There’s a newish development in the world of keyboards; the optical switch. It’s been around for a couple years in desktop keyboards, and recently became available on a laptop keyboard as well. These are not replacements for your standard $7 keyboard with rubber membrane switches intended for puttering around on your raspberry pi. Their goal is the gamer market.
The question, though, is are these the equivalent of Monster Cables for audiophiles: overpriced status symbols? Betteridge would be proud; the short answer is that no, there is a legitimate advantage, and for certain types of use, it makes a lot of sense.
Background
A single sheet of rubbery material provides the spring force for each switch.
The Cherry MX Blue keyswitch is a mechanical switch with metal contacts.
We delved into this topic a bit before. Keyboards come in a variety of flavors, with the cheapest being membrane/rubber dome switches. These rely on a rubber dome that provides the spring force, and a small conductive pad on the underside of the dome makes contact with the PCB/membrane when pressed, connecting two traces. There’s no travel after the actuation; you press until the contact is made and you can press no further. Rubber dome switches are rated for about 5 million keystrokes.
Mechanical switches are the next step up. These have a spring that pushes the key up, and the key presses two metal strips together, but in such a way that contact is made before the travel is complete, so it’s possible to ride the key on the edge and press more rap ..
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