geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: BucklingSpring on Mon, 01 October 2012, 12:14:22
-
There is nothing like peer review.
This morning at the office I switched the RealForce with the QP.
At lunch my colleagues asked me.
Coll - Hey what happened to your other keyboard?
Me - What do you mean?
Coll - We never noticed your typing before. Now we hear it.
Me - Oh, is it that bad?
Coll - Not at all, you just sound like everybody else now...
The Topre is quieter. But to be fair, I don't think Topre switches are considered mechanical (Tactile Capacitive Switch).
Conclusion - Noise level of the Quiet Pro compares to the average rubberdome Keyboards.
I guess the statement of the most quiet mechanical in the world still holds if I disqualify the Topre of the mechanical type.
-
I know Matias made a nice switch, but if the key were a bit more stable (less wobbly) or the keycap didn't touch the switch housing I bet it would be near dead silent. The mechanism itself is ridiculously quiet.
As the Matias guy told us earlier, there is nothing to stop us from trying O-Rings to see if it improves the dampening.
I removed one keycap and played with the switch. I don't think it is the keycaps itself that is wobbly. The keycap seams pretty well attached to the "shaft".
It is more likely the tolerance in the switch itself.
[attach=1]
This is not an actual Matias switch, but just to illustrate what I mean. On the Matias I noticed that the white piece had significant side play in the black housing. Enough to explain what you called wobbly.
We can have Matias to confirm, but I suspect the keycap never touch the black housing. Most of the sound we hear is the white part hitting the housing and reverberating in the keycap. I'm not even sure O-Ring would reduce it. That kind of tolerance is probably required to reduce friction and make sure the switch performs well cycle after cycle after cycle x 40 million times :-*[attachimg=2][attach=2]
-
From my limited understanding and experience, ALPS switches are inherently more wobbly than Cherry MX, due to the switch construction. That said, my Ducky ALPS board is WAY more wobbly than my AEKII.
The bottom line: regardless of the noise level...are you happy with the board?
-
The bottom line: regardless of the noise level...are you happy with the board?
My girl friend keep saying I have hard time expressing my emotions.
So I'll provide a 2 folds answers.
1- Noise level for a mecanical keyboard is very low. "Sounds like a rubberdome" is a good thing :=) It is a viable option for all of us working with peers in a rather quiet space. Colleagues would send me Chuck Norris for a kick in the face within 30 minutes of use of any other mechanical keyboards I own (MX Brown and Topre excluded)
2- Yes I'm happy with the keyboard. I love the tactility feel.
I'd like to comment the wobbly thing. The polycarobate keycaps Matias uses are pretty stiff. From what I noticed on those ALPS, the worst wobbliness is when the switch is at rest and it tends to disappear as soon as you start pressing the key. Once fully pressed, there is next to no wobbling (better than MX with ABS keycaps). Matias also did a good job with the stabilizers.
-
My girl friend keep saying I have hard time expressing my emotions.
So I'll provide a 2 folds answers.
LOL.
Good to hear about the wobbly-ness of the new Matias switches. It was one "feature" I never really cared for in the ALPS "genre."
-
I getcha buckling spring, and I use this keyboard at work in an office surrounded by hard working people who try to keep the noise levels to a minimum. People have approached me and said they were happy I went back to a "normal" keyboard and much to my chagrin after all of the comments I got about my silenced browns I can still use a mechanical board at work without raising people's ire. The tactility is awesome.
::EDIT:: There was a huge inconsistency in my writing due to derp (thanks to gloster for pointing it out), and to clarify for anyone who read my first post in the thread I would type harder on the Matias while getting use to the force to actuate. While this was a personal observation the folks around my desk have only noticed that I'm no longer using my modified brown board and that I make less noise over-all.
-
After getting used to my Silenced Topre, I had a hard time believing that the new Matias could be quieter unless they had done something really fancy with the stabilizers.
-
The bottom line: regardless of the noise level...are you happy with the board?
My girl friend keep saying I have hard time expressing my emotions.
So I'll provide a 2 folds answers.
1- Noise level for a mecanical keyboard is very low. "Sounds like a rubberdome" is a good thing :=) It is a viable option for all of us working with peers in a rather quiet space. Colleagues would send me Chuck Norris for a kick in the face within 30 minutes of use of any other mechanical keyboards I own (MX Brown and Topre excluded)
2- Yes I'm happy with the keyboard. I love the tactility feel.
I'd like to comment the wobbly thing. The polycarobate keycaps Matias uses are pretty stiff. From what I noticed on those ALPS, the worst wobbliness is when the switch is at rest and it tends to disappear as soon as you start pressing the key. Once fully pressed, there is next to no wobbling (better than MX with ABS keycaps). Matias also did a good job with the stabilizers.
Matias uses Polycarbonate Keycaps? Are you sure? Last I checked, they were almost never used (I only know of one set, it's clear, and feng sold it ages ago). I try to keep up with trends in polymers used in various designs, and I hadn't heard this yet.
-
After getting used to my Silenced Topre, I had a hard time believing that the new Matias could be quieter unless they had done something really fancy with the stabilizers.
The large keys on the QP are the quietest. I wrote in another thread about how quiet are the spacebar, ENTER, SHIFTS and backspace. As you say they must have done something really fancy with the stabilizers. It's the regular keys that make the QP a bit louder that the Topre.
-
Matias uses Polycarbonate Keycaps? Are you sure? Last I checked, they were almost never used (I only know of one set, it's clear, and feng sold it ages ago). I try to keep up with trends in polymers used in various designs, and I hadn't heard this yet.
My BAD... The switch housing and the case are made of polycarbonate, no mention about the keycaps.
Can you share which material is used? If that is not possible, can you tell us which material was not used?
It's not quite that simple...
There are different grades of steel and different thickness, and various suppliers have different processes for making them. You have to find the right combination for the switch to feel right. That's partly why it took 2 years to develop them.
The old Fuhua switches used thinner cheaper metals. They still felt good, because they'd found the right combination, but they were lower quality, so they didn't last as long. This is also why they made that residual ringing sound that many users found annoying. Our switches don't make that sound.
I know ALPS switch housing uses ABS plastic, which is not suitable for applications where friction is of concern. Topre's switch housing is also ABS by the way. Cherry uses more durable material.
ABS is okay, but we chose polycarbonate for the switch housing, so that it could be made transparent. This allows you to use the same switch for keys that have an LED lens. With the old Fuhua switches, we had to use LED-embedded XM switches for keys like Caps Lock, Num Lock, etc. That XM switch was linear, so those keys felt different from the others. We actually had customers returning keyboards because they thought they were defective.
The new switches solve a lot of problems.
-
Thanks for the field testing and taking the time to report it. For me, after having used an AEK II or a Model M for a couple years, everything else is pretty quiet! And since I gave my Model M to an office mate, in comparison to him, my HHKB Pro 2 is indeed rather quiet. Don't need it to be quieter, personally.