Mechanical Cherry Keys

All keys are mechanical, in our case making use of cherry red MX with white LED back-lit switches. The idea behind mechanical switches is that they give a key press a more perceptible feel opposed to keys with a standard rubber membrane used in cheaper dome based keyboards. Gamers seem to prefer mechy's very much over dome based keys, and ever since the past year or three mechanical keyboards have been on the rise big-time. 

The keyboard registers ALL keys pressed at once, as such this is full key rollover. If we may believe Cherry, these Cherry MX switches can withstand over 50 million key presses. Each key switch is mounted directly onto a top plate that ensures structural rigidity, topped with a translucent ABS laser-etched UV coated keycap to enable back-lighting. 
 

Back-lighting on a Cherry MX switch is much sharper than that of a membrane keyboard because each key is lit by an individual LED and not in an array. This means that if you remove the keycap, you can see a LED directly under it that maximizes the lighting effect. Let's do just that:
 

Our keyboard houses red Cherry MX switches as you can tell from the pressure switch under the keycap (see above). There are actually four types in general with the following specifications:

• Cherry MX Black - Linear switch with Actuation Force: 60g (40g-80g overall)
• Cherry MX Brown Switches - Tactile Switch with Actuation Force: 45g (55g Peak Force)
• Cherry MX Blue Switches - Tactile & Clicky with Actuation Force: 50g (60g Peak Force)
• Cherry MX Red Switches  - Linear Switch with Actuation Force: 45g

Each color switch feels different. The Cherry MX mechanical switches are intended for for fast, efficient gaming.  The keys are curved a little and are fairly slippery which gives them a good positioned feel. The Cherry MX keys are in the noisy category, though recently they announced a very good silent version as well.