Silent "Gazzew Boba U4" vs. "Gazzew U4 RGB V2 65g" switch?

Learning and discussion Key switches
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Hello everyone on this fine forum!

I would like to try out Gazzew Boba U4 silent switch (the lighter 62g version in updated black housing). Now that I started looking for them, I ran into this new “Gazzew U4 RGB V2 65g”

Has anyone tried those please? Are they same apart from the springs? Did they just cut ties with the original designer?

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Hello and welcome to KeebTalk!

I’ll start with the easiest question. The designer is “Gazzew,” so these newer switches are still from the same designer as the older switches. “Boba” refers to the type of plastic used so “Gazzew Boba U4” means that it’s a U4 switch with Boba plastic designed by Gazzew. Also, I just wanted to mention that the switches are manufactured by Outemu, in case you see that thrown in the naming mix.

Short answer: no.

Gazzew switches (usually) have two variants: opaque top and clear top. The clear top is the RGB shine-through friendly top if RGB is your thing. However, the plastic used for clear tops is different than the opaque plastic, so the sound of the switch may be different. I think the general belief is that the clear/RGB tops are slightly higher pitched than the opaque tops.

There were some issues with the “Boba” plastic blend used that caused some switches (or just certain batches?) to yellow fairly quickly for plastic and some concern that they’d become brittle or develop other issues. So Gazzew discontinued the older Boba U4 and Boba U4T switches and is rolling out a newer off-white colored switch with a different non-Boba plastic blend. I believe these are called the “Gazzew U4” or “Gazzew U4T” switches, but I suspect that the vendor you looked at added “v2” there to help differentiate from the original Boba switches.

So, to finally answer your question, a “Gazzew U4 RGB V2 65g switch” is a newer U4 silenced switch with non-Boba plastic bottom, clear/RGB top, and 65g spring.

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Thank you for explaining the history, I knew that the original white plastic was replaced in favour of the black one, it did not occur to me that “Boba” indicates only the material…

Let me try to summarize it then.

  1. This was the first iteration with the now discontinued Boba white opaque plastic, 65g spring, still available here:
    rgbkb.net (US)

  2. The opaque version got then replaced with black plastic, for some reason it still carries the Boba label, at these EU stores anyway. Interestingly they have two spring versions, 62g and 68g:
    keygem (DE)
    splitkb (NL)

  3. Then there is this authorized seller with both transparent and opaque versions and only one spring option, 65g. The opaque version is white this time:
    mkzealots: “Gazzew U4 RGB V2 65g” // the transparent version
    mkzealots: “Gazzew U4 65g” // the opaque version, could as well be labeled V3, I suppose

I hope I got it right

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