Cherry's redesigned MX Red with a factory grease ring chemically similar to Krytox 205g0 and tighter stem tolerances. Smoother and quieter than the legacy MX Red while keeping the same 45g actuation and 100M-actuation lifespan.
Cherry's MX2A landed in 2023 with a real engineering update — factory lube, tighter tolerances, the same 100M-press lifespan. The reason the discourse cooled isn't that the switch failed; it's that the enthusiast slot it aimed at was already claimed by the time it arrived.
Two years ago HMX was a name on a vendor page nobody pronounced confidently. Today the Cloud sits second on our W19 tracker and lands in half the $120 prebuilts the scene argues about. The rise wasn't an accident.
Lube moves the sound and feel of a switch in ways nothing else in the build can. It also chews up a Saturday and ruins switches when applied with the enthusiasm the rabbit-hole crowd recommends. Here is the version that earns its keep.
The housing line on a switch spec sheet is the second-most-important thing about a switch, after the type, and most buyers skim past it. Material decides how the switch rings, how the stem rails feel under a finger, and how much grace it gives a bad lube job. A 'PC top, nylon bottom' tag is doing more work than its three words suggest.
Thin POM shims between your switch housings cost five dollars and promise a tighter, better-sounding switch. The mechanism is real. Whether it matters on your specific switches is a separate question.
Cherry MX2A Red appears in editor-curated build sheets.