Hi, being a fan of silents myself (and thinking of them as the true masters of thock) i thought i’d throw in my knowledge.
Gateron: calling these silents is an insult to actual silent switches lol. i like to think of these as nicer sounding, slightly mushy, normal switches. the brown and aliaz stem is like the “cherry browns are scratchy linears” meme but taken seriously. zilents, while extremely expensive, at least have a fine enough big bump. overall wouldn’t recommend any of these.
Kailh: Theres four of these now…
BOX Silent Brown: due to the circular top, loose tolerances and only one leaf leg, these feel like they’re twisting out of the way of the tactile bump rather than going over it, the bump is small-medium. These like to tick over time and it’s especially noticeable because they’re silents, i actually used some oil on one and managed to turn the switch into a clicky lol. the silencing is first place out of the four kailhs for tactiles but second place for linears. let me explain because this’ll come up again later, tactiles with halo like no-pretravel bumps generally do worse in silencing than their brown bump and linear counterparts, this is because the upstroke of the bump causes the stem to hit the top housings with more force than linears, more force equals less silent, so because this switch is a brown bump with an essentially linear top out, it’s more silent than the other tactiles which have no pretravel, halo like bumps. the silencing is middle of the pack overall, not silent silent but not gateron “silent”. wouldn’t recommend personally
BOX Whale Fall: I haven’t actually tried these yet but I’m pretty sure deep sea clears have the same silencing method and i’ve tried those. The linears are more on the gateron side possibly even less silent, i’d probably put them in 4th, again, haven’t tried them so idk. it will likely still have the same problem of ticking and twisting because they’re still BOX switches so i can’t recommend them because i don’t have them but i also wouldn’t want to recommend them because of those problems that seem to permeate all box tactiles.
Midnight Tactile (V1): medium strength halo like bump, pretty short travel, 3rd place among the kailhs. pretty nice silencing, very even but thumpy. I’d recommend trying them but they were EoLed by V2s and are impossible to find now…
Midnight Pro Tactile (V2): same bump as v1s, not as even as v1s but quieter overall i’d say so they take 2nd within the kailhs. I’d recommend trying them.
JWK: I think there’s only silent t1s right now, nice big bump, smooth, the second most silent tactile i’ve tried so far but i don’t think it’ll take second after I try one switch i’ll mention later. I’ll use this switch as an opportunity to talk about the bane of silent tactiles, leaf noise. jwk leafs are especially bad, silent t1s (and most other strong tactiles in general for that matter) have a noticeable ping that can be really annoying when you’re trying to make quiet and good sounding switches. lubing the leaf can fix it but my preferred solution is the shroud mod. this can kill most the ping but then just the sound of the friction of the bump going over the leaf can become noticeable, still haven’t found a solution for that that isn’t just lubing the legs. Would recommend regardless.
Haimu: these are the only non-silicone based silent tactiles i know of, if you think that means they can’t be mushy, you’d be lying to yourself, while the leaf spring cutout in the pom stems of these switches is a different feeling than the molded silicone dampeners of most silents, they still have mush in the form of about .5mm of extra travel on bottom out, because of the unique silencing these have a certain flipping point where if you bottom out too hard, they’re pretty loud but otherwise the bottom out of these is second best only to outemus. meanwhile the top out is second worst only to gaterons… they get substantially better with lube though but so does everything on this list… would recommend if you’re going to lube them and if you don’t bottom out too hard.
Outemu: boba u4 68g are still the best stock silent tactile i’ve tried, the bump is big and the silencing is the best. only minor downside is that all those traits combine to make it feel and sound like a really good quality rubber dome. theres brown bumps (silent lemon/grey), clear bumps (silent forest/sky), and halo bumps (boba u4/cream yellow). silencing is the best but is mushy, in my experience, silence is directly proportional to mushiness, i embrace and accept the mush, it’s like gasket mounts but on every individual switch. leaf noise is a bit of a problem, not as bad as jwks though, its the only unintentional problem with boba u4s imo. get these first, highly recommend.
TTC: I recently found out ttc technically has three kinds of silents…
Half Silent Bluish White: only silenced on bottom out, top out is like a normal tactile, the bottom out is pretty thumpy too, i like to think of these as normal tactiles but technically they’re not ig? wouldn’t recommend as silent tactiles
Full Silent Bluish White (Flat pole): same as HSBWs but now with pretty good top out silencing, if you want thumpy instead of silent this is it. i shouldn’t recommend because i haven’t tried them but i’ve tried the linears (silent red v3s) and the HSBWs so i think i understand them enough that i want to recommend them.
Full Silent Bluish White (Round pole): whats a flat pole? whats a round pole? well first, ttc silents are fairly unique in that they are pole hole silenced, they’re long poles but with rubber where the pole would bottom out, this means the shape of the pole of the stem determines how pressure is distributed over that rubber, the sharper the pole, the more the rubber can compress, therefore flat poles are thumpy and round poles which reduce contact area are mushier and quieter. i haven’t tried these either but i have tried linear round poles (frozen v2s) and they’re likely to be similar. with that said, they’re second only to outemus overall and the leaf noise isn’t as big of a problem. it seems that newer listings of FSBWs have round poles now. again shouldn’t recommend but want to anyways because im 80% sure these will be great, good luck trying to figure out which listings are flat and which are round pole though…
Lichicx: most people don’t know about these yet and again i only have the linears right now but these are a good middle ground between the louder flat pole ttcs and quieter jwks, the bottom out silencing is unique in that it bottoms out on the tower that the pole of the stem goes into. right now it seems there are brown bump silent tactiles called Old DG silent teas, and in the works is one with a bump thats more halo-like but in my opinion closer to momoka sharks where its no pretravel but also sharp like mx clears, i’ve tried it in the non-silent varmilo ec iris v2 switches. Would recommend once they become available lol.
Ranking in terms of silencing ignoring leaf noise
- Outemu
- Round Pole TTC
- JWK
- Lichicx
- Lubed Haimu
- BOX Silent Stem Kailh
- Midnight Pro Kailh
- Flat Pole TTC
- Midnight V1 Kailh
- Unlubed Haimu
- Gateron
- BOX Silent Housing Kailh
- Half Silent TTC