anyone trying to tell you that is (1) either misinformed, or (2) is a gaming company whose marketing you shouldn’t fall for.
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They’re all pretty unique
Mechanical keyboards have varying switch designs. Most use metal contacts (similar mechanism to rubber and membrane), some use magnets, some others use light, some others use capacitance, and there’s a bunch of other exotic designs out there. The design variety means that each type feels different; if you tried a certain type of switch design and don’t like it, chances are there’s some other design that you may like. Having a diverse range of choice is always a good thing.
So in summary
A mechanical keyboard activates each key by individual units called ‘switches’. These keyboards are more durable and last longer, have better build quality, provide a more comfortable typing experience, and have a lot of variety.
Other differences from membrane keyboards
Mechanical keyboards aren’t perfect and aren’t for everyone. Most people that try one have no problems switching, but occasionally there are some that find the differences to be uncomfortable. Here’s a list of some common points against mechanical keyboards.
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Price
The biggest turn off for people is the higher price tag. It’s kind of obvious, but a higher quality product with less mass-production will cost more money. In my opinion, decent mechanical keyboards start at around the $80 USD mark and get better to around $120, while the extreme high end can reach thousands of dollars for diehard hobbyists. The lowest price for mechanical keyboards I’ve ever seen is around $30-40, but at this level quality really drops off and isn’t worth getting in my opinion. Compared to a cheap membrane keyboard that you can find anywhere for less than $15, mechanical keyboards seem expensive. The better way to think of this is to be aware that you’re paying for a product that can last you for life if you don’t handle it roughly, and it’s repairable anyways.
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Increased weight and height
Because of the more solid materials used to build mechanical keyboards, they’re heavier by quite a bit. Since a keyboard is going to be sitting on a desk, this shouldn’t be a problem but be aware of it if weight is somehow an important factor to you. These keyboards are also taller than the average membrane keyboard due to the switch design and assembly. This often causes transitioning people to change their typing posture, such as raising the wrists (which is a good thing to do anyways). The extra height also comes with an increased key travel, i.e. the distance needed to bottom out a key. Some people don’t like the increases ‘floatiness’ and prefer shorter travel keys found on laptops. If you’re one of these people, keep in mind that some mechanical keyboards use low-profile switches that are akin to thin laptop keyboards.
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Different typing feel Earlier, I said that mechanical keyboards feel nicer to type on. While this is generally true, there are always exceptions. Some people don’t like how a mechanical keyboard feels, even though this is a minority. These keyboards feel very different to typing on membrane keyboards, so often the best way to see for yourself is to go into a electronics retailer and try typing on whatever mechanical keyboards they have. You’ll be able to experience a limited but real example of how some feel.
And that’s it for now
There’s a lot more to cover before talking about how to buy a mechanical keyboard the smart way, so I’ll cut the article here to not drag on any longer. I’ll post more content about where to go from here such as things to avoid, elaborating on switch designs (this is important), how to go about getting your first board, and where you can go beyond from there. So far, we’ve covered the reasons why people buy mechanical keyboards and hopefully some of it made sense to you. Next will be what to avoid, so that if you decide to rush ahead and buy something at least you know what not to get.