I got some Cherry Clears in from Cannonkeys this past week and I wanted to share some initial non-typing impressions comparing the bump profile in hand and the smoothness.
My favorite switch that I use in my main keyboard has been Durock Medium Tactiles for quite a while now, which are modeled on Cherry Clears. The DMTs I’m using have a very light coat of 3204 on rails and stems with TX XL (18mm) 60g springs and Deskey films. I’m lubing my Clears with a slightly heavier coat of 3204 on rails only as I aim for as much of a “frictionless” feel, and the prior DMTs ended up feeling a little sluggish with rail+stem lube.
I would rank the smoothness of these Clears compared to the DMTs as follows: Unlubed Clear<Lubed Clear<= Factory lubed DMT < Lubed DMT. The DMTs get really close to the frictionless feel that I desire, whereas the Clears are definitely smooth post lube but you do still hear some scratch. Its not the egregious scratch that one would expect based on older pretool molds, but there’s some definite texture to the push feel. I expect that this is mostly unnoticeable when typing at speed though, and some light break-in should close the gap to the DMTs.
I find the Clears to have more pre-travel and a smaller but sharper feeling tactile bump. Looking at the stems corroborates this for me as the DMTs have a slightly more rounded bump in the tactile leg. However, the Clears are consistently lighter in terms of peak tactility - when testing by pressing two switches together with the same spring and lube combination, the Clears have consistently actuated first. The impressions of the rounder bump lines up with Pylons’ testing of the two and his force graphs. I would have to disagree with @Deadeye’s impressions earlier here on the Clears having the more “assertive” bump, but this is most likely because the Dragonfruits have really loose tops/housings while the Durock Medium Tactiles are quite tight housings with low amounts of stem wobble.
I have to finish lubing these and use Geon’s stem trimmer to reduce the size of the stems, but so far I like what I have. If Durock Medium Tactiles didn’t exist then I would be using Clears in most of my builds for sure. However, based on my preferences in switch smoothness and the slightly rounder bump profile of the DMTs, I prefer those even at the standard price of $0.55 USD per switch from standard vendors. Right now I can get them from the official Durock Aliexpress storefront for $0.40 USD per switch which is a really competitive price compared to the $0.38 USD of standard Cherry Clears.
These are going to go into my Keychron Q5 I use for work so I’ll be able to use both long term and update with more typing impressions when they’re ready.