Good to know it does that with the Tangies. (Bump syncs fine with the DF’s, but it’s still crazy short.) It might function with a stronger / longer spring, but yeah - that’s probably the shortest travel I’ve experienced on a normal-sized mx-compatible switch.
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The only tactiles i’ve used have been the Aliaz 70g and gateron browns, so I don’t have much experience to base my opinion on.
But anyways, I received my dragon fruits earlier today. Spent about 20 minutes lubing/filming and decided to put a few on a board before I got too far into it. I couldn’t help myself…
The spring ping is the worst I’ve heard so far. I drenched the springs and re-applied lube and though the ping is less noticeable, its still there.
I didn’t even bother finishing the lube/film job. Back into the bin they go.
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Heya. Been playing with Dragonfruits. I don’t have the spring ping even in stock, but I notice more of a leaf crunch if that make sense. Like micro-clicks. It’s sad because they are not smooth unlike Kiwis even if same manu.
Tactility, it’s same as ergo clears and Penguins–mild. I prefer the sound of Penguins, but we’ll see once I lube the Dragonfruits.
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So I’ve been living with these dragon fruits for about a week now. A few thoughts:
The bump is nice. It’s very small and short, starts at the top, and is followed by a lot of free travel. If you press slowly, you can overcome the bump and then feel the spring start to compress.
These feel much better to me with ABS SA keycaps. It makes them both feel and sound a bit better.
The leaf ping is a big problem. I find I like them a lot better when I wear headphones (since I can’t hear them ping)
The wobble is really bad. Of course, now that I am using SA caps, the wobble is much worse than with Cherry profile.
TLDR: The idea was good, but the execution was terrible. They’re on par with a bumpier greetech brown, except more wobble. The only thing they got right on this was the concept and the colors. It’s like no one tested the switch.
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Totally agreed. I’ve gotten an enjoyable frankenswitch or two out of these but they’re pretty disappointing on their own, especially compared to the other fruit switches.
I ordered some tops from Gazzew to see if they might help; Boba tops are a hair too tight for the DF stems, but he has some slightly less tight (but still kind of tight) clear tops that people use to reduce wobble on Gaterons. I’m hoping these will help clean-up the DF’s a bit.
If not, heck it, I’m throwing U4T stems in them.
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The rapid change from a progressive linear to a supposedly Ergo-Clear type tactile was a red flag.
I ignored it, because I’m always interested in new tactiles, but the safe call was not to buy the switch until real reviews came in.
I have been using mine for a while and I can’t detect any leaf ping at all with my batch. I do however, notice the wobble if I lightly place my finger on top of the keycap and wiggle it back an forth and compare that to my other boards/switches.
I thought it might be possible to hear pinging if I bottom out my switches when typing (I don’t normally bottom out on every stroke), but I still couldn’t hear it. I have some spare switch films that I will try out to see if reduces the wobble even though I can’t really detect the wobble while typing either. Overall, I think these switches are OK, but not as loved as my kiwi, zealio, lilac setups.
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So I finally finished filming and lubing this set of switches. While films did improves the sound a lot it didn’t reduce the wobble as must as I hoped but it did improve it from how much then stems moved without them. After spending more time typing on them, I would say that they are bit more gratifying to type on from the sense that the bump is at the top, which these days I just have to have.
Out of all the switches I have tried, this switch solidified that it’s not how large the tactility is that I like but that it is at the top of the key press. So even with these switches I still find the stem gratifying even though it’s not as pronounced as the kiwi switch.
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Based on the stem photos, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were identical mold designs. The fact that they have different tool marks might just be an artifact of how the JWK factory sets up production runs.
It also looks a hell of a lot like a Zealio v1 stem. I’d love to see some side by side comparisons with Everglide Jade, the old Stealios, and various other Zealv1-style JWK sliders.
I’m also very curious about the differences in housing internals. For all we know, the housing molds are identical too, but the penguin switch uses a stiffer leaf or some thing that stays in place better and reduces wobble.
Maybe it’s time for me to start buying switches again and break out the old USB microscope…
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Based on this discussion, I decided to actually open my box of Dragonfruits, and actually test a couple.
They are actually better than I thought they would be. Nice and bouncy. They are wobbly. And the noise is annoying - too much friction or wobble or something. The leaf?
I’ll have to carefully lube a couple and the springs, and see how it does. I think the stem and the spring weight are fine.
I enjoy typing on stock Dragonfruits more than I do lubed Penguins, even though the Penguins have a better housing / leaf. This could be a good switch if they were more diligent.
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Okay, so after lubing, you can get a more ‘rounded’ rolling sound from the Dragonfruits. I used 3204.
However, it doesn’t address the wobble, of course.
When looking at the disassembled stems, they reminded me a great deal of the ‘Penguin’ stems. They may be the same. I haven’t done a direct comparison.
Unlike the Penguin stems, the Dragonfruit stems are factory-lubed. It’s a thin, glistening application. It might be a more ‘watery / oily’ lube, I don’t know. It felt slick to the touch.
The factory lube felt okay in the factory switch.
It’s too bad they made mistakes with this switch, because it has potential. The stem works for me in this housing, as does the spring. They need to fix the wobble, fix the leaf. It could have been a fine Ergo Clear out-of-box.
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I read this thread and ended up getting a set of 67g Penguins, and haven’t regretted it
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