A beginner's guide to picking your first switch

The hardest part of buying a first mechanical keyboard is not the board, the keycaps, or the firmware. It is the switches. There are now hundreds of them on the shelves of any well-stocked vendor, with names that range from the descriptive to the deliberately mysterious, and prices that swing from a few cents to several dollars per switch. The good news: nearly every switch on the market belongs to one of three families. Once a reader can name the family, the rest of the choice becomes manageable.

This guide is for someone who has never bought switches before, or who has bought one set, did not love it, and wants to do better the second time. It is not a buyer's list. It is a way of thinking about the question.

The three families

Every switch sold today is either linear, tactile, or clicky. The difference is what happens between the moment a finger starts pressing and the moment the key actuates.

A linear switch travels in a straight line from rest to bottom-out, with no bump and no click. The whole press is one smooth motion. Linears tend to be the quietest of the three families on average, especially when factory-lubed, and they are the dominant choice in the enthusiast scene right now. They are good for people who want a calm, even feel and a sound profile that leans toward the deeper "thock" end of the spectrum. The Gateron Oil King from Gateron is a representative modern linear: smooth out of the box, on the heavier side at around 55g actuation, and built to land with a deep bottom-out note rather than a sharp tap. Other common linears worth knowing by name are the Gateron Yellow, Gateron Milky Yellow, and the Cherry MX Red.

A tactile switch has a small bump partway down the press. The finger feels the bump, then breaks past it, then continues to the bottom. The bump is the actuation cue: most typists learn very quickly to stop pressing the moment they feel it, which can reduce fatigue on long sessions. Tactiles are the closest modern equivalent to the feel of an old buckling-spring or a typewriter, though much quieter. Common starting points are the Kailh Box Brown, the Gateron Brown, the Holy Panda variants, and the increasingly popular Boba U4T from Gazzew. Tactiles have a wider range of bump shapes than linears do, so two tactiles from different makers can feel very different.

A clicky switch is a tactile with an added mechanism that produces a sharp, audible click at the actuation point. The click is intentional. It is loud. Clickies are the smallest of the three families today, partly because the modern hobby has drifted toward quieter sound profiles, and partly because many shared workspaces simply will not tolerate them. The classic example is the Cherry MX Blue, with the Kailh Box White as a modern, smoother-sounding alternative. A clicky switch is a great choice in a private room and a poor choice in an open office.

What about silent switches?

Silent is not a fourth family. It is a modifier. A silent switch is a linear or tactile with small dampening pads inside that soften the bottom-out and, on the way up, the top-out. The result is a noticeably quieter press, at the cost of a slightly mushier feel; the dampening pads also slightly reduce travel distance. Silents are worth considering for anyone sharing a desk, recording video calls, or living with a light sleeper. They are not a free upgrade. The trade-off in feel is real, and some typists who try silents end up returning to a normal switch with foam-modded keycaps instead.

Where to actually start

Three steps, in order. Do not skip ahead.

Step one: buy a switch tester, not a keyboard's worth of switches. A switch tester is a small acrylic or plastic block with somewhere between nine and thirty-six switches mounted in it, each of a different model. Most major vendors sell their own tester; some are themed around a single brand, others span the catalog. The point is to put a finger on three or four candidates from each family, in person, before committing. A tester costs roughly the same as ten loose switches and saves the cost of a full-board mistake. It will not perfectly replicate how a switch sounds in a real case, but it will tell a beginner whether they prefer linear or tactile, and that is the question that matters most at this stage.

Step two: pick a single family, and a single switch within it. Resist the urge to order three different sets to compare. Comparing is what step one was for. Once a family is chosen, pick one well-reviewed switch in that family at a moderate price, and order enough for a full board plus five or six spares. Stay with mainstream brands for a first purchase. Gateron, Kailh, and Cherry all have strong entry-level options, and their quality control is consistent enough that a beginner will not be diagnosing a wobbly stem on day one.

Step three: actually use the keyboard for at least a month before changing anything. The first week with a new switch is misleading. Hands adapt. A switch that felt too heavy on day one often feels correct by day ten, and a switch that felt perfect for the first hour can become tiring by the end of the week. Give it a month of real typing before deciding the switch was wrong. When that month is up, and only then, is it worth going down the rabbit hole of lubing, filming, and reading detailed reviewers like TheRemingoat reviews for the next, more specific upgrade. Starting with reviewer rabbit holes before knowing one's own preference is how a beginner ends up with three drawers of unused switches.

The honest truth: most people who go through these three steps end up happy with a mid-range linear or a mid-range tactile and never need to look further. The hobby goes very deep, but it does not have to. A first switch only needs to be the right family, in working order, and given a fair month to prove itself. Everything after that is optional.