So here's finally one user review of the Cherry Viola switches:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/orcwfb/cherry_violias_6_months_later/
Cherry Violias - 6 months later…Here to rant/ inform. I joined the mechanical keyboard community around January and didn’t have the money or knowledge to jump into a custom board from the get-go, so my first ever mechanical keyboard was a Corsair K60 RGB PRO SE. there wasn’t a lot of info out there about the new Cherry Violas, but it seemed like a good alternative at the time that was also kinda budget friendly. Six months later, this board is collecting dust somewhere in my house (no idea where it is, since I got my cherry blues on a tkl board the Corsair was promptly swapped out). Here are my thoughts:
Violas feel horrible. Excessive friction that you can feel and hear. Like soft scratching that you can’t get rid of.
The housing is obnoxious. Why do the switches have those giant feet that are milky white? Especially since the board itself is black aluminum. The switches look extremely cheap from any angle other than top-down.
Violas are FRAGILE. I broke several stem frames (not the stems themselves, thank goodness) trying to swap out keycaps.
The switches appear to be MX style, but for whatever reason they are slightly different when it comes to tolerances. Typical MX artisan keycaps fit looser on Violas, but standard MX keycaps sets that I’ve gotten from Amazon fit just fine. It’s hit or miss.
RGB is ok. Not much to say here. Pudding keycaps make everything better.
TL;DR: Cherry Violas aren’t worth your time. Stick to the classics.