At the Bay Area meetup today, HaaTa put together a full 60% keyboard with Matias quiet linear (red) switches, and then several of us directly compared Gateron red vs. Cherry MX red vs. Matias red switches, loose.
First, a Matias switch keyboard is really quiet, since it has the little rubber dampers in it (same as the Matias quiet tactile switch).
Second, while the Gateron switch is definitely noticeably smoother (i.e. less frictiony) than the MX switch, the Matias switch trounces both of them. Much smoother than any unlubed Cherry MX or MX clone switch I’ve ever tried, and I’d guess pretty comparable to lubed MX switches (though we didn’t have any handy to compare against, so I’m speculating a bit), or to white space invaders or complicated green Alps (but we also didn’t have any of those to compare with).
The switch weight seems slightly heavier than MX red (putting it closer to my preference for linear switches), though without a full assembled MX red keyboard to compare against directly (only the loose switches) it was a bit hard to judge. The Matias keyboard also wasn’t plugged into anything, so I’m not precisely sure at what point in the stroke the switch actuates. I’m guessing it’s slightly closer to the top than MX switches.
I hope HaaTa (maybe with some help) can get a better force curve gauge built sometime soon, because I’d love to see precise graphical comparisons between these and MX switches. I’m not sure if there’s any good way to precisely (numerically) characterize how frictiony a switch is, but that would also be handy.
Anyway, I think the video game players out there who appreciate linear switches are going to be thrilled with these. Considering how much people have been hyping Gaterons the last couple months, Matias linear switches might blow some minds.