geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: Infinite north on Fri, 14 May 2010, 17:47:01
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I am noticing that cherry boards are manufactured all over the place and I am wondering about reliability based on where the board is built. Are German built boards better than Chinese? Are all the key switches made in one location and shipped to different assembly plants? Does anyone have any horror stories they can link to a location?
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There has been quality decreases in the keyboards themselves. Never heard anyone say anything about the switches... In fairness, they are pretty simple things, I'm not sure how you could cut corners with them.
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Lexmark ones are the worst.
Oh wait, wrong myth.
(http://thanasis.com/sphnx1r.jpg)
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To the OP-
I really wouldn't worry about build quality amonst different plants regarding cherry keyboards. I have seen, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, and many keyboards and the only one that I found to be significantly and consistently sub par with reliability is the Scorpius M10.
It has suffered from tooling inconsistencies on the plastic casing (the keys are ok though) and pcb problems and wiring problems. The cherry switches it uses are ok when soldered correctly to a non flaking board. Most everything on that board is a crap shoot.
Old WYSE boards with cherry black switches seem a tad bit off with consistency of key smoothness and ease of actuation. But I think that is just a materialization of a slightly (very slight) cherry switch design change and perhaps a plastic they used at that time.
Honestly though with "cherry" made keyboards I wouldn't worry about it.