Seriously, I’m obsessed. I’ve used them in 2 custom builds and I can’t get enough. In terms of tactility, typing feel, and producing that satisfying thock-thock soundtrack, I can’t think of a better switch. IMO they out-Topre Topre. There, I said it.
Who’s with me?
I like the Zilents, soldered them into one of my Pearl PCBs.
But I don’t think they’re worth the extra money over the same-weight Zealios, personally. The feel is practically the same (I certainly can’t tell any difference), and the sound is definitely less loud, as advertised. I guess I just don’t value the dampened noise enough to justify the cost.
I’m typing on them now in a Preonic and love them! Really enjoying the feel and for an office setting, they really are not loud at all which is worth the price tag for me. The most interesting part for me is the upstroke tactility, I love how strong the upstroke bump is.
Now all I need is a way to truly silence stabilizers, as that is by far the loudest part of the build!
I’ve been typing on 62g R10 Zilents on my daily driver for quite a while, and while I do enjoy them, I prefer my HHKB or MX Zilents when it comes to pure switch choice.
While the 62g Zilents do sound nice, they need some work before they do. Mine had horrible spring crunching, and spring ping which I resolved with lube. Unfortunately, the very nature of the MX design means that the noise the contact leaves make (as the tacitle bump of the stem clears them) will always be present. This is a big drawback IMO, since the silence of the Zilents “amplify” this contact leaf sound. It’s an awful sound, which doesn’t exist on my MX Zilents (as they are linear).
Also, I disagree that the Zilents have a better sound than Topre. Of course, this is all subjective. The Zilents just sound hollower than the “full” sound Topre provides. I can’t really explain it, but it’s just my preference.
The tactility is quite nice as well for an MX-style switch. I still prefer my HHKB, though.
I started out with 62g zilents a while back and have since replaced the springs in them up to 78g. Lubed zilents are by far my favorite switch that I’ve tried (although that’s not much basis for comparison). And as @Ipsum mentioned, I really gotta find silent stabs as mine are jarringly loud with silent switches.
I’ve been heavily using a variety of zealios since R1. Have built a board with them in all four standard weights as well as a few spring swaps, notably 35g gat clear springs (seriously, just try it, it’s fantastic). I picked up some 62g zilents with the intention of spring swapping them. Out of the box, I was really not a fan. Like skyzskruzzle said:
On top of that, imo they feel quite different from zeals. Slightly less tactile, less pre-travel, super pillowy landing… But also scratchy as hell. Unlike normal zealios, zilents don’t get any factory lube. I often leave my zealios “naked”, but I found the zilents really hard to tolerate unlubed.
Once lubed (and spring swapped down to 35g in my case) though, they feel really great. The pillowy bottom out is great for long typing sessions and the noise level is perfect for the office. These bad boys are definitely gonna make it into my regular switch h rotation.
I had an issue with 62g zilents at one point where every so often I would press down and they wouldn’t fully spring back up. These were unlubed and it mainly happened on my escape key that held an artisan that was heavier than a normal keycap. I switched up to 78g springs because I thought that the issue lied in the spring weight. Have you faced anything like that? I’d be really interested in trying out the 35g springs if it was only an issue with lubrication or that with switch in particular.
I’ve been a big fan of the 78g zilents I have in my MAO E6. I think when lubed right they really shine.
I haven’t got a chance to use them on a board yet, but I liked them in a switch tester so far. It’s a shame they changed the springs in the R11 ones, though, to reduce the sound the spring makes. They don’t feel as tactile to me and I’m short about 5 switches for the board I was going to solder them into. I should have bought more R9/10 67g ones.
If you come to the Seattle Meetup you can feel em yourself! 
I could see it happening with zilents because they are so scratchy, but I didn’t use them much stock before I changed them. I haven’t had any issues with them since lubing them, though, and I’ve never had any issues with my spring swapped zealios that just have the factory lube, either.
That being said, I leave spacebars at 62g, and also left the two keys under my Rama XO caps on the zealio board as 62g as well.
I would love to go to the Seattle meetup if I could take the time off to fly out there 
In the mean time I bought 200 gat clears to mess around with, I’ll report back when they get here!
I’d recommend trying them in Zealios as well as your zilents! They take to the lighter springs quite differently imo. And bring them to any meetups you do go to so that people can try them.
Gotta spread the good word of the light switches!
I agree the lubing is key with the first batch of Zilents. While I absolutely love mine after lubing the springs with VPF1514 & slider/housing with Tribsys3204, I gotta be honest & say I was kinda disappointed in their stock feel compared to regular Zealios. They are definitely a lot scratchier than regular Zeals & my batch had some of the worst spring crunch I’ve encountered in my building career so far! 
That said I am extremely glad I did not give up on them & just sell them off before trying some lube. After I got them tuned into my preferences they definitely became a switch worth the Zealio name IMHO! 
While I really dislike lighter switches, your posts about 35g Zealio/Zilents has intrigued me. I have around 70 Gat Clear springs just sitting unused right now, you’ve convinced me to do some experimenting with them!
Good! I don’t like lighter switches in most scenarios (normal gat clears shouldn’t even exist), but I really like the way super light tactiles feel
I’m willing to try this out. Not sure about weighting, but I guess 67g shoud be fine since alot of people say Zealios are best in this flavour.
What would I like to know is what would be the best PCB + metal case for 66% layout?
Very nice, but oh boy, it does cost a pretty penny.
What about Whitefox case+PCB, how does it compare to this?
WhiteFox/NightFox is decent too! You asked for best though, and having built both a NightFox and a Clueboard, the Clueboard is definitely the best option you can buy right now that I know of. Similar build quality (the Foxes come mostly assembled and you just drop switches in, but the Clueboard feels more solid to me… maybe because of the heavier weight?), but the Clueboard absolutely kills the Foxes on layout options, especially the bottom row.
Keep in mind that there will be a new revision of the Clueboard coming out near the end of the summer that will support USB-C. Might be worth waiting for that.
