Cherry Hyperglide switches

How’s the stem wobble? 8/10 sounds like a stock gateron to me, and if we could get a stock gateron feel with less wobble and cherry housing sounds… that would be a very good switch.

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They’re…fine? I don’t really care about wobble.

I guess there’s some wobble, but not enough to annoy me.

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Please ping the heck out of me when there is a US vendor for these. Interested to see how these will do with wobbly PE stems. Did they add rails on top of their molds, or did they widen their stem holes?

Sounds like hyperglides could benefit from polishing. Oh well. At least that’ll stop me from hoarding those.

Wobble issue becomes apparent if there are other boards with very little wobble to compare to.

There have been some reports that the new 100m actuation Cherry ‘Hyperglide’ switches are smoother than usual. I’ve heard from more than one person that the Hyperglide MX Browns are better than remembered. Maybe they’re benefiting from the new molds similar to the ‘retooled Blacks’ that were so big a few years ago.

Has anyone tried the Hyperglide Browns? I think this would be a good time to pick some up if they’re at minimum scratchiness and ping, maybe even less wobble.

I see some on sale in the U.K. and other places but, like many, have been waiting for word of a U.S. distributor.

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Interesting that the uk shop I bought my hyperglides from had way better shipping options to Canada than anything novelkeys, dixiemech, or primekb had to offer.

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Would that be “UK Keycaps?”

Because I’m in Canada, and the UK sometimes has good delivery arrangements.

UI Keycaps’ pricing was unattractive to me. I’d have went for it if I had an expensive board waiting for them but I don’t. Hopefully, they’re part of the November Cherry restock at NovelKeys.

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I received my sample of 10 Cherry MX Brown Hyperglides:

So far, they are easily recognizable as Browns.

They’re a tiny bit smoother than the retooled Browns in my 2019 Leopold, but not by much. Stability doesn’t seem wildly different either, they’re not as stable as Bobas, for example.

Although these have garnered some praise in some quarters, I’m not sure they’re such a big deal. It doesn’t motivate me to buy a keyboard full of these.

OTOH, if this treatment were given to Clears, it might smooth them out a bit, and increase their tactility. Hyperglide Clears would be a nice addition.

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Update: I tried them with GMK Oblivion V2 keycaps, and it was marginally better.

The heavier GMK keycaps reduce the scratchiness of the switches somewhat, which removes most of it.

The Hyperglide switches are definitely smoother out-of-box than the pre-tooled Browns on my circa-2016 Majestouch.

I would say that they are probably comparable to the freshly-retooled Browns in 2017. But they are still Browns. If you’re not happy with your existing Browns, you probably won’t find these much of an improvement.

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Honestly while I do want some linear Hyperglides, I think you hit the nail on the head by comparing them to freshly retooled Cherry switches. IMHO it mostly the fresh molds that are making these hyperglides smoother than pretool/retooled MX switches, not any of the small design changes Chery made.

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I agree.

I just had someone compare these to 2017-2018 retooled Browns that they were typing on at the time. They are very similar in feel for the end-user.

He is satisfied with his retooled Browns, and also likes the Hyperglides. So they’re basically just fresh Browns, as far as I can tell.

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The one thing I do wonder though is if the changes made to the stems & housing will adversely affect their swapping ability? I hope not cause I love using Cherry tops on a variety of other switches.

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What’s the difference between retooled and hyperglide in those pictures? All I can see is small differences in texture.

From what Cherry has said, the differences are supposed to be on the front side of the stem (opposite of TLS side) and on the inside of the top housing (eight guide rails).

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It’s a good question. My ‘hyperglide’ Browns don’t look much different than the regular retooled ones.

Maybe I should open one up and compare it visually to a regular retooled.

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Perhaps they just reduced the distance between the stem and guide rails. Does Hyperglide have less wobble than retooled?

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I need to do more comparison of these supposed ‘Hyperglide’ MX Browns I bought from the U.K. directly alongside pre-Hyperglide Browns.

One thing I can tell you, from some testing in hotswap vs. pre-Hyperglide, is that these Browns are actually quite nice, by Cherry standards. I plugged in the new keyboard and was ready to criticize these, but they were very gentle and relatively smooth. The pre-Hyperglide Browns desoldered from my Leopold are scratchier and … worse.

So if you really like MX Browns, the ones I bought from the U.K. are well-manufactured when looked at in terms of recent Cherry production. I don’t know if they really are Hyperglides or just new, but slap some GMK on it and it’s kind of like typing on what the old Kinesis and early MX Brown Cherry boards may have been like.

(In terms of having new molds). The GMK really goes well with it. It’s making me think of populating my Archon AK89 with Hyperglide Browns and GMK Oblivion V2.

I’ll try to open some up later, and do more comparison with the Browns from my Leopold.

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I just ordered some blacks from CandyKeys, I’ll compare them to my Black Inks and write it up here. I’m hoping they’re as good as the press release promises. There’s not a lot online about them yet (apart from sound test vids and this thread).

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They arrived a few days ago. I compared them to some other switches I had.

TL;DR in order of best to worst wobble performance:

  1. Cherry hyperglide blacks
  2. Gateron black inks
  3. Gateron yellows - filmed
  4. Gateron yellows - unfilmed
  5. Cherry blacks (probably not retooled, but definitely not vintage either)
  6. Cherry clears

1, 2, 3 and 4 were all compared in a wooden prototype case I have for testing switches, the others were on existing boards.

About The Hyperglide Switch
They retain the classic scratchiness that Cherry switches all have (whether that’s good or not is subjective). This means you will need to lube these if you are a smoothness freak. The spring ping is very present on these switches (louder than my older, worn-in Cherry blacks), although the overall sound is pleasant and thocky.

Wobble Performance
The wobble performance of the hyperglide (1) switches is definitely on a par with the black inks (2), possibly even better (although, if better, it’s by a very fine margin).

The filmed gateron yellows (3) were much better than the unfilmed yellows (4), and closer to the first two, but not quite as good.

The unfilmed yellows were about the same as my other Cherry switches (5, 6) - fine but not great.

My Conclusion
These days, I’m only interested in switches that require very little or no modding, so that’s how I judged these switches. Keep that in mind.

Gateron black inks are my favourite linear switch. I prefer not to mod switches if I can help it, partly because of the extra effort involved. My interest in the Hyperglide Cherry MX switches was to see if they are close to the black inks in wobble performance.

While the wobble performance of the hyperglides is as good as the black inks, I would not use them for a build because that would require lubing them - and I have no interest in lubing any more.

That doesn’t mean they are bad switches; they are better than the existing Cherry blacks (for wobble) and people love those once they’re modded.

Make of that what you will!

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So was it ever ascertained here if Hyperglides have binding with GMK keycaps?