So I originally bought the Keychron K3 (first mechanical keyboard) in optical red, which are nice, crisp, clean switches. But all (2) of my mechanical keyboard friends gave me lots of guff for not going browns, so I caved and bought a set.
I don’t have much (any) experience with other mechanicals, but I DO recommend the browns over