Hey,
Those Kailh Midnight switches are actually pretty decent!
Mine finally arrived today, and now I have a lineup of Midnight, Deep Sea, and Fried Egg.
Fried Egg is the mushiest and softest of them all. Despite that, I kind of like it. It’s okay on a generic alum. plate TKL, but even nicer on a dampened Aurora. Easy to bottom-out, but not harsh.
Deep Sea is stiffer than Fried Egg. Unlike Fried Egg, it doesn’t sound as if it needs to be user-lubricated. [Fried Egg has a bit of shuffling.] It’s crisp, almost feels like a tactile instead of a linear. But there’s no bump.
Then there’s Midnight. I’m using KBDFans PBT on all of these. Midnight is somewhat crisp, no scratch. The tactility is slightly less than what I remember from Kailh BOX Silent Brown. It’s a medium tactile, whereas I would call Silent Brown a medium-heavy.
It kind of reminds me of TTC Pale Blue in overall feel, but Midnight has a cruder bump whereas Pale Blue might have been crisper and sharper, yet more indistinct in location.
Anyway, I think Kailh Midnight could be a viable out-of-box tactile switch. However, it is loud, about as loud as those cheap $10 Microsoft black rubber-dome keyboards that come with OEM computers. The Deep Sea is somewhat quieter, like a conventional office rubber-dome. And Fried Egg could be the quietest, but there’s squeaking/shuffling from the spring or dampening, so that has to be addressed.
Not sure what I’d recommend for a ready-made office keyboard, I’d have to think about it and test the switches more. All of these Kailh ‘silents’ are on the loud end of silent, whereas Boba types are the quietest stock.