Hi there, im new here and this is my first post so i apologize if it is posted in the wrong section.
I would like to discuss cherry black switches with you. I have been a mech-board enthusiast for about 2 years and owned and tried countless of boards and every avaible switch (except for the famous buckling spring) and i cannot, for the love of the keyboard-god, understand why anyone would want to use cherry blacks. Now, lets just get this very clear: im not saying people who use them are stupid/misled/have bad taste, nor do i want to start a childish flamewar over wich type of key is the best, because as we all know, they are made for different people with different needs. What i do want to find out however, is who, or what, the cherry black switch is actually made for and what purpose/advantage it might have for some people.
My second mechanical keyboard was one with Blacks. My very first was a Razer Black Widow wich i disliked because of the big and clumsy layout and because i kept hitting the poorly-placed macro keys when i was reaching for shift or CTRL (altough i must say i still think the board has very good build quality for its price, and here in sweden its one of the very few boards you can actually buy in a store.) so i re-sold it to a friend and went for the other (only) option the store had to offer: a Steelseries 6gv2. Back then i didnt know that different boards used different switches, i thought all mechanical keys where the same, so the Steelseries looked very appealing to me, it was compact and had no distracting macro keys. it looked like the regular dell keyboard i had used before, except it was mechanical. Perfect!
The moment i came home from the store and pushed the keys for the first time, i was a little schocked. At thirst i thought there had been a mistake and that i had gotten a non-mechanical keyboard, because the keys didnt feel anything like the BWs cherry blues. I called the store and the explained that this board used a different kind of switch, the black one, and that it was "Generally favored by gamers".
Now, i have been a diehard gamer since i got my first home computer when i was 6, but i could not see what these so called black switches had to offer that would give a "Gamer" an advantage. At the time i was a hardcore Starcraft 2 player (i had just gotten into the master league a few days after it was introduced) and i play FPS games daily aswell, and i performed way worse with the steelseries board in every game than i had ever done with my old rubber dome or black widow. Pushing the keys felt like pushing down a rusty iron spring, and since there was no tactile feedback i was forced to pretty much bottom out on every keypress, wich eventually caused my fingers and wrists to hurt just after playing a couple of starcraft 2 matches, and my actions per minute had gone down the drain.
I thought to myself that maybe it was just a "getting used to it" thing, or that the keys would break in and become softer after some use. It didnt. i stuck with the board for a whole month, and even though i learned how to not bottom out, it was distracting for my muscle memory when playing Starcraft 2 to not only remember the stressful in-game actions like building workers and supply depots, but to also remember the actuation point of the key. My joints and fingers would still start to hurt after a session of gaming, and i was starting to worry that i might be developing Carpal Tunnel syndrome (every gamers worst fear) so i literary went back to my old rubber dome and tried to sell the steelseries board to friends, but after trying it nobody wanted it, even if offered to give it away for free. Some of my friends remain hostile thowards mechanical keyboards to this day because of their experience with the cherry blacks. Since the razer and steelseries where the only mechanical boards avaible in store, i gave up on mech boards until the marked seemed to grow and retailers started to carry new boards with new switches and i was introduced to the Zowie Celeritas with browns (i use a Filco Majestouch with browns these days and i dont think i will ever switch) wich i instantly fell in love with, it had the tactile feel of blues, except less clicky, required less force to push down and easier to double-tap. The Board had some flaws and i eventually had to return it because of a defect (some keys would always doubletap even if only pressed once, and it used cherry black switches on the enter and spacebar
) but i had found my switch: the brown.
TLDR I really, really do not understand why blacks are advertised and marketed as "THE Gaming switch". A gamer requires keys that are fast and easy to push in critical moments, and a tactile feedback is very useful so you can spam even faster without bottoming out (big advantage in RTS games). Blacks are the complete opposite, they require a crazy amount of force to press down (and im a fencer so my frists and hands are in pretty good shape) and they lack any form of feedback, you have to learn and memorize where the activation point is and different boards have different depth. Even after getting used to, gaming with blacks was a nightmare in comparison to any other switch (including cheap rubber domes) and i wouldnt be surprised if prolonged use of blacks could actually cause "premature" Carpal Tunnel syndrome!
Now, again, i would really like to hear someone who prefers blacks for gaming explain why they prefer them over other switches. Again, im not bashing on people who like them, im just curious and i DO think that blacks are more of a "niche" switch than any other cherry switch and should NOT be marketed as a "gaming switch" because i have never met any gamer, competetive or casual, who likes them.
Please, prove me wrong
(no sarcasm, i really want to hear some thoughts from someone who prefers blacks)
