Switch Try Numpad version 2. Round 2: EUROPE

[Acanthophis]

START OF EUROPE STNv2 TOUR
Managed by : Acanthophis

Subscription starts : Already started!
Subscription ends : 31-03-2013 (dd-mm-yy)

If you want to participate, fill out the form (google docs), and I will manage it from there.

NOTE: I, Acanthophis, the sinklist manager, will guide the process for you, I will tell you what to do and what I need from you.

Tour process

After the subscription ended, I will sort every participant according to their country. To save time and shipping costs. Start will be the Netherlands (the STNv2 is located in NL).
You will always get the address of the participant next in line from me. You will always provide me with the tracking ID.
The recipient will always get the tracking ID, so he has a fair idea when the package will arrive.
This will be done by the PM system here on DT.

A SurpriseBag will be shipped with the sinklist item. If you like something that's inside, you are allowed to swap it for something equal in value, preferably more, so the total value of the bag increases. The contents of the bag are for the sinklist manager (me) so he can be rewarded for his efforts.


Terms of the Switch Try Numpad version 2 (important!! must read!!):

• 1. Be a registered member of DT.
  2. You need to provide your actual full name and home address. NO work address!
  3. Make sure you are aware of the costs of international tracked shipping!
  4. Do NOT change/alter/damage/break the item! Do NOT pull any of the keycaps!
  5. Take a week (7 days, ±1day) to sample. 9 days are the absolute maximum! If you have trouble, contact the manager.
  6. Write a short review about your experiences with the item.
  7. ALWAYS ship the item with tracking! If you can't provide tracked shipping, you are not allowed to participate.

Read the terms? You sure? Did you fully understand and agree with them? Alright

>>Form<<

*Disclaimer*: I will keep a record of all addresses. Your personal data is safe with me, I will not use it for any purpose next to the STNv2 tour, nor will I share it with anyone. After the end of this tour, I will delete all personal data.




If you have any questions left, feel free to ask. Either in this thread or PM me directly



________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The STNv2 - Introduction

The Switch Try Numpad version 2 is ready -> Cherrys and Alps together in a functionally working bundle! (This one is done by Mrinterface and CeeSA ). Both MX and Alps and as a bonus the cherry ML!

Ghetto reds are black MX with blue/brown spring
Ergo Clears are clears with blue/brown spring


If you still need further information on the device, ask away. If I can't answer the question myself, hopefully Mrinterface or CeeSA will chip in

[Acanthophis]

Participation list (unsorted)

• pheo
• t4ub3
• hostcontroller
• Inie

Participation list

• t4ub3 [received | sent]
• hostcontroller [received | sent]
• Inie
• pheo
• Megagil

[Acanthophis]

<reserved>

[pheo]

Hello,
I submitted the form. Thank you Acanthophis for your effort on managing the list.

[Acanthophis]

Subscription phase got prolonged due to difficulties on Mrinterface's side. Subspriction time ends now on 31-03-2013.

[Acanthophis]

Only one day to go, now is still the chance to enlist!

[Muirium]

I'm tempted, Acanthophis. Got a ballpark estimate for how much this will cost to send to the next in line? Not only am I new to the process, but I've never shipped a parcel abroad.

[Acanthophis]

Depends on the shipping costs of the carrier you decide to pick.
I, for instance, would pay 8,90€ for insured shipping from Germany to the UK.

[Muirium]

Fair enough. I'm already in the Topre cluster and the big switch try bag now so I'll pass. Thanks anyway.

[Acanthophis]

No problem.


Although there are only four participants, this Tryout stars NAOW!
The STNv2 is still with Daniel in Germany. I sorted out the participation list by country and updated it. #2
I'll contact Daniel and provide him with the address of the first participant. A tracking ID will be given to you.

I hope you'll enjoy the STNv2 and post a quick review in the tryout thread

[pheo]

Cool, so as I see on the list I am the last one. But I guess it wont be a long wait.

[Inie]

My first time getting to use mechanical keys!

After obsessing on reviews and videos, I'm looking forward to this.

[t4ub3]

Yay, im on top of the list Thx to Acanthophis for your effort!

[t4ub3]

I recieved the Numpad yesterday. Gonna type some words about it this week.

@Acanthophis: Can you give me the adress of the next on the list?

[Acanthophis]

Can you give me the adress of the next on the list?

Sure, that's why I'm here for

[t4ub3]

Hey Guys. Sorry, im a bit late with my little review. But the Numpad is already on the road to the next one.

The first thing i noticed: tactile switches are crap for me. I'm not able to type without bottom out, so the resistance at the trigger point is completely waste
Ok, left were MX Blacks, Reds, Ghetto Reds and two of the Alps.

Blacks i already use on my Cherry G80, like them, but after long time of typing, my fingers start to hurt a bit cause of the strong spring. But then i tried the Reds and thats the thing i wanted Very easy to type, linear - very nice for me. There wasnt really a big difference to the ghetto reds, so i will focus on the normal reds to safe myself the effort on modding the switches.

The Alps also were not bad, but they felt a bit spongy to me, not as exact as the mx switches. hard to describe... not really my switches.

Oh, and the Cherry MLs ... i love their flat shape and the short path, almost like the scissor switches on my cherry evolution stream which i really like typing on. The bad thing about the MLs is the really, really strong spring, sadly a dealbreaker for me.

Ok, thats it. Thanks to Acanthopthis, i found 'my' switch I hope my impressions help other interested people and sorry for my (hopely not too) bad english

[Muirium]

Your English is fine, and so is your logic. If the tactile bump isn't telling you anything, then linear is the way to go. And if black is too stiff, red is there instead. The main criticism people have of reds is how easy it is to make mistakes on them. Light keys are sensitive to resting fingers.

