So I went out on a limb and bought a Realforce 87U while my Blue Cherry Filco Tenkeyless was being sent in for repairs.
You can read all about it here. BTW, Brian at EliteKeyboards is awesome, he repaired my board in 2 days and had it sent back to me immediately. The round trip was just over a week.
In any case, I've been typing on the topre for about a week. I just got my blue cherry board back in today and I was excited to be typing on it again. I'll be honest and say that I wasn't blown away by the Topre switches like I was with the change from a membrane board to the Blue Cherries. It was to be expected but I was still a bit let down.
The Filco came in today and after opening it I slowly actuated the keys and was gitty with excitement at being able to be typing on it again. I unplugged the Realforce and put the Filco to work. As I started typing I heard the loud, reassuring feedback that I had sacrificed with the 87U. But wait, something felt off. The sound was soothing but my fingers weren't as excited as my brain to be back on the Filco. I seemed to be typing, well slower. I hopped onto type racer and ran 5 tests on both boards and these were my results.
Filco: 86 WPM Average, 96.7% accuracy
87U: 103 WPM Average, 97.2% accuracy
So you can see that I wasn't making a substantial amount of typos on either board but my fingers were flying on the Topre. I imagine this is because the key doesn't actuate like it does on the Blue Cherry and I've now begun to trust that the Topre is registering each stroke.
I realize that I've been on the Realforce for a week and just hopped on the Filco, so I'm assuming if I typed on the Filco for a week solid and tried the test again the results might be skewed in the Filco's favor. For now I'll be swapping the boards back and forth when I'm feeling frisky but it seems like the 87U is going to remain my daily driver for the foreseeable future.
I guess you could say I've become a Topre believer.