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There Are No Best Switches for Gaming

Dec 23, 2024

Figure 1: Nope, not a single one of these is necessarily better than the rest...

For no particular reason, I’ve been spending more and more time over the past few months in and around various mechanical keyboard help forums and servers. Despite having never really relied on their services back in my day when I first joined the hobby, I can kind of understand the appeal of them to new and curious enthusiasts as they generally seem like go-to places to connect with people who know a thing or two about keyboards. What I cannot wrap my mind around, however, is the sheer number of times that the exact same comments, questions, or concerns that get raised by the newer hobbyists get repeated. Even with FAQ or pinned set of questions, people seemingly only seem to think about and/or be concerned about the exact same set of things when it comes to their first keyboards. One of these types of questions that I find particularly concerning are those that are directly or indirectly asking for “the best switches for gaming”. Marketing from the large, prebuilt gaming keyboard companies like Razer, Roccat, Corsair, etc. has clearly done a toll on the community as even when you assure users that there is no such thing as a best switch for gaming, they’ll often double down and lay out a set of equally marketing-heavy reasons why ‘X Switch’ or ‘Y Keyboard’ must be better for gaming. While the short answer to this question has forever been and will always forever be that there is no switch nor switch technology that is necessarily better for gaming, I figure I’d dedicate this answer to going through the longer version of this answer and a few of the reasons why it doesn’t make sense that there’s a better switch (or keyboard) for gaming, and even if there was - it’s likely not what you’re thinking it is.

Figure 2: I don't care what the marketing says, none of these are necessarily any better for gaming than any of the switches from the first image either!

Let me reiterate it again once more in the hopes that you article skimmers may catch it this time - there are no switches nor switch technologies that are strictly speaking better for gaming. For a less technical apparel for those of you still reading, consider that if there were switches out there that gave some measurable, repeatable advantage such as allowing you to act faster than your opponents, increase your actions per minute, or any other type of competitive advantage, then wouldn’t this already be being used by basically all professional gamers across the board? Take players from the rhythm game OSU for example - they recognized that drawing pads were superior for in-game patterns such as spins and higher level tracking and (to the best of my understanding) they widely adopted this technology for it without any need for debates or marketing around such. For a more technical response, consider that all keyboards effectively operate identically through the use of push buttons that activate at a response rate that is several orders of magnitudes faster than any human reflex when they are triggered. As you slam your fingers down onto keyboards in a game, you’re moving switch stems of conventional MX-style designs through their 2-4 mm strokes so quickly that it’s almost certain that shortening that distance by a small percentage is not going to make a reliable, consistent difference in your gameplay. Furthermore, electrons moving through either direct conduction circuits or hall effect circuits do so at orders of magnitudes faster speeds than however fast you think your gaming reflexes are, and so those too are unlikely to be affected by your choice in design. Even at peak technological designs, you’re really only likely to save fractions of a millisecond sometimes at absolute best conditions, and never reliably enough to make an impact to your game. A switch that would be notably better for gaming would almost certainly have to bend physics itself to make electrons move quicker through circuits for a more true ‘low latency’ activation. Usually when someone points out one or all of those points I made above regarding “gaming” switches to those newer folks in the help channels, they’ll often push back and reference further marketing materials from gaming companies and insist that there must be a better keyboard for gaming then if not a better switch. “Recent” technologies such as that ‘Snap Tap’ mechanic on Razer keyboards or fancy new magnetic switches relying on the Hall Effect are usually the things lauded by these advertisements as the next evolution in keyboard technology. However, I hate to break it to you that neither of these features are new nor innovative. Hall Effect switches were designed first by Honeywell and several other keyboard companies as early as the mid 1980’s, making the technology at least a decade older than most people getting into gaming keyboards for the first time in their lives right now. (In fact I own a magnetic sensor keyboard that uses the Hall Effect that is almost 1.5 times as old as I am!) As for the ‘Snap Tap’ technology pushed by Razer that is “so OP that it has been banned in multiple professional gaming scenes”, this is something that almost everyone that has a custom mechanical keyboard has had the ability to do for well over 5 years now via QMK - the main firmware package used across the mechanical keyboard community. With just four small lines of code you can push out ‘Snap Tap’ functionality to everything from a small, budget friendly Planck 40% keyboard to an ultra-high end premium board like a Keycult and people can do even crazier stuff than that with macros. Razer just basically made something that is simple enough to do with little to no effort in any custom mechanical keyboard into a selling point for an entire fleet of new designs. I also find it curious that nobody ever seems to advocate for more exotic or ergonomic keyboards as a means of improving your game ability. Surely a split, tented, 3D-printed dactyl manuform kit specifically curved to make your hand not have to flex at all and give you a trackball directly at the tip of your thumb has to be significantly better for your overall gaming performance than just some mass produced keyboard that lights up, right? If you truly are looking for better performance, you should be looking into that stranger end of the hobby over anything cranked out by companies that market based on their RGB toggling.

