9 Key Cherry MX Key Tester: (The one I used is no longer available)
How’s it going everybody this is beat the bush if you’re in the market for a mechanical keyboard you’ll likely need to try and figure out which color cherry mx switch you need now you can go on amazon and spend about 20 on one of these key testers i have a wasd 6 key tester here you’ll likely buy this try out once and never need to use it again once you figure out
Which key you need if you’re lucky you can borrow one but if not let me try and demonstrate it for you in this video even if you buy this thing you can push the keys and have an idea what it feels like but you won’t know when it actually activates because all these keys are actually not wired they’re just dead switches so what i’ve actually done is hooked all these
Switches up with leds there’s actually a spot in each key for the led let me show you my handy work here on the opposite side of this thing these two posts are the switch terminals this is the positive lead of the battery pack this is six volts it goes through the led over here and then comes out over here and then it goes through a resistor here and it goes through
The switch from here to here and then this bar is connected to the negative terminal of the battery pack all of these things are wired in parallel so i can push all of the buttons at once if i wanted to here’s my battery pack let me connect it so you can see i can push this one this one this one and there’s a light underneath i know this one is yellow because
I ran out of red leds the middle two are the linear switches which means as you increase the force you’re going to press it more and more the red one is the one i have on my keyboard and you see it has a 45 gram activation force and most people like it for gaming but i like to use mine for typing as well you see as i press it here it lights up in the middle and
I can still press it some more before it bottoms out of course on the black one i can press it and halfway it turns on and then it bottoms out you can’t see this on the video but it does feel like i have to put a little bit more pressure on it which is something i don’t like because i don’t want to fatigue my fingers too much when i’m typing i want it as light
As possible while still functioning so that’s why i like the red one more than the black next we’re going to look at the tactile switches which is the brown one over here and also this clear one over here now what does it mean when it’s tactile when you push it you can feel a little bump before it activates the brown one is a favorite for all purposes including
Typing and gaming the easiest way for me to describe this tactile feeling is if i run this pointer thing across the screwdriver you can feel like a little bump like that it feels just like that when you’re pushing these buttons it’s like you’re going over something the brown one is 45 gram and it has a tactile feeling the clear one you have to push a little bit
Harder and it has that tactile feeling which is something i don’t like because it causes fatigue because you gotta push it a little bit harder i guess i can get it to not activate sometimes so the red one people like to jam it right you just kind of jam and push it hard and activate it whereas the brown one when you’re typing you can actually not bottom out you
Can feel the tactile not bottom out and still push the key so people like to just push it halfway like that and they know they pressed it so that’s why this is popular for typing however i don’t enjoy this tactile feeling that’s why i went with the red one now the next one is the blue and green cherry mx switches these are clicky ones see you can hear the clicky
Sound this one is 50 gram activation force this one is 80 gram again this is a little bit too heavy but maybe for people with really fat fingers or a heavy hand they would want it to be heavier so that they don’t accidentally activate a switch typists kind of like this clicky one but if you’re in an office environment you really don’t want this clicky one because
Every single key you press is going to go click click click you might annoy some of your coworkers so you might not want to get a clicky one for a office environment and go with something that doesn’t click just maybe a tactile or even the red like me i have a feeling this green one is probably malfunctioning a little bit because it’s supposed to activate right
After it clicks instead this one i have to push a little bit harder it might have been damaged a little bit when i’m soldering so this one has this tactile one again this one has the tactile one and these things don’t have a bump so they’re linear so there it is i removed the cap and massaged the switch a little bit and it seems to work now i can push it halfway
And it’ll light up like that anyway i hope you enjoyed this video and this gives you clear indication of which key that you want to get don’t forget if you still want to get one of these key testers you can get it through my affiliate link down in the video description below and you can help support this channel other ways to support this channel is through the
Audible link down in the video description below or directly through my patreon link over here don’t forget to give me a like over here comment down below let me know what you think of putting leds in these key testers and don’t forget to subscribe over here thanks for watching
Transcribed from video
Which Cherry MX Key to use? | BeatTheBush By BeatTheBush