Flashquark has both Outemu Ice and Kailh Pro Purples in stock so I went ahead and ordered both (I chose the lightest Ice switch, the Light Purple).
After playing around with them I think the Outemu Ice switches were just the victim of bad timing.
Nice and tight with little wobble
Full Polycarbonate housing before that was a thing
Relatively smooth feel
The Pro Purples brought back good memories, but they are a lot scratchier than the Outemu Ice switches. These Pro Purples have to be lubed before I would call them good.
But I continue to pleasantly surprised by the Outemu Ice switches, especially the full polycarbonate housing and tightness of them.
My guess is that Outemu brought these out around the time the community was going nuts over Zelios and Panda switches and the Ice switches were just dismissed out of hand as not being tactile enough.
How tactile are these two switches? From what I read, Outemu is as tactile as MX clear. If that’s the case, they aren’t really light tactile at the level of MX brown or the meteor orange
People thought Pro Purples were just ‘scratchy Zealios,’ and also that OUTEMU Ice was just a Zealio built to a lower spec, with some scratchiness.
I tried some Ice Purple the other day, but I just couldn’t get in to them. They felt kind of empty to me. Maybe I should give them another chance. I think the stems work in Boba housings.
Tried both gateron cap brown and durock light tactile this week. They both are solid cherry brown alternatives imo. Out of these three, I like durock light tactile the most. It is smoother than my lubed cherry brown and sounds cleaner. Cap Brown sounds very deep, I think many people would like them, they are also much lighter than cherry brown and durock light.
I am looking into Gateron Cap Brown at the moment, and from some of the spring weight descriptions, I wasn’t sure if the switch is heavier or lighter than Cherry.
I’d be testing various weights anyway.
My experience with Durock Light Tactile was marred by receiving the first batch of over-lubed Pewter factory switches at the beginning of the year. I just sold them today. But maybe I will try again with Durock Light Tactile, which will definitely need a spring-swap.
Don’t know the exact bottom out force for gateron cap brown, but when comparing them one against another: durock light tactile (67g) > hypeglide cherry brown > Gat CAP brown > Gat milky brown.
While cherry brown is supposed to bottom out at around 60~62g, I feel that my brown are only slightly lighter than durock light. When opened up one of the cap brown, the stock spring length is 18mm, which means it’s a bit longer than TX long springs(16mm).
Did your Durock Light Tactile switches require any work? Like L + F? It would be interesting if they could be used as is, with just a spring-swap.
As for the CAP Browns, I was recommended the other day to go for Milky Brown instead of CAP Brown. Do you know to what degree these two switches are comparable? Does the Milky have an advantage?
I have been using stock. I have already ordered another bag of these switches potentially for a portable board, maybe I will lube those in the future.
On alibaba, it seems that you can ask Durock to make light tactile with 55g, 62g, 65g, 78g. So I guess these switches will work just fine with different spring weights. It also says they picked 67g as default because it gives closest experience to Cherry brown(?).
I don’t really like the deep sound of cap brown and haven’t put milky brown on a full board. But that’s something on my list to explore. Where was the discussion on milky brown vs CAP brown? Woud love to read it.
I was discussing buying and modding some Gateron Cap Browns with someone, and they recommended the milky/Golden housing over the clear housings.
The reason behind this is their own personal experience with the milky Gateron linear housings, which sounded better than the clear ones.
However, this was with the linear housings, so it may not apply to the tactile switches.
It could be a moot point, because I’m not sure where you get Gateron Cap Browns with the milky housings.
EDIT: This person may have been comparing Gateron Cap Brown to the older Gateron Milky Brown. The latter, I think, is a Gateron Brown with a milky housing. I’m more interested in the Cap Brown, which appears to be a more modern design.
I got the cap brown from here, they look like poop , and there’s a milky version if milky one sounds better.
The Cap brown has a different stem and internal design which is supposed to make them smoother. I think they are a bit smoother but they are also pre-lubed. To me, the bump in the cap brown is a bit more rounded when comparing it to milky brown but similar tactility. I would say a bit bigger than cherry brown but a lot smaller than ergo clear.
Looks like I may be picking up both regular Gateron Cap Brown and Gateron Milky Cap Brown. Of course, if Pewters had worked out for me, I wouldn’t be doing this at all. But Durock went crazy with the factory lube on both the early Pewters and Durock Light Tactile.
I can’t remember - did you lube your Gateron Cap Brown?
Larger than Cherry Brown but smaller than Ergo Clear is a good way to go. I’d say that Everglide Jade Green are like that. It’s also cool to go smaller and lighter but more distinct than MX Brown, which SP Star Meteor Orange might be said to do.
They were pre-lubed with factory oil, I did not mod them. They were quite generously lubed, perhaps even more so than the durock light tactile that I got. I may try Star Meteor Orange in the future, but right now, I am pretty happy with durock light.
That’s interesting. I can confirm that my v2 cap brown also leaks oil - much less severe than what you had. There was only some oil on the plate when I pull off the switches, PCB was clean, but I had only used them lightly for about a day.
I’m biased, because I had the early Pewter samples that were way factory-overlubed.
So to me, the tactile event seemed tiny and indistinct. But I thought that may have been a consequence of the factory lube. I am trying again with some Durock Light Tactiles.
But yes, my stock Pewters in some respects seemed less tactile than Meteor Orange.
, and there’s a