Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Disclaimer: I bought the brown switch keyboard from newegg; for some reason, Amazon won't ship it to APO--even though they shipped the blue switch TK here no problem. I work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week in Afghanistan as chief engineer on a large software project. I don't game a helluva lot, so I'm looking at these keyboards as a professional typist...you know, of sorts. Between coding and PM documentation stuff, I spend something like 80% of my waking hours with my hands on a keyboard. I've been here for a year and a half, but for some reason investing in a keyboard that's worth a damn never once occurred to me until the last two weeks or so, when my second bog-standard dell chiclet keyboard crapped itself. After researching the Cherry keys for a few days, I decided it would have to be between the Cherry Blues or Cherry Browns. I bought one of each, with the intention of buying a matching keyboard to whichever I preferred. It's been four days now, and I still have no idea which keyset--or even keyboard--I prefer. Let me explain the bit about "which keyboard": Amazon won't ship the QuickFire Rapid--my first choice--out here, but they shipped the QuickFire TK no problem. I always prefer ordering from Amazon, so I bought the TK with Cherry Blues first. It got here, and I loved it, but I'm not a huge fan of things lit and there are a few other minor annoyances I have with the board. So after about a week with it, I went ahead and bought the QuickFire Rapid with Cherry Browns from newegg. I'm going to review the keyboards and the switches here. To be perfectly honest, these are both very good keyboards and I doubt anyone would be unhappy with either. I almost didn't bother reviewing them because they're so damned good and most of the reviews already posted cover everything I might have to say, but I haven't seen any by people who have used both the Blues and the Browns. I've had the Blues longest, so I'm going to review the TK first. ===============================QuickFire TK=============================== Pros - I got this keyboard first, so I was astonished at how solid it feels. A few people have said it's heavy, and I guess if you've got spindly little girl arms, it could be considered heavy-ish. It's about a pound and a half, which is much weightier than any other keyboard I've used since the early 90's. Construction is solid as hell, and there's only one small CM logo above the numpad. As I mentioned, I'm not a fan of lit keyboards (my officemate says "you listen to techno, but you don't like lights?" "nope."), but these are fairly well done. Brightness is adjustable through 6 steps, and there are 3 basic modes-WASD on, all on, and "breathing". There is also an option to turn them all off. When numlock is off, the arrow keys light up independently, but it's only noticeable if you don't have all the keys lit. Honestly, it looks kinda cool. Solid construction means there is no bleedthrough from the lights, but keys on the outer edges (function keys, left CTRL for example) are clearly not independently lit. You do have access to the numpad in a compact keyboard, which is especially useful if you were taught to use a calculator one-handed. By turning numlock off, you get access to arrow keys and the normal 9-key keyboard functions. Cons - The ****ing numpad. I'm getting used to it now, but holy crap...when I first got the keyboard, I hated the damn thing. You don't realize how used you are to finding the home/end/del keys by feel until you can't feel them anymore. They're just more keys in a row. When highlighting/deleting chunks of code, I use home/end/del constantly. Having to hunt for them almost every single time annoyed the crap out of me until I started modifying the way I work to get around having to use them at all. This is by far and away my biggest complaint about the keyboard, and it's not really a problem with the board itself. Lights are stupid. ===============================QuickFire Rapid=============================== Pros - I love everything about this keyboard. Seriously. There are no cons. As others have mentioned, the rubberized body of the board is very nice; it's kind of like hopping out of a lower-end Mercedes Benz and stepping into a BMW 7-series. Soft touch plastics everywhere. The letter etching and painting on the keys is very, very slightly raised, which gives them just a touch of tactile feedback. Some might not like it. I am not one of them. The keys on the TK are a little tactile, too, but something about the way it's done on that board makes it annoying against my fingertips, especially the "S" key. It feels classy on the Rapid. There have been a few complaints about the ridiculous number of CM logos on the board. Mine doesn't have those. It has exactly one logo, and I had to look for it; it's on the top (or the front?) of the board, on the other side of the function keys. You know, where you'll never see it. You have no idea how relieve I was to not see the QuickFire logo on the spacebar. Classy move, Cooler Master, and I thank you for it. Con - Okay, I lied. I can think of one, but I'm reaching a little bith with it. The Caps and Scroll Locks are lit by red LEDs, and they're bright as HELL. But how often do you plan on leaving those two things on? What's Scroll Lock even *for*? ===============================THE KEYS!=============================== Overall, both switches are extremely clean. Every single click is exactly the same. It sounds weird, but when you type as much as I do, you start to notice little inconsistencies in the amount of pressure required to get a key to register. You start to automatically compensate for it. It's especially bad on traditional keyboards as they start to wear down. I found myself banging on the homerow keys for the first week or so. I still do it when I hit my stride. When typing at speed, the blues sound like a hundred chickens tap dancing across a hardwood floor. If you've never heard that, it's a whole lot of none-too-subtle clicking. It doesn't bother me all that much--when you bottom out, it's about twice the decibel output as a standard mouse click. The first click (mid-way actuation point) is about as loud as a mouse click; very subtle. Unless you are a very light typist, I don't see any reason to get the blues over the reds, which are supposed to be the same switch without the mid-way point. I'm learning to hunt for that first click, and it is much faster to type that way. It's an extremely light touch and requires a fair amount of control to achieve. The browns are hardly quiet, but they're also not noisy. They make about as much noise as a standard full-height set of keys, maybe a touch less. The response is mostly tactile. There's a very distinctive bump in the keypress just past the halfway point. When you bottom out the key, it's still less noisy than the blues. Combined with the better feeling of the keytops on the QuickFire Rapid, this makes for a much more pleasant typing experience vs the TK with blues. Huh. I guess you guys just helped me pick my keyboard of choice. Time to order another Rapid with Browns, I think. If you have any questions about either keyboard or switch, please let me know in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.