Author Topic: Kailh on Kale  (Read 7874 times)

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Offline merlin64

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Kailh on Kale
« on: Tue, 26 September 2017, 14:30:09 »
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tl;dr: It was delicious

https://imgur.com/a/lLHWR

Kale a leafy cabbage of the plant species Brassica oleracea. It’s low in calorie, high in fiber, zero fat and filled with powerful antioxidants. But since this is a mechanical keyboard forum, you might be more familiar with Kailh the switches available from the Kaihua Electronics company in China.
You may be familiar with Kailh if you owned a Razer keyboard back in 2014. Quite a few things have changed since then.

Kailh sent me a few loose switches from their clicky line-up. I’ll just briefly talk about each of them and offer some of my opinions. But you must all know…...I hate clicky switches. So I’ll try not to be biased in this review. I’ve linked an imgur album with more pictures for your perusal!


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Kailh PG1350
Despite being inspired by Cherry ML, keycap mount is not the same, and neither are the pins. You can’t just replace an ML with a PG1350 or vice versa. As of this review, there really are no aftermarket keycaps for these switches. However, there are keyboards from the Havit and Dareu brands. I dareu to havit!
The PG1350 comes in linear and tactile variants but as I said, I only received the clicky version. Unlike Cherry MX clicky switches, these use a click bar which give it a more crisp click, but to me it’s got a lower pitch and volume than what we’re used to when it comes to MX Blues.

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Kailh PG1511 (Speed Switch)
These are available in clicky, linear and tactile versions, with support for both through-hole and SMD LEDs. The through-hole LED types have lifetimes of 60 million for the click type and 70 million for the linear and tactile types.The SMD LED version has a lifetime of 70 million keystrokes across all versions. Why this is so different for SMD LED version? I don’t really know.
So I’ve always found these switches to be confusing. I’m used to the regular - red is linear, blue is clicky, and brown is tactile color scheme. For the speed switches, you got silver switches for linear, bronze switches for clicky, gold switches for a heavier clicky, and copper switches for tactile. I get copper and bronze confused for some reason.
A normal Cherry MX switch has a travel distance of 4mm and 2 mm pretravel, the Kailh switch has 3.5 mm travel distance, and 1.4 or 1.1 mm pre travel distance. This particular switch has 1.1 mm pretravel.

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Kailh PG1511F01 (Box Switches)
These aren’t as confusing. You got black and red for linear, brown for tactile, and the new one which I received, is white for linear stem with click bar. It’s not as linear feeling as you might think as you can actually feel a small bump right before the click occurs. The bump is smaller than MX blues or browns, so when you’re typing normally you probably won’t feel it. Can’t confirm as I don’t have a full board of them yet.
So what makes these different? First off, the stem is shaped like a box. These are also IP 56 certified. What does that mean? IP stands for Ingress Protection, the first number is for solids protection, and the 2nd number is for liquids protection, and basically the higher the number, the greater the protection. Solids have a max rating of 6 and liquids rating have a max rating of 8. This puts it at dust protected and water protected. Please don’t go taking your keyboard to the beach or burying it in the sand. While your switches may have an IP rating, the rest of your keyboard may not.
Both variants of these Cherry MX clone type switches are very hard to open. It might be because they are supposed to be more protected. For those of you who like modding your switches after you’ve already soldered them on, not even those switch plate cutouts will allow you to do it. Some actually say they are easier to open when loose, but I’ve always found it hard.

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Kailh PG1280 (Tesoro Agile Switch)
his next switch is interesting. It’s a low profile switch with a Cherry MX compatible stem. These aren’t as widely advertised as the other switches I’ve talked about. In fact I encountered this as part of the packaged keyboard in the Acer Predator computers. Other than that, the only other place to find this switch is on the Tesoro Gram Spectrum. Tesoro calls them their Agile switches.
So these have an MX stem, so any keycap on any of your MX keyboards will fit. The switches are also PCB compatible, ONLY if you snip off the PCB mounting pins. Even then it’s somewhat of a tight fit. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone has made an aftermarket plate to accommodate these switches. Once again, it uses a clickbar mechanism to do the click.

Conclusion
All these switches feel really smooth compared to their Cherry MX counterparts. I’d even argue that they are smoother than Gaterons. Unfortunately I don’t have a full keyboard with any of these switches. So I can’t say for sure that I like how they feel.
What I like best though is how they click. The clickbar mechanism changes the tone and the volume of the click to something a lot more pleasing to me. Before this, the only click I could tolerate are the ones from an SKCM Blue Alps board. These Kailh switches sound really good. Out of the switches I got to try, I think I’ll be using Box Whites in my next build.

