How Long Do Keyboard Switches Actually Last?

Over the past year or so of reviewing switches, many of my more frequent questions have begun to be focused on that of “breaking in” switches. With the advent of DIY break-in machines cropping up in 2022, many people are wondering if they can use automated, motor driven button-pressing machines to help wear out the friction in their switches prior to using them. However, given that these machines aren’t exactly the easiest to get ahold of, and take a fair amount of time to break in switches to a large degree, many people are now faced with the task of balancing the cost and time reward of pressing their switches hundreds or even thousands of times before ever putting them into a board – all in the name of endgame hunting. However, I don’t think many of these people are truly considering this break in process in the scope of a single switch’s lifetime, as I promise you that it is a lot longer than you think.

Given that many of us that have sunk this far into the hobby as to read an article like this likely own more than a few keyboards, it’s likely never crossed your mind that these boards do have a definite shelf life. Like all good pieces of equipment and machinery, every single piece of a keyboard is doomed to fail at some point. You could wear entirely through your keycaps, your gasket mounting gives way after many iterations of gaming with a heavy hand, and even the leaves in the switches themselves will eventually give out and snap. However, switches are (usually) the only part of a keyboard that people are actually more interested in being used and worn out. As switches are pressed over and over again, the friction between the stem and housings begins to reduce through wear and tear, the factory lubrication can migrate and settle into its final resting spots, and even the springs can change their tune the more that a switch is used. As for how much change a switch can take, though, most modern, MX-style switches are cited as being rated between 50,000,000 and 100,000,000 actuations before they run the risk of giving out, according to the brand you choose. In the case of Cherry, specifically, their 50,000,000 actuation lifetime recommendation has actually been tested, and the equipment used to reach this can be seen in Linus Tech Tips’ tour of Cherry MX’s Factory video around 4:00 minutes into the video.

But really what even is 50,000,000 keystrokes? With a number that large and my MonkeyType record being so low, it really is hard to get a sense of scale of just how long it would take someone to get through that many keystrokes and what the document might look like on the other side of it. If you were to type fairly on par with what I’d guess the average keyboard enthusiast can type at – a good ballpark of 80 wpm – with words that are 5 characters long, orfourandaspaceifyoudon’twantitlookinglikethis, it would take you 125,000 minutes or just over 86 days of consecutive typing to hit this number. For perspective, this is about the same number of days as someone who works 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 52 weeks a year. Nevermind the fact that typing words takes more than just one key, hitting 50,000,000 strokes is a literal job! And for some perspective as to what that might look like in terms of texts, Henry Williamson’s ‘A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight’ is considered to be one of the longest published novels in existence with 15 volumes, over 6,000 pages, …. and only 2,436,924 words.

Winding the topic back around to that of break in machines, you probably are wondering what the point even is faced with the numbers of that magnitude. With my measly homemade machine only able to press switches 17,000 times per hour, there’s no way it can stack up in terms of efficiency or speed with that of Cherry’s validation machines. I mean just at that rate, alone, it would take 2.4 nonstop days for me to break in switches even 1/50th of their minimum lifetime. However, that would be selling the effect of these instruments a bit short in my opinion, even if that is where their reach may fall. Completely disregarding the fact that the community at large clearly seems to think that there is some effect of breaking in switches, my own testing over the last dozen or so reviews has shown that characteristics in switches such as their smoothness, sound profile, and wobble, can all noticeably change just over 50,000 actuations, and to the point that I can pick them apart from each other when blindfolded. There’s not much doubt in my mind that people who are breaking in their switches out to 1,000,000 keystrokes feel the same way as well.

While it is a bit hard to say whether or not I and the rest of the community at large are experiencing some very ritualized placebo effect with our break in machines, it does appear to be tangible enough of an effect that people are willing to pay for it. Thinking a bit about how this all has manifested on mechmarket and various selling platforms, though, I really only ever recall seeing the most broken in switches being around 1,000,000 actuations at most. While I’m sure I missed a small handful of sales of Novelkeys Creams or Cherry MX Blacks being broken in further than that, this means that for basically everybody in this hobby, at least 80-90% of a switches true ‘lifespan’ is likely never actually realized. In fact, the probability that any one single person has pushed a switch out to 50,000,000 keystrokes out of their own usage, alone, has probably never happened in the history that Cherry has even been around, and likely won’t ever happen without a dedicated effort. To be entirely honest, the thought has left me up a few nights on separate occasions.

Not wanting to leave you with overwhelming existential dread at the end of this, though, I feel compelled to share with you a personal anecdote of the closest I’ve ever known of anybody approaching that lower bound on a switch’s life. Since I was in about fourth grade, I’ve been friends with a guy who has been a pretty heavy gamer his whole life. Throughout school, college, and even a job, he still manages to come home and put 3-4 several hours a night into everything he plays, and has done so quite consistently for about 10 years now. Interestingly, as I’ve begun diving a bit deeper into switches as a whole, this friend made me aware that he has been using the same Cherry MX Black gamer board for nearly 10 years straight. If we take something like 100 wpm by 4 hours a day for 10 years, you end up with a number of actuations 1.7 times that of the 50,000,000 threshold for a switch’s lifetime. In fact, that’s closer to the upper limit at 100,000,000 strokes which is the rating for some switch brands. While I can attest that I’ve tried them in person and have noted that his WASD keys feel several grams lightering than his lesser used function keys, I can only leave you with the following horrendous photo as proof. And yes, that is entirely handmade shine.