**Switches and Switch Feel**

When it comes to switches, there are several characteristics that can affect their feel. One common term used to describe negative switch feel is "wobble". This refers to the wobbling or instability of the switch inside its mount or stem, which can be more noticeable with certain keycaps. Another characteristic is "scratchiness", which describes the lack of smoothness when pressing a switch. This can be particularly pronounced on poor linear switches and can even produce an audible sound.

There's also "ticking", a less commonly used term that refers to the sound produced by uneven wire in the stabilizer, causing it to move within its mount and not being firmly held in place. Rattle is another common issue found in mainstream keyboards, where the stabilizers hit the plastic housing and produce unpleasant sounds. On the other hand, "pinging" describes resonance inside the keyboard frame that might be hollow or a switch that's particularly loud due to the spring. These issues can be solved with various solutions, such as applying foam inside the keyboard for better sound or lubricating springs (also known as lubing).

Lubing is a process of applying special grease to components inside the switch or stabilizers to improve both their feel and sound. This can be done using specialized tools and stations, which can help streamline the process but requires some time and effort. It's worth noting that looping is often performed on linear switches or tactile switches, as it can turn a clicky point into a mushy tactile point if not done correctly.

**Positive Switch Characteristics**

On the other hand, positive switch characteristics are often described using terms like "thunk". This refers to the sound and overall feel of high-quality switches that convey a sense of quality and satisfaction in the keyboard community. These switches typically have a smooth, consistent travel distance without scratchiness or wobble.

Another term used to describe these switches is "silky smooth" or "buttery smooth", indicating a lack of imperfections and a perfectly consistent feel all the way through the switch's travel range. Some switches may even be referred to as "crispy", which describes high-quality clicky switches with a defined, crisp sound that distinguishes them from softer or more muted alternatives.

**Keycaps**

When it comes to keycaps, there are several types and sizes to consider. The standard 1u size is the most common, but some keyboards may use smaller or larger sizes depending on their layout. One important thing to keep in mind when buying a custom keycap set is that they should fit your keyboard perfectly, without any issues.

There's also the issue of keygap material, which refers to the type of plastic used for the keycaps. Double-shot PBT (polybutadiene thermoplastic) is a popular choice due to its durability and tactile feedback, while Dye Sublimation (Daiso PBT) offers clear legends but may not be as durable.

ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) keycaps are also widely used and less expensive than PBT, but this can come at the cost of durability. Double-shot ABS keycaps offer a compromise between quality and price, allowing keyboard manufacturers to produce more languages and layouts while still offering cool color options.

Finally, there's the "pudding" effect, where the translucent bottom half of the keycap (the skirt) is used to illuminate the keyboard, creating an almost invisible legend until light shines through. Phantom keycaps take this concept a step further by making the legends almost invisible until they're illuminated from underneath. Side-printed keycaps offer a similar stealth look but with clear legends facing upwards instead.

