I told you all last week that this run of reviewing tactile switches wasn’t quite over yet! This week, a deep dive into Cherry’s latest of their custom community-oriented MX2A platform releases - the Cherry MX Petal - inspired by the light tactility of the ever classic Cherry MX Browns.
As always, thank you all for the continued love and support week in and out. The past few weeks at work has been especially rough on me and it felt nice to sit down and work on this review, even if it is a bit out there on focus and length.
Great review as always Goat! Actually got me fairly interested in this switch as it sounds like Cherry honestly made a concerted effort to improve the feel over MX browns. Although the break in stats are a little underwhelming, I bet if hand lubed they shouldn’t deviate in sound so much over time. Gonna have to give these & Cherry’s new light linear a try here sooner than later. Anyways, hope you’ve been doing well bro, haven’t had a chance to BS with you in a hot min. Also hope your artisan collection is coming along nicely too as it seems the resin is starting to get it hooks into you too!
having just reviewed the Goji Reserves, having once again gone on about the Blueberry Chiffons, and with me actively making plans to do content on some other new light tactiles such as the Greetech OG switch re-releases, that well also feels like its drying up a bit too.
I sympathize with it seeming as if the well of light-tactile switches is limited.
However, I would say that there are a number of light-tactiles from the past few years that have yet to be reviewed:
There’s Gateron Mini i, HMX K01, Gateron Longjing Tea, AKKO Bittersweet, Gateron Jupiter Brown, Gateron Beer, WS Light Tactile, and KTT Macaron Orange.
Some of those, such as the K01 and the Bittersweet, seem to have been released in the past year. Most are still available for purchase.
[Granted, the Beer and the WS Light Tactile were reviewed among the “Switch Scores” shorts.]
What is your plan with these? I was thinking of spring swapping. But I am not sure what the stock spring length might be. Must be a little longer since the bottom out force is 45g.
You know - and this is ironic - but I am thinking of using them stock.
I bought a sample package of x10 of these switches back in November. And the thought on my mind was similar to yours - what will I have to do in terms of spring-swapping, lubing, etc…
To my surprise, when I tested a couple in a Transition Lite TKL or something, they were actually pretty good! They were relatively smooth, for a Cherry switch, they felt consistent, and they were light.
They might be the first Cherry tactile I would consider using in stock form. And yes, they are light. They might even be lighter than MX Brown, but I haven’t tried a stock Brown in a while. I was surprised. The bottom-out is a bit sharp - I wonder if these are slightly-long pole, despite the advertised travel of 4 mm.
So I ordered 80 more, and I might fill out an entire TKL with stock Cherry MX Petal.
Even at 16mm, a spring that actuates around 30 gf and bottoms-out at 45 gf might seem lighter than a 60 g 14mm spring.
I was surprised at how light they were. I often swap Browns to 57 - 58.5 gf, but I didn’t see a need to do so upon testing these. If you sent these switches back to 2020 and said that they were Cherry, there might be some skepticism.
I’m hoping that the 10x samples I received in November weren’t just some particularly nice batch. I have 80x more on the way.
I just tested MX Petal on the TKL again, and they were still the best switches for that particular build. I tend to build Ergo Browns, and these are kinda what they are. In retrospect, I might switch the springs with a 14mm spring lighter than 60 cf.
But I don’t really see the need to. The improvement would be too marginal. As the review indicates, the housing collisions seem to offer greater impact than the tactile event, and I am not sure I can modify that.
It’s interesting. In his review of MX Petal, ThereminGoat said that he was running out of light-tactiles to review. Back in November, I suggested some to review. Since that time, I now intermittently have access to about 5 light-tactiles produced by HMX. In addition to medium and heavy HMX tactiles.
