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Kailh Box Silent Switches: Soft, but Scratchy

One of the biggest points mechanical keyboard haters will bring up is how loud they are. Although they are probably thinking of clicky switches, even linear switches are still not very quiet, especially compared to rubber based switches like domes, scissor, topre, etc. However, you might not have known that there are switches called silent switches. These switches have foam on the slider or in the bottom housing to mute the bottom-out sound, resulting in a very quiet switch.


Kailh Box Jade and Box Navy switches

Another kind of switch that is very popular are the Kailh Box Switches. These switches connect to the same keycaps as normal Cherry MX switches, but the housing and stem are different. To make it short, the housings have a box inside that makes them water-resistant and dust-proof, and the stem has a rectangular shell around the cross that makes the switch more stable. With that added stability, the contact points for the switch can be much smaller, so these switches can come factory-lubed on those contact points and be smooth out of the box.

Kailh Box Silent Pink

These are like regular box switches, but with foam on the bottom of the stem and a cylindrical shell around the cross. They can come in either linear silent pink, or tactile silent brown. They are extremely quiet, as quiet as rubber-based switches or quieter in some instances.

Unfortunately, one of the first things I noticed about these switches is that they are quite scratchy. As I noted in a previous paragraph, box switches are usually quite smooth out of the box, but these feel and sound a bit sandy. There were no changes in the type of plastic used, and the contact point is lubricated, so perhaps it's due to the circular stem?

The box silent brown switches, although I did not have them in for review, are also quite scratchy. Popular keyboard reviewer Glarses did say that the tactility was good though, you can check out his review here.

Overall, these are a promising addition to the mechanical keyboard scene, but for any enthusiast, they will be quite annoying as the scratchiness is very noticeable. Fortunately switches often go through multiple iterations, so hopefully we will see this problem fixed in the next one.


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