These are factory-lubed, all-POM linears from Gateron featuring a frosted SMD light diffuser and a refreshingly reasonable price. (About 30 cents each, depending on where get them and how many you buy.)
I think I’ve said it before about Gateron, and I’ll probably say it again - but this is a great example of them taking what’s good about a trend and executing it well on their own time. Whether it’s just the good factory lube or a combination of factors, these really are some of the best POM switches I’ve ever used.
No slip-stick here - it’s all cream and butter. All the benefits of POM and none of the caveats. Sweet!
Here’s a recording:
Build as-recorded
Portico68 Black Label
Alu gasket case w/ poron strips
Gateron Smoothe linears
Custom 1/16" plywood plate
Poron foam between it and PCB this time
TX AP screw-ins poorly lubed with 205g0
MT3 WoB doubleshot ABS high profile keycaps
Try to ignore the rattly Backspace… Most of the time I over-lube my stabs, this time I guess I under-lubed them. They feel great, but do have top-out rattle… Someday!
It has a similar shape and design theory to other recent Gateron diffusers, but is a separate piece from the top housing for these switches.
First impression final thoughts
Are they breaking any ground? No. Are they casually perfecting another existing format? Yeah - kinda seems like it. While you won’t get all of the typical POM qualities from these, you will get the ones that I think matter: the feel of the impact and the tone of its sound. If you want to try an all-POM switch and want something that just works great with no fuss, this is the one. So, too if you’re more generally looking for a “creamy” linear - I think these fit that bill nicely.
MXRSKey TK Y80 keyboard, Princess tactiles, and my keycap holy grail 1976 SA.
It’s lovely, plate mounted stabs which is by no means ideal, but it feels solid and I think as a final build after seven years in the hobby it is as close to perfect as I could get.
I’m waiting on the VIA json from the AliExpress store, but it’s a very solid board and the looks the ticket.
Just some basic first impressions from the print station this evening;
What are they? – Nothing new at this point, but something I’ve been meaning to add to my collection. I think they may have stood out a little more when they were new - IIRC these alongside the Flame Whites (same but with a dome-style integrated diffuser) were the first MX compatible switch on the market featuring a POK stem. These are the second edition with the revised, shaved-down solid diffuser, which does a great job at transmitting SMD light and no longer interferes with some keycaps.
How are they? – Material aside, these are pretty standard fare for a premium TTC linear - which is to say very solid in a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none sort of way, at least when stock. They have decent factory lube that’s closer to skate than butter and isn’t overdone, but may also leave a little to be desired for discerning users who prefer a complete lack of noise in the sound and feel. They remind me of Aces, or the lighter Wilds, for example.
Been using the Dolphin since I built it. Got NKxKKB WoB with the RGB mods on it right now, just to complete the classic feel. This keyboard honestly surprised me. I wasn’t expecting it to feel as good as it does due to the kinda sandwich mount it has. I did use Geon force break pads on both sides of the plate where the screws run through, but I’m not sure that made a huge difference. I’m thinking the having the top piece minimized so much & almost all of the mass of the board in the bottom is what lets it overcome the usual drawbacks of sandwich mount. It also sounds pretty decent too with new Nixies on alum, so it has a nice balance of good feel & good sound. Got it for the looks, kept it for the feels!
XD64 pcb, modified with a rerouted trace to be able to use eight 1u keys to the right of the very off-center 3u spacebar.
kbdfans 2u-shift brass plate, also modified to accommodate the twelve keys in the bottom row.
Tofu60 redux case, orange e-coated.
Outemu low profile snap spring clicky switches.
Tecsee low profile stabilizers.
A self-bent 3u wire for the spacebar.
A generous dash of hot glue to hold the switch under the iso-enter in place, since all switches had to be soldered with about 1mm distance from the pcb to allow enough room for the stabilizers under the plate.
Alphas and AltGr are XMI with “irish” layout (meaning us-intl). The keys with sublegends which I don’t need are substituted with XMI without sublegends.
Red mods and spacebar are from Wuque Studio basic red.
Orange iso enter and arrows are from Ghost Judges Salmon.
Still very much in the realm of first impression, but this might be the best sounding and feeling pre-built keyboard I’ve ever used.
It’s hardly perfect or anything, but geez - I feel like I’ve got whiplash from how fast and far the bar just got raised for “entry” keyboards.
On the one hand this particular version has painted keycaps with inconsistent color and lacks software control for the lighting, which are decidedly “cheap keyboard” qualities. [Edit: there is software on the company’s website, it just isn’t mentioned in the included materials.]
On the other, it’s a solid cnc’d gasket keyboard that costs about a hundred bucks even and sounds like this straight from the box:
Almost everything ist fine so far.
Since I usually use my left thumb for the spacebar, the extremely left leaning spacebar is fine.
At work I have to use a Norwegian keyboard, so I’m used to iso enter and it works well for me.
What I’m struggling with, is the 1u right shift.
I’ll see if I can get used to it.
If not, I’ll change to 2u right shift, move the minus-key back up to the top row, and remove the del-key up there.
In any case, this thing was built as an oddball, knowing that I might not like it
These are part of Geon’s RAW series, the intention of which is to give manufacturers an opportunity to showcase what that means to them. What’s a “raw” version of BSUN? KeyGeek? Huano? etc.
Each manufacturer has taken their own approach, and it looks like the only real rule is leaving dye out of the housing plastic. Some of them are clear, some of them are bleached-white like these Huanos - most are a creamy off-white of some variety. Some are factory-dry, some get minimal treatment, some get the works. Some are traditional varieties with classic specs, while others are more adventurous, or at least follow more recent trends like long poles, preloaded springs, or novel plastics. No clickies yet, but plenty of both linears and tactiles represented - and prices just about run the gamut, without venturing into either extreme.
Description
Huano’s entry is on the lower-priced end of the RAW series, and features a mild long-pole configuration at 3.8mm linear travel. It has light but competently-applied factory lube, and is an all-round solid performer. The housings are polyamide (PA66; Nylon-adjacent), and the stems are POM with a dust shroud - and of course, they bottom-out on that aforementioned long pole.
One other notable physical feature is the small port-hole at the bottom of the central tube; I understand that this combats sluggishness by preventing an air seal in the tube. I imagine it also affects sound, but who knows.
Thoughts
They’re plenty smooth, being somewhere in the middle of the skate-butter spectrum. They’re pretty medium-weight, too, at around 52 grams. The feel is great, while IMO the sound is just OK - with most points being taken-off by the thin, almost rattly sounding top-out alongside some kind of random-seeming metallic noise I call “spring chatter”, because I’m assuming it’s the spring wiggling around in there bumping into things. It’s not loud and it’s also not scratchy at all, it’s just not clean-sounding. Like a bag of legos when typing or something.
Again - they feel great, and the bottom-out clack itself actually is pretty clean.
At 38 cents apiece, I think these are very solid prelubed longpole linears, and IMO a great pick for Huano’s “RAW” switch.
DARN, I was so close lol. I kept going back and forth between DCX and GMK. I can differentiate the two cuz DCX has a thinner font compared to GMK but was hoping I could tell the difference between the two from your picture.
It’s not loud and it’s also not scratchy at all, it’s just not clean-sounding. Like a bag of legos when typing or something.