Dunno if it’s a good idea to necro this thread, but..
The cheap feeling of the Chicony has to do with the awful plastic case and the equally awful keycaps. I’m also not a big fan of the layout. Just pulling the plate + pcb out of the case entirely and setting it on a rubber mat for stability, and putting some keycaps from an Apple M3501 (this leaves some funny gaps, but just for the sake of trying the switches [and leave the original shifts and spacebar, since without stabilizers those are kinda terrible]) makes it feel quite dramatically better. With some better keycaps and a custom plate/case, these SMK blue-alps-slider switches should make a really nice keyboard.
Comparing to the Cherry MX blue.. the SMK-alps blue switches are slightly stiffer at actuation point, and the actuation point takes a bit less travel than the MX blues. Then force drops dramatically after actuation, so that it's quite easy to type lightly/springily on these switches. The original Chicony keycaps are thin, wobble a bit, and add a cheap hollow kind of sound to typing. With better keycaps added, the sound and feeling is very satisfying, a bit sharper sound and sharper tactility than the MX blue switches. I like it better.
[Though, my main criticism of the MX blue switches is just that the activation point is too low for my taste. This probably just boils down to personal preference.]
As was said upthread, if you compare a nice plate-mounted Cherry MX blue keyboard, with a solid case and nice thick keycaps directly to the Chicony 5181, it’s not unlikely that you’ll prefer the MX blue keyboard.
Note: I wish someone at Geekhack had (access to) the proper equipment for measuring force throughout the keypress accurately, so a few copies from different batches of each various type of switch could be consistently measured on the same equipment and proper graphs could be put up showing force on the way down/up, with actuation point marked. Ideally also showing the variance among same-model keyswitches, and the differing action of switches once they’ve been “broken in”, etc. You’d be able to very clearly see the differences between cherry MX blue and these SMK switches.
I’d really love to see the force graphs of all the various Alps & clone switches over the years, since there seems to be quite a broad range.
Edit: actually, that’s not quite right. I just tested again, and as it happens the click on the SMK “Monterey” switches happens about halfway through its range. It’s the genuine complicated Alps switches (e.g. tactile orange ones) that have a much higher activation point. I compared to some vintage MX blue switches again, directly, with and without keycaps, and the point of actuation is relatively similar between MX blue and Monterey blue. The real difference between the two is the sound, the tactile bump on the SMK switches is much sharper than on the cherry switches, there's less plastic-on-plastic friction throughout the keypress, and after the tactile bump/actuation point, force required to keep pushing the key drops to a very low amount. Also, the force required to push the keys to the start of the tactile bump is pretty low, just a bit more than the force exerted by resting the fingers on the switches. Maybe that's why they feel like the activation is nearer to the top: it takes less total work to get to the activation point.