I think I'd rather have a full board of reds than blacks. It might make me less lazy a typist! But I think the only way for me to tell is to try a full keyboard.

[Inie]

I've played with the keys a bit, and it seems I bottom out with all the switches.
Alps amortise the end a bit, the others don't.
Blue is fun to type on, I like the clicky sounds.
Black is the firmest and the most comfortable.

I didn't really know a proper way to test things. In the end I settled on (Linux):

# codes are from `xev |grep keycode`
# paste `setxkbmap fr` (with the code for your layout) to restore
xmodmap \
-e "keycode 13 = Left" -e "keycode 14 = Right" \
-e "keycode 52 = Left" -e "keycode 10 = Right" \
-e "keycode 55 = Left" -e "keycode 25 = Right" \
-e "keycode 27 = Left" -e "keycode 39 = Right" \
-e "keycode 57 = Left" -e "keycode 32 = Right" \
-e "keycode 44 = Left" -e "keycode 45 = Right" \
-e "keycode 41 = Left" -e "keycode 42 = Right" \
-e "keycode 56 = Left" -e "keycode 54 = Right"

and played SuperHexagon.

With this game I prefer blacks, but I bottom out everything.
For typing (couldn't test it in anger, but these are my impressions), I prefer browns.
I think with a slightly lighter touch I wouldn't bottom them out.
(I eliminated the blues, they would be too noisy in the long run)

Now there's a downside in choosing. Browns in SuperHexagon are uncomfortable, whereas blacks for typing seem acceptable if worse than what I currently have (I have a slim G85 with scissors, blacks seem to require more movement to register than the scissors take to bottom out). But typing matters to me more; so I might switch to brown and keep my current keyboard around for the games it isn't good at.

[pheo]

Great. I am waiting for the numpad. What is the weight of the parcel?

[Inie]

993g :P

[Megagil]

Inie.
what do you think about reds ?

[pheo]

I got the package today. I havent had time to play with it. I will try tonight.
Thanks for the candies.

[pheo]

Here are my impressions:
Alps:
Never tried Alps, it is true that I have only gone with cherries mx in my experiences of mech boards. Aside I have an old acer mechanical waiting to be retrobrighted.
My favourite alps are the grey one. They are a bit clicky and I think that this is how I imagined the cherry mx browns.
The second alps I like are the white ones. I dont feel right with the black alps I dont know why.
Cherry:
I have been using reds in the last 3 weeks as my main switches so I am a bit influenced by this.
I will start with the biggest disappointment: Browns.
Before I got my first mech board I have a lot of doubts between browns an blues and as I said before I dont know if these browns are ok but it is not how I expected. I am happy I finally got a board with blues. I find them (browns) nearly non clicky. I like the grey alps more.
As I said before I have been using reds and although I have more typos with it I like em very much, so I feel very hard the blacks, but I understand why they are a good choice for gaming.
I got a nice surprise with ghetto they are very comfortable to write on it.
I dont know if it is so but I feel the clear stronger than blacks I didnt like it much. But ergo was fine to me.
I didnt like ml swithces too.
So the board will leave tomorrow if nothings happens.

[Muirium]

Your reactions feel very familiar, Pheo, because I had almost precisely the same when I opened up my switch sample bag from Mr.Interface.

Cherry MX browns do indeed feel almost non-tactile to me. Fortunately there are lots of other tactile switches in the set, and I found I preferred likely all of them to MX brown. There's something rough about Cherry's tactile mechanism, which makes it feel poor to me when done on a light switch like brown. MX clear feels a lot more like what I expected brown to be: its bump is far more noticeable. I get that clears are too stiff for many people's tastes, though. But if I was going for a tactile Cherry, I'd definitely go clear; not even ergo.

Blues, however, are wonderful! And I even find I prefer them with an O-ring on, which was the opposite of what I expected. I quite like MX white, too; which is a much subtler click than blue and a bit stronger, but otherwise very familiar and highly tactile. I reckon I'd like green a lot, as I do prefer tough springs when it comes to tactile switches.

But when it comes to linears, I'm with you: red is brilliant. I don't know why black doesn't win again on springiness; this is the kind of thing you can only discover with your fingers and not your head! MX red is the closest Cherry does to Topre, which I also got to try. Red has the least scratch of any Cherry switch and quite impressed me for that. Still not Topre smooth but quite nice nonetheless. I think it's Cherry's tactile bump mechanism that I don't like. The clicky switches feel better than the pure tactiles to me, and I love the click, but the linears feel better still.

There's a whole other world of these comparisons among the Alps switches, which I'll write up once our good mad scientist sends me some more Alps keycaps and Matias switches. Alps are certainly direct contenders with Cherry when you've both at hand. I love some of their clicks. All lower pitched than Cherry's, though; which has a certain precision in sound, if not in finger feel. Another fine click is the Omron switch. But I'd have to go on quite a quest to find a keyboard full of those!

But I fear what my taster has done is led me off in search of buckling springs. They're a monster. And a clicky one at that.

[pheo]

Very well exposed man, I agree with you word by word.

[Megagil]

I agree with Muirium.

I don't like any Alps.

Cherrys:
Black: I feel like my fingers will get tired of using them.

Brown: Meh, that bubble that sometimes you do not notice.

Blue: Funny. But very noisy.

Red: I like them very much. Almost perfect. I wanted to test them with the O-ring...

Ghetto: Fine. Like red, much better then black.

So, my favorites are Red. The only thing I think could be improved is when the button reaches the bottom, and the plastic scraping plastic when the button is moving up and down.

[user65]

Hi there, is this still on? If so I'd be glad to have a try. Thx

[Bojo]

Me 2

[CeeSA]

Is there any Status for this beautiful item? Where is it?

[Mrinterface]

It's at my place....