Figure 3: You can't convince me that a random RGB-laden TKL from Amazon would be better for gaming than any single one of these split keyboards from dovenyi.

The simple answer as to which switches, keyboards, or really any part related to a keyboard is best for gaming is going to always and forever come down to the preferences and opinions of the keyboard’s user each and every time. While I can empathize that it is a bit annoying for newer users to just have people repeatedly tell them that it’s “up to them” what they want and that there’s truly no right or wrong option, take a second to consider what the mechanical keyboard hobby is. This is not just off the shelf, mass produced stuff you can buy and find a hundred ratings for on Amazon or RTings. Even at the most entry level, custom mechanical keyboards are highly customized, specialized, and tunable down to the smallest component that anyone could ever desire or care about. Most people in the hobby haven’t even tried enough keyboards to truly know with certainty what they do and don’t like across the wide spectrum of available options out there, and those that have tried a good number of keyboards still likely haven’t tried every possible combination of crazy options out there. So how can you realistically expect just random people to be able to speak to your specific set of niche interests or designs you want in your keyboard? For much the same reasons that skilled performers each have their own specific tools they like to use for their crafts - such as pencils or paintbrushes for artists, specific guns for competition shooters, or even specific puzzles for competitive Rubik’s Cube speed solving - it will always and forever come down to what the user feels the most comfortable using. Those performers don’t use their best friend or coworker’s ‘tools’ for a reason. You’re still going to get smoked by someone out there who has better fundamentals, game knowledge, and play time than you when using your favorite and most comfortable keyboard, but you’ll stand a significantly lesser chance of embarrassing yourself by doing that than trying to remember some weird layout or work through the pain that some “on paper better keyboard” supposedly will offer you.

If you’re in the mood for learning some more about keyboards, or wanting to try and see if there’s other blind spots you’ve picked up from bad mechanical keyboard marketing that exists out there, then you’re in the right place! Drop is full of articles from both me and other enthusiasts that not only share interesting and unique perspectives on mechanical keyboards, but also try and help beginners get their feet firmly underneath them after having spent many years figuring it out for ourselves! Consider checking out some of my other articles here such as ‘Switch Marketing Terms: What to Know and What to Ignore’ or ‘The Who’s Who of Switch Manufacturing’!

(Edited)

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Dec 24, 2024

Great article, Theremin! "Here are no switches nor switch technologies that are strictly speaking better for gaming." I've stopped saying this because I always get rebuffed with the, "Well, you're not a pro gamer"/"Not true, then why does (insert gaming team here) use (HE switch or gaming keyboard here)? It's not all about sponsors," and so on. I know that there are always exceptions, and placebo effect can be beneficial, and being told that "it's up to you" like you mentioned can feel annoying, but it's nice to hear your take on gaming keebs and switches. Skill can absolutely mean that someone playing a game on a membrane can outperform someone playing on a "state-of-the-art gaming keeb or using HE switches". Anyways, we appreciate your articles, thank you for the amount of effort you put into all your work, and I'm glad that you're putting out great content on the regular. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

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