So I’ve been playing around with a batch of Outemu Snap switches. They are 2mm lower than regular switches giving you a mid-height profile.
These are named for the (supposedly) different click mechanism of their Snap Blue switch, but these Red switches work just like a regular MX linear switch.
My discoveries so far:
Like many Outemo switches they have a nice, tight housing and very little wobble (the shorter stem probably helps here too).
Sadly they literally use a shorter MX spring so you can not really spring swap them. Kailh Box and Alps springs are too narrow.
I definitely like the lower profile, however small a difference it may be. Remember with some boards having around 20mm front height a 2mm reduction is still 10%
Have not tested the affect of lube yet. They are no more or less scratchy than a regular Cherry MX Red.
It was one of my first experiments. With the spirit spring that I tried it reduced travel by at least another millimeter. If you push hard enough you can still bottom out, but only after a horrible grinding crunch sound.
There are 2 versions out there from Outemu - one has MX footprint, another has some other wacky one that is like a reversed choc footprint.
All of the stems appear to be the same design - so if you bought clicks you could remove that bar and they would be exactly the same as the linears.
FYI I have been working with Outemu over the last few months getting some minor tweaks done to these switches and am excited to bring the first big batch of them into my store in the very near future.
I am very curious to try the black variant, which is not readily available anywhere. The red snap linears are okay, but not satisfying for me. A heavier or intermediate spring might help.
About time a vendor snapped these up! Looking forward to getting some.
If the plastic was extended so that it stayed in contact with the wire throughout the while travel of the slider I think it would work for tactility without a click.
Okay, now I’m interested. So from looking around these can be found in the Tecware Phantom L and the Redragon Shrapnel K589. Are there any places where you can buy the switches by themselves?
No one carries them for retail right now. They used to be on Aliexpress a year ago, but not anymore. I found a cheap, used Tecware Phantom L. Since it uses regular Outemu hotswap sockets it was not a terribly difficult harvest.
That is why I was so excited that MKUltra is going to carry them in the future.
I’ll be carrying red, brown, blue and black versions to start.
If you want to keep the nice smooth tactility without the click, you can glue or pin that click leaf into place. I’ve looked into getting little c-clips made for exactly this purpose. Should make for a pretty cool switch that way so you can pick how you want it to perform - linear, tactile, clicky all in one.