**Additional Keyboard Terms**

As you continue your search for the perfect keyboard, you'll likely come across many more terms and concepts that can help you understand and appreciate your switches, keycaps, and overall typing experience. Whether it's "looping" or "lubing", understanding these terms can help you make informed decisions when buying a new keyboard or modifying an existing one. By taking the time to learn about these subtleties, you'll be able to find a keyboard that meets your needs and provides years of reliable service.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enlet's bottom out your mx stem on your hot swap board who gives a damn i need to understand the type of stabs north facing mount or putting key caps double shot can be both abs and pbt i need some answers asap good people let's be real understanding everything there is to know about the keyboard space comes in waves i only recently understood what looped switches means and how they feel or that keycaps have a used specification to indicate the size so what i've done is compile an entire keyboard terminology that is often referenced in keyboard reviews and marketing of both entry-level keyboards gaming keyboards and beyond and this way you know what things mean and eliminate any confusion moving forward so let's start with some really interesting terms related to switches hot swap that's a hot term that gets spread around that means the switches are removable from the pcb and can usually be swapped for other flavors of switches this is desirable because you can install your favorite switches into a hot swap keyboard and enjoy some variety in the future as well or potentially replace a broken switch etc we hear the term fast gaming switches or something else that is related to speed all this means is the actuation point on the switch is high usually around one millimeter so registration happens faster than the common two millimeter actuation point it started with the cherry mx speed switches that had an actuation point of 1.2 millimeters so you lightly tap the keys and be sort of speedy with your inputs of course understanding the switch specs is pretty simple we have the total travel distance of the switch an actuation point where your input is registered a reset point where the switch is reset and is ready for activation again a tactile or clicky position that if not at the same as actuation point it's very close and the actuation force measured in centimeters or grams which is how much force you need to apply to pass the actuation point and usually these values are associated with light medium and heavy switches now one of my most common mistakes when buying a new keyboard is not realizing there's an incoming message from our sponsor smooth play your games the right way with a much improved virtuoso rgb wireless xt with bluetooth support fantastic swivel hinges deeper ear cushions tactile controls with usbc charging a beefy microphone to step up your comms game and awesome wireless sound reproduction check it out below alright so we've got a lot of terminology to learn let's go key rollover this is usually presented as n key rollover or nkro or a specific number indicated as key rollover this tells you how many keys can be registered at the same time so in the early days we saw 8 or 16 key rollover for fancy gaming keyboards but now the processor on keyboards is powerful enough to register all the keys at once so you can literally press all the keys and they will all be registered so it's quite bizarre seeing keyboards that are brand new to come out with only six key rollover logitech come on what are you doing stabs or stabilizers are receiving a lot more attention lately and that's the metal wire that holds the larger keys in place on each end so your spacebar for example is stabilized regardless of where you press on it otherwise without the stabilizer the key will be very much a playground polling rate is very interesting as we are finally going beyond the thousand hertz that's the measurement on how many times a second the keyboard is sending the signal to your computer so a thousand hertz is measured as one millisecond response time and we now have 8 000 hertz keyboards or 0.25 millisecond response time that is absolutely insane and questionable in terms of its usability optical versus mechanical is also a common question so optical switches are also considered to be mechanical in a sense but use a laser for the actuation so it's an instant registration with usually much longer life span while standard mechanical switches use a metal contact and have a slightly lower response time and debounce delay now d-bounce delay is necessary to remove the unwanted signal from the two metal contacts literally bouncing off each other unlike with an optical switch where you have this on and off state with a mechanical contacts that signal is not very clean and needs to be filtered out by the controller on the keyboard otherwise the balancing effect might introduce additional keystrokes which are not intended bottoming out is when the switch is pressed all the way down bottoming out also refers to the sound profile of keycaps hitting the top of the switch or the plate so interestingly different keycaps because of their material produce different bottoming out sound characteristics switch stem is the part onto which the keycap gets mounted so you'll often hear mx style stem as that is by far the most common throughout switch's world with kale gateron and of course cherry but there are different style switches and the stem part can also be different and require specific type of keycaps box style switches are becoming a little bit more popular now that stabilize the stem when you press it down because of the box housing eliminating the keycap wobble south or north facing mount so this refers to the orientation of the led on the switch very common is a north facing mount to allow better illumination of the keycap text while south facing mounts have better clearance for all types of keycap sets but at the compromise of less shine through text because the led is at the bottom so it acts more like as a backlight underneath the keycaps and not shining through common terms used to describe negative switch feel include wobble either switch wobble inside the mount or the stem wobble that is more evident with keycaps scratchiness refers to the lack of smoothness when you press the switch usually felt on poor linear switches and can be audible too then we have ticking so this is a less used term but still something to know about when talking about stabilizers this is what it sounds like so this is when one side of the larger keys produces a ticking noise when you lightly tap it and it's caused by uneven wire of the stabilizer that moves within its mount and is not firmly held in place rattle is also common among mainstream keyboards where the stabilizers hit the plastic housing and produce unpleasant sounds that are different from pinging and pinging is also a common term used to describe resonance inside