deskthority

Please vote for nominees for the Best keyboard switch in 2014.

You can use a maximum of 5 votes.

This is round 2. This round is used to trim down the suggested nominees from round 1 - the 5 entries with most votes will be promoted to official nominees and make it into the third and final round.

See the first round for reference and motivations.

By voting in the third round of this category, you can win a NovaTouch TKL and Reaper from Cooler Master|CM Storm!

The second round ends on Wednesday 3 December, 00:00hrs UTC. You can change your vote until the end of the round. The full results will be published at the end of the Awards.

Currently ahead are, in alphabetical order:

Cherry MX Black
IBM beam spring
IBM Model F capacitive buckling spring
Nixdorf black
NovaTouch TKL - Topre hybrid capacitive switch

Yet again, we learn that voting is a really bad way to pick keyboard switches. Model F switches already won last year (or rather “buckling spring” won, showing a picture of a Model F hammer).

If any kind of Cherry MX switch wins this category, I’m going to laugh. There’s no way a linear MX switch beats out all the fantastic linear switches from the 70s on merit unless the main criterion is “what can I buy in a new keyboard”.

Well, that's a part of it. Especially if you're not fully end-game on layouts and fully stocked (home and work boards, spares, etc.), availability matters.

I like Matias loud switches. They may not be the perfect ALPS switch, the romanticized simplified white from when you could get any number of used FK-2001s for a dollar a piece from the local university's computer graveyard shop, but you can get them brand new and unworn, promising a consistent experience, in any quantity you may need, at a very reasonable price.