If you had asked me back when I had started the website if I ever thought I would have the chance to review brand new Cherry switches in consecutive years in the near future, I would have thought that that was an insane question. In hindsight it appears I would have been the insane one, myself. To kick off 2024 I bring an incredibly too long review of a historical first collaboration between Cherry and a keyboard community content creator, Glarses - Cherry MX Purples!
As always, thank you all for the continued readership year in and out. I can’t believe I’m in my fifth calendar year of writing switch reviews now, and even trying to wrap my head around the body of work seemingly gets harder and harder by the day. Here’s to another great year of reviews ahead of us all!
Great write up as usual Goat! I definitely agree with your conclusion that this is nothing more than a recolored + spring swapped ergo clear. I too feel a little disappointment over that, as I had hoped Cherry would have done more to make these switches unique. However I did keep my expectations low & was bracing for a recolored clear from the gate. Until Cherry shows some actual innovation beyond “new molds, get the switches while they’re still a little smoother than normal” I will keep that mindset when judging switches from them. Think I’ll probably just keep my batch as a cool piece of the hobby’s history & get some ergo clears to use for a build. It is a shame though as these really could’ve been a special switch if they would’ve done more to differentiate them from clears/ergo clears.
To be honest this is what I expected from those switches and nothing more.
And most importantly those are meme switches, with a stem color that we’ll probably only see on those million switches made.
I didn’t know that clears were stem crackers, was planning on using them with PBT keycaps, I hope this will be ok …
Thanks for the helpful comparisons to MODE Tomorrow switches. I found the description of the Tomorrow to be very accurate.
I’ve always felt that MODE Tomorrow is an elongated, mellower Ergo Clear, and this comparison only reinforces that opinion.
MX Purple is mostly a recolour. However, it seems to have better factory-lube than Ergo Clears. And the molds are newer. When you take the reduced wobble into account, these could be the best medium-tactiles Cherry ever produced.
Were I to use them in an economy build, I would simply switch the springs with 55 G 18mm, as that should be more than enough for 1U keys. 60 G 55 G on large keys.
I’m also starting to think, what if you put Zealio V1R stems in these housings? With afternarket springs, they would solve the spring-ping of stock Zealio V1R, and solve the thick stem problem of MX Clears. Of course, they would be a little mellower than Ergo Clears, and I would be using Brown-level springs.
Could be a nice intermediate between Browns and Ergo Clears.
