I got mine the other day. I have to say I’m not totally wowed.
The buttons do feel mushy in comparison to a stock Sanwa. They feel more along the lines of a Seimitsu. So I decided to open them up. I ended up taking out the foam and they became just as loud as a Sanwa.
Next I applied o-rings to them and they became just as quiet as when it had the foam though not nearly as mushy. Now the only thing I don’t like about these is that the travel distance for the buttons is longer than a Sanwa. Sanwas are closest to a feather trigger and these buttons feel far from it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t dremel my stick holes or sand down the sides of the buttons. They are an incredibley tight fit and good luck to anyone trying to take these out.
There definitely is a market out there for these things, however if you’re looking for the most sensitive buttons, these are not it. But if you’re willing to trade off sensitivity for sound dampening, these are probably the best ones to look at.
I had red switches. I also have a mechanical keyboard with red switches.
You won’t find many people who complain about accidentally pressing keys on cherry red keyboards. That’s because there is a decent sized length to engage.
Again, I would say for sensitivity, you want to go with Sanwa OBSF-30 (stock on most premium commercial sticks). Those are the nearest to a feather trigger I’ve found.
If you want sound dampening, go for these. They are probably the most sensitive out of all of them. But I honestly would take out the foam and put in an o-ring instead. The muddy feel comes from bottoming the button out and hitting the foam. With an o-ring, you still bottom out, but you hit silicon and that feel of bottoming out is not as muddy and shorter-lived. I’m sure hitting silicon isn’t as quiet as hitting foam, but I believe that it’s still pretty quiet and is a better trade-off. You can find a youtube video comparison of mechanical keyboards with and without o-rings installed.
These are the o-rings I used. I used them for my lit keyboard and LED lights pass through still. These fit on the button caps but stretch a little.
edit: Also, the plastic used in these is ridiculously hard. The plastic is not light or remotely cheap feeling as a Sanwa. They’re more along the lines of the plastic used in Seimitsu clears, probably even more dense/high quality. This I think can also contribute to “feels” as the button is ever so slightly heavier to press.
edit2: The only way I think to correct the length to engage is to somehow have the cherry switch partially depressed at neutral, which I don’t think is feasible to manufacture or engineer into at this moment.
edit3: To be honest, I don’t think I’m being fair. So I’m going to give these buttons more time and report back. But so far these are my first impressions (after being so used to Sanwa).
Update: 05/10/2014
**
Thanks Guys,
We are very careful to respect each feedback.
Many freak fingers urged us to release color HBFS30.
Thank you for your patience and encouragement,
We like the colorful, but it must be special.
After careful consideration, we have selected four classic colors at first.
Red, yellow, blue and green with crystal texture.
Make up your Stick now.
Ready to fighting with your artistic sense.
This question goes to Milkshark/Pei the creator of HBFS buttons.
I notice he uses Cherry MX switches which are mechanical switches German engineered designed by Cherry for keyboards.
Up-to-date news, there’s back-lit Cherry MX-switches that gives different RGB lighting effects and this is used exclusively for Corsair’s K65, K70, and K95 keyboards.
From the looks of the HBFS-30 and the microswitch.
The HBFS-30 would be compatible with any switch that mimics a standard Cherry MX switch.
It possible that the Razer Orange and Green switches would work (same for the korean or Chinese MX switch clones), as for the Romer-G, no.
"there’s back-lit Cherry MX-switches that gives different RGB lighting effects and this is used exclusively for Corsair’s K65, K70, and K95 keyboards"
As long as the switch case and stem is the same I don’t see these switches not working.
I thought this maybe an interesting point. Because if its possible, you guys have options to switch gears whether it is for better lighting options or responsiveness, or both its there but its still theory.
BTW the Chinese MX switches you refer to is manufactured by a company called *Kahl *which is funny because Kahl sounds close to a vegetable and Cherry is a fruity name. From what I heard the blue Kahl switches are slightly heavier than the Cherry MX blues meaning you have to push a little harder than 50 grams of force.
Anyways my theory is if you can switch a mechanical keyboard with any of these switches then chances are same with HBFS buttons but I think Pei would know better since he’s the one doing this kind of stuff unless you also happen to test them yourself then I apologize for the doubt.
MX RGB are the same as regular MX switches except they have a clear housing so you can add LEDs beneath them and they will shine through. They don’t actually have LEDs in them, right?
Dear All,
Razer Microswitch looks like the same specifications with Cherry Microswitch.
We sure that is fit in HBFS too.
Finally, we got some Razer Green stem microswitches & Orange stem microswitches.
We’ll do some testing & review.
If this works well.
We might launch a special version HBFS based on Razer micro switch.
