Gateron Green

2021-01-31T20:37

Some Gateron Green keyboard switches arrived last week. I bought them to pair with the Gateron Blues before discovering just how bad they are.¹ The Greens are similar to the Blues, only slightly heavier — 80g vs 55g, and both are tactile and clicky. I wanted to see if they helped the stabilized keys returned from their depressed state faster.

I had h0001 apart to repair a switch (my current board. h0002 is the white one that I'm currently building) that broke when I swapped its keycaps onto h0002; sometimes the switch pulls from the plate when removing the cap, when that happens it sometimes breaks the solder join.

While had my things out I checked whether the Greens I bought suffered the same dead spot issue I experienced with the Blues — that they register a key press slightly after the click. I tested one key which was fine. It worked just as I expect they all should.

Since I had everything apart and some switches undesignated to any job, I decided to swap the thumb-operated Cherry Blues for Gateron Greens — the fn, cmd, space, alt and fn keys.

After they were installed, I discovered that two of the three (I couldn't easily test the fn keys because they change the internal state of the keyboard and don't register as a key press to the OS) had the same dead spot I experienced with the Gateron Blues, but it did seem to be a lot smaller in the Greens than the Blues.

I think this might just be how Gateron switches are. At best they're inconsistent, at worst they're not very good. It's okay for the modifier keys to register late and the switch in the spacebar position is good. I do wonder whether the switches loosen up and work more consistently after they've been used for a while. I hope so.

Inside

Broken solder join

Gateron Greens installed

The top

And how do they feel? So far, pretty good. They are slightly heavier. Once I get used to it, I'll know better whether it's something I prefer. They don't sound distinctively different from the Cherry Blues, either. A slightly deeper pitch, but all the same characteristics. You can't pick out the spaces from the sound when quickly typing a sentence.

As to whether I prefer the Greens over the Blues, I'll have to report back once of used them for at least a day.

One good thing I can say about the Gateron's is that they are silky smooth. No scratchiness to them at all. If your typing style is to bottom out, then you'll find them fine. This dead-zone problem really is the only issue I have with them.

Update 2021-02-02T07:39

After using the switches for a day my opinion is that greens under my thumbs feel different but not better or worse than the blues.

During the first few hours, they felt heavier but I wouldn't say they were heavy. Just now, I pulled out another modded Filco Minila with Cherry BLues (h0000). The transition back from greens to blues is much more obvious than the transition to the greens. The blues feel too light where as initially the greens were were just slightly heavier.

Whatever the case, I could easily live with either green or blue switches under my thumbs. I've been a happy user of Cherry Blues for about 10 years now so I'm not suddenly going to hate them or think them not good enough — they're great key switches.²

Using a green switch might be an okay fix for a bad stabiliser on the space. That isn't a problem I have, but it's worth remembering.

I'll revisit again in a month to see if my love for the greens grow, or if I remain fairly indifferent.

¹ First impressions of the Keyboard

² Well the ones I'm using are. I've used some pretty terrible Cherry Blues on other keyboards.

Update 2021-03-14T20:41

I've been using this setup for about six weeks now and I still really like it. It's become normal — they feel right. Because every thumb-operated key is heavier, they don't seem to mismatch. I'm happy with this change but it doesn't really solve any problems I have with this keyboard. I do think that this is a fine solution to improve the reset of spacebar if that's a problem.

I'm not going to remove the heavier keys, but I also don't think I'll put go out of my way to set a keyboard up like this again.

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