Offline Zobeid Zuma

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #1 on: Tue, 26 September 2017, 16:06:34 »
Good report.  I would just mention a few things in addition.

The BOX white sample that I have here feels and sounds good to me, and I'll probably try them on my next build too.  However...  Did you notice that it makes a double-click?  It clicks when you press down and again when you release!  I haven't seen any other clickies that do this.  A standard Kailh blue doesn't do it.  I wonder if this is too much of a good thing, and the extra clicks only make more noise instead of useful auditory feedback?  However, when I tap the key quickly (as when typing), the two clicks and the bottoming out sound all sort of blur together to make an interesting mechanical noise.  I think I could get used to that.

NovelKeys got some special variants of these switches.  The BOX pale blue is a slightly heavier version of the BOX white, and the BOX burnt orange is a slightly heavier version of the BOX brown tactile switch.  However, those seem to be sold out at the moment.  I was impressed with the tactile ones too.  They don't have a clicker, but they do have a subtle actuation sound that could almost be described as a "quiet click", and they feel good to me.

Offline Findecanor

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #2 on: Tue, 26 September 2017, 20:49:37 »
I'm not sure that the Kailh switches in Tesoro Gram Spectrum are exactly the same as PG1280. From Kailh's product images of the switch, it has a different type of clips on the sides.
The image they use could be of a prototype though and not the final product. They look very close otherwise.

Edit: Tesoro's renders from pre-production press does match the renders of the PG1280.
The stated actuation point does differ however. An old figure for the PG1280 is 1.8mm, where as the Agile is rated to actuate at 1.5mm.
I wonder what changed: the PG1280 or which model to rebrand as "Tesoro Agile"?
« Last Edit: Tue, 26 September 2017, 21:31:43 by Findecanor »

Offline merlin64

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #3 on: Tue, 26 September 2017, 22:13:29 »
I'm not sure that the Kailh switches in Tesoro Gram Spectrum are exactly the same as PG1280. From Kailh's product images of the switch, it has a different type of clips on the sides.
The image they use could be of a prototype though and not the final product. They look very close otherwise.

Edit: Tesoro's renders from pre-production press does match the renders of the PG1280.
The stated actuation point does differ however. An old figure for the PG1280 is 1.8mm, where as the Agile is rated to actuate at 1.5mm.
I wonder what changed: the PG1280 or which model to rebrand as "Tesoro Agile"?

I'm pretty sure they are the same switch. I'm actually more doubtful that Kailh would send me the wrong products for review.

Tesoro probably had an exclusive partnership with Kailh and thus started rebranding the switches.

Offline Halverson

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #4 on: Tue, 26 September 2017, 23:38:29 »


Kale outside

Offline klennkellon

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #5 on: Wed, 27 September 2017, 19:55:47 »
I honestly believe that the linear BOX switches and Speed switches are the smoothest and least wobbly linears you can get right now. Tealios may be smoother but they are certainly wobblier and also cost a fortune more.

I found the tactile Kailhs (BOX Brown and Copper) to be disappointing however. The high-up tactility is an interesting idea but it just feels like a tweaked MX Brown imo.

Offline Millsoncapo

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #6 on: Thu, 28 September 2017, 03:38:45 »
Learned a lot,tk.

Offline noisyturtle

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #7 on: Thu, 28 September 2017, 16:23:47 »
delicious Kale

Offline Halverson

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #8 on: Thu, 28 September 2017, 16:34:00 »
delicious Kale
Show Image


Is that how broly got so good?

Offline merlin64

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #9 on: Fri, 29 September 2017, 10:26:33 »
That's broly a good assumption

Offline dante

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #10 on: Fri, 29 September 2017, 10:50:09 »
The Kailh speed switch is not speedy enough for me.

And even if it were, no PCB mount version exists.

Offline davkol

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #11 on: Sat, 30 September 2017, 06:52:39 »
IMHO Kailh Speed stems are better in Cherry MX housings. Presumably not speed anymore, but the normal actuation distance works better, and everything else feels/sounds better, plus it's compatible with damping clips. I really like copper stem in vintage MX Black switch.

Offline klennkellon

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #12 on: Sat, 30 September 2017, 18:32:48 »
IMHO Kailh Speed stems are better in Cherry MX housings. Presumably not speed anymore, but the normal actuation distance works better, and everything else feels/sounds better, plus it's compatible with damping clips. I really like copper stem in vintage MX Black switch.
The sliders do feel better in MX Housing! Especially in retooled MX Black housing.

However they sound weird. The bottom out clack is suuper loud and clacky for some reason.

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh on Kale
« Reply #13 on: Sat, 30 September 2017, 18:39:11 »
What stabs go with the agile switch?