the keyboard frame that might be hollow or a switch that is particularly loud because of the spring and this is solved with either foam inside the keyboard for better sound or lubing your springs lubing so this refers to applying special sort of grease to components inside the switch or the stabs to improve both how they feel and how they sound you can buy these full lubing stations to help you take apart the switch and streamline the entire process it is fairly time consuming but the end result is always worth it uh as long as you don't over loop looping is also generally done for linear switches or tactile and not on clickies because that will turn the clicky point into a mushy tactile point if you don't want that now common terms used to describe positive switch characteristics include the thunk where the sound characteristics of the switch and the entire keyboard conveys a high quality and pure satisfaction in the keyboard community switches that are referred to as silky smooth buttery smooth extra smooth or some sort of variation of smooth indicate the lack of scratchiness and this kind of perfect consistency all the way along the travel distance crispy is a term i use to describe high quality clicky switches where the clicky point has definition unlike some clicky switches that are soft and almost feel like they should be tactile switches instead and so now let's talk keycaps this is a 1u size keycap your standard alphabet slash number square this is a 1.25 u key cap this is a 2 and so on the only time this is important is when we talk about the standard bottom row layout which means the three keys to the left of the spacebar the spacebar itself and all the bottom keys to the right are standardized to a particular you size format so if you buy a custom keycap set it should fit to that keyboard no problem you should be careful with shorter right shift keys on a 65 layouts and some brands even make smaller space bars so that they could fit a standard 1.25 u keys to the side of it so keep that in mind now keygap material is also very important today we hear the term double shot ppt get into more gaming keyboards so the pbt part is the durable plastic with nice coarse texture for extra grip that does not reveal finger oils the double shot part tells you how the keycap legend is produced so by molding two sets of plastics so the writing on the keycap is its own separate plastic layer and will not fade or scratch off now pbt texture and molds used to create them vary from one brand to another and are not all made to be equal then we have dye sublimation ppt or daiso pbt where the printing material is applied on top of the pvt keycap in its own shape cavity of sorts it's still really durable and clear but unless the keycap itself is somehow transparent or translucent you won't have any options for a shine through keycap abs keycaps are next so that's the cheap the smooth plastic material that we all have grown up with and despite bbt becoming more popular abs keycaps are still very common so double shot abs keycaps are about half the price to produce so keyboard companies can do more languages more layouts plus you can still get all sorts of cool color ways and abs plastic because it is cheaper pudding keycaps are pretty sweet this refers to the translucent bottom half of the keycap aka the skirt of the keycap to help illuminate the keyboard and i think phantom keycaps will become a bit more popular maybe in 2022 that have this almost invisible legend until there's light shining through and side printed keycaps offer a similar stealth look but with clear legends facing you instead of being on top now i'm sure there are plenty more keyboard terms that you'll come across in your search for the next keyboard so share them below and as always keyboard warrior responsibly my friendslet's bottom out your mx stem on your hot swap board who gives a damn i need to understand the type of stabs north facing mount or putting key caps double shot can be both abs and pbt i need some answers asap good people let's be real understanding everything there is to know about the keyboard space comes in waves i only recently understood what looped switches means and how they feel or that keycaps have a used specification to indicate the size so what i've done is compile an entire keyboard terminology that is often referenced in keyboard reviews and marketing of both entry-level keyboards gaming keyboards and beyond and this way you know what things mean and eliminate any confusion moving forward so let's start with some really interesting terms related to switches hot swap that's a hot term that gets spread around that means the switches are removable from the pcb and can usually be swapped for other flavors of switches this is desirable because you can install your favorite switches into a hot swap keyboard and enjoy some variety in the future as well or potentially replace a broken switch etc we hear the term fast gaming switches or something else that is related to speed all this means is the actuation point on the switch is high usually around one millimeter so registration happens faster than the common two millimeter actuation point it started with the cherry mx speed switches that had an actuation point of 1.2 millimeters so you lightly tap the keys and be sort of speedy with your inputs of course understanding the switch specs is pretty simple we have the total travel distance of the switch an actuation point where your input is registered a reset point where the switch is reset and is ready for activation again a tactile or clicky position that if not at the same as actuation point it's very close and the actuation force measured in centimeters or grams which is how much force you need to apply to pass the actuation point and usually these values are associated with light medium and heavy switches now one of my most common mistakes when buying a new keyboard is not realizing there's an incoming message from our sponsor smooth play your games the right way with a much improved virtuoso rgb wireless xt with bluetooth support fantastic swivel hinges deeper ear cushions tactile controls with usbc charging a beefy microphone to step up your comms game and awesome wireless sound reproduction check it out below alright so we've got a lot of terminology to learn let's go key rollover this is usually presented as n key rollover or nkro or a specific number indicated as key rollover this tells you how many keys can be registered at the same time so in the early days we saw 8 or 16 key rollover for fancy gaming keyboards but now the processor on keyboards is powerful enough to register all the keys at once so you can literally press all the keys and they will all be registered so it's quite bizarre seeing keyboards that are brand new to come out with only six key rollover logitech come on what are you doing stabs or stabilizers are receiving a lot more attention lately and that's the metal wire that holds the larger keys in place on each end so your spacebar for example is stabilized regardless of where you press on it otherwise without the stabilizer the key will be very much a playground polling rate is very interesting as we are finally going beyond the thousand hertz that's the measurement on how many times a second the keyboard is sending the signal to your computer so a thousand hertz is measured as one millisecond response time and we now have 8 000 hertz keyboards or 0.25 millisecond response time that is absolutely insane and questionable in terms of its usability optical versus mechanical is also a common question so optical switches are also considered to be mechanical in a sense but use a laser for the actuation so it's an instant registration with usually much longer life span while standard mechanical switches use a metal contact and have a slightly lower response time and debounce delay now d-bounce delay is necessary to remove the unwanted signal from the two metal contacts literally bouncing off each other unlike with an optical switch where you have this on and off state with a mechanical contacts that signal is not very clean and needs to be filtered out by the controller on the keyboard otherwise the balancing effect might introduce additional keystrokes which are not intended bottoming out is when the switch is pressed all the way down bottoming out also refers to the sound profile of keycaps hitting the top of the switch or the plate so interestingly different keycaps because of their material produce different bottoming out sound characteristics switch stem is the part onto which the keycap gets mounted so you'll often hear mx style stem as that is by far the most common throughout switch's world with kale gateron and of course cherry but there are different style switches and the stem part can also be different and require specific type of keycaps box style switches are becoming a little bit more popular now that stabilize the stem when you press it down because of the box housing eliminating the keycap wobble south or north facing mount so this refers to the orientation of the led on the switch very common is a north facing mount to allow better illumination of the keycap text while south facing mounts have better clearance for all types of keycap sets but at the compromise of less shine through text because the led is at the bottom so it acts more like as a backlight underneath the keycaps and not shining through common terms used to describe negative switch feel include wobble either switch wobble inside the mount or the stem wobble that is more evident with keycaps scratchiness refers to the lack of smoothness when you press the switch usually felt on poor linear switches and can be audible too then we have ticking so this is a less used term but still something to know about when talking about stabilizers this is what it sounds like so this is when one side of the larger keys produces a ticking noise when you lightly tap it and it's caused by uneven wire of the stabilizer that moves within its mount and is not firmly held in place rattle is also common among mainstream keyboards where the stabilizers hit the plastic housing and produce unpleasant sounds that are different from pinging and pinging is also a common term used to describe resonance inside the keyboard frame that might be hollow or a switch that is particularly loud because of the spring and this is solved with either foam inside the keyboard for better sound or lubing your springs lubing so this refers to applying special sort of grease to components inside the switch or the stabs to improve both how they feel and how they sound you can buy these full lubing stations to help you take apart the switch and streamline the entire process it is fairly time consuming but the end result is always worth it uh as long as you don't over loop looping is also generally done for linear switches or tactile and not on clickies because that will turn the clicky point into a mushy tactile point if you don't want that now common terms used to describe positive switch characteristics include the thunk where the sound characteristics of the switch and the entire keyboard conveys a high quality and pure satisfaction in the keyboard community switches that are referred to as silky smooth buttery smooth extra smooth or some sort of variation of smooth indicate the lack of scratchiness and this kind of perfect consistency all the way along the travel distance crispy is a term i use to describe high quality clicky switches where the clicky point has definition unlike some clicky switches that are soft and almost feel like they should be tactile switches instead and so now let's talk keycaps this is a 1u size keycap your standard alphabet slash number square this is a 1.25 u key cap this is a 2 and so on the only time this is important is when we talk about the standard bottom row layout which means the three keys to the left of the spacebar the spacebar itself and all the bottom keys to the right are standardized to a particular you size format so if you buy a custom keycap set it should fit to that keyboard no problem you should be careful with shorter right shift keys on a 65 layouts and some brands even make smaller space bars so that they could fit a standard 1.25 u keys to the side of it so keep that in mind now keygap material is also very important today we hear the term double shot ppt get into more gaming keyboards so the pbt part is the durable plastic with nice coarse texture for extra grip that does not reveal finger oils the double shot part tells you how the keycap legend is produced so by molding two sets of plastics so the writing on the keycap is its own separate plastic layer and will not fade or scratch off now pbt texture and molds used to create them vary from one brand to another and are not all made to be equal then we have dye sublimation ppt or daiso pbt where the printing material is applied on top of the pvt keycap in its own shape cavity of sorts it's still really durable and clear but unless the keycap itself is somehow transparent or translucent you won't have any options for a shine through keycap abs keycaps are next so that's the cheap the smooth plastic material that we all have grown up with and despite bbt becoming more popular abs keycaps are still very common so double shot abs keycaps are about half the price to produce so keyboard companies can do more languages more layouts plus you can still get all sorts of cool color ways and abs plastic because it is cheaper pudding keycaps are pretty sweet this refers to the translucent bottom half of the keycap aka the skirt of the keycap to help illuminate the keyboard and i think phantom keycaps will become a bit more popular maybe in 2022 that have this almost invisible legend until there's light shining through and side printed keycaps offer a similar stealth look but with clear legends facing you instead of being on top now i'm sure there are plenty more keyboard terms that you'll come across in your search for the next keyboard so share them below and as always keyboard warrior responsibly my friends\n"