How to Describe Any Tactile Switch

I think I can come right out of the gate and speak for the vast majority of us in saying that tactile switches were my first true love in the keyboard hobby. Also, like most of you, I started out with the ever classic Cherry MX Browns, strictly chosen because I enjoyed how the little tactile feedback made the switches feel somewhat premium compared to the membrane boards I was used to. However, looking back, I must have gotten bored of these switches pretty quickly as I was trying to move ‘up’ from there in only a few months. Something like a hyped frankenswitch or Zealios came to mind as an alternative; Really just anything that provided some real, forceful kickback when I pressed the switch in. And much like the majority of us who started in the hobby with Cherry MX Browns, this too is a pretty well-trodden path.

Unfortunately, though, it’s not all that uncommon for new people to stumble and get lost in this pursuit of their ideal tactile switches largely because of the fact that they lack the vocabulary and understanding to truly express what they want. With the variety of tactile switches that exist out there today in 2024, the similarities between all tactiles pretty much end at the blanket statement of them all having some distinctive feedback between the start and end of a keystroke. Trying to ask for anything more detailed than that is going to get you hundreds of different answers from thousands of different people. Completely disregarding all of the other features that people often discuss when buying tactiles – such as manufacturer, material, weight, etc. – just the tactile bumps of these switches alone have an unending amount of variety to them, and lack of a proper way to talk about them doesn’t help anyone’s confusion. So, in order to try and help cut through some of this confusion for you, here’s my no math, no graphs way of how I describe and talk about tactile switches.

Before I try and go into any depth about the different ways there are to describe and detail tactile bumps, it’s probably important to really nail down what a tactile bump even is and why they even physically occur in the first place. Put most simply, tactile bumps occur as a direct result of the contact between a stem’s leg and the metal contact leaves of a switch when the stem is pressed inward. Following along with Figure 1 above, as the stem is pressed downwards into the switch, the leaves will touch and trace along the shape of this stem leg, starting at the bottom and then ending towards the top as you reach the very bottom of the downstroke. Since the legs of this tactile stem are curved and have what looks like a tiny ‘bump’ partway between the start and end point, this will cause the leaves of a switch to exert different pressures on the stem depending on where they are touching. Much like the shape of the legs itself, the variation in this force is what we physically feel as a “tactile bump.”

As you can probably guess based on this information, the combination of the shape of the leaves in a switch, as well as those of the stem legs themselves, are what give rise to the different types of tactile switches that we encounter in this hobby today. While there are no explicit categories or buckets that all tactile bumps can be sorted into easily, there really are only two metrics that you need to know about in order to really discuss tactiles like a pro. These categories are:

Tactile Bump Strength

The “strength” of a tactile bump is the term that I use to describe how forceful a tactile bump feels at its peak relative to the rest of its own stroke. While you might intuitively think that we could just compare the singular number that represents the peak tactile force between any number of tactile switches as a sign of their strength, consider that how strong or weak a tactile bump feels is actually relative rather than objective. If two switches have a peak tactile force of 85 grams, but one starts its bump at 30 grams, and the other starts it at 75 grams, you’d almost certainly feel like the 30 to 85-gram transition would be much stronger. It’d almost feel like climbing a steep cliff to get to the top of that tactile bump! It is the difference in force between where the tactile bump starts and reaches its peak that you feel as the ‘strength’ of a tactile switch.

To provide some context in switches you might be a bit more familiar with, switches like Cherry MX Browns would be something you’d describe as traditionally “weak,” and switches like Zealios or Holy Pandas you’d describe as something “strong.” However, it makes much more sense to say that one of these switches is ‘stronger than’ or ‘weaker than’ another tactile switch you are comparing them to. Tactile bump strength does not exist on a binary and can instead be thought of as a spectrum of weak to strong feeling bumps.

Tacile Bump Size

The other term that I use to describe tactile bumps is that of their ‘size,’ or how much of a switch’s total stroke is taken up by a tactile bump. While strength describes how much force it feels like it takes you to get up over a tactile bump, size attempts to describe how long it takes you to get over that bump. If a switch very quickly gets to its peak tactile force in what only feels like the tiniest push, its bump could be described as “short” or “sharp.” On the flip side, if the peak tactile strength is something you slowly work up to over the entire course of pushing the switch in, its tactile bump could be described as “wide” or “long.” Much like with the strength definition above, tactile bump size also operates on a spectrum.

Unlike the strength spectrum, though, the short and wide ends of the spectrum are not quite so evenly distributed here. While longer tactile bumps often take up the majority of a switch’s entire downstroke, short tactile bumps are quick enough to occur all over the place in the downstroke – including at the very start, in the middle, or evenly rarely in the back half of a switch’s downstroke. (For example, Zealios would be switches that have a bump at the start, Cherry MX Browns in the middle, and old Gateron Aliaz switches as ones with tactile bumps towards the very end.) Just these two terms alone should and very well could carry you through any question or conversation that you could possibly have about tactile switches in the future. However, I would be selling you a bit short on the benefits of using these two works if I didn’t make you consider that these two things can be mapped out together on one two-dimensional grid.

If you cross a tactile switch bump’s strength with its size, as you can see in the figure below, you end up with four different groups of tactile switch bumps – ‘short & strong,’ ‘strong & wide,’ ‘weak & short,’ and ‘weak & wide.’ Suddenly, it's much easier to visualize the whole spectrum of tactile switches when you think of Cherry MX Browns in the weak & short portion of the graph and Holy Pandas as belonging in the ‘strong & wide’ one.

As for what other types of tactile switches exist in other regions of this graph, I will leave you to discover those on your journey deeper into the hobby. While ‘strength’ and ‘size’ hardly constitute a concrete, well-defined pair of terms for you to describe tactile switches, I’ve found through years of experience that this will greatly reduce headaches for everyone involved when talking about tactiles. It’s how I still talk about tactile switches today, nearly seven years deep. So, while I am a bit biased in recommending this system, I don’t think it has quite steered me wrong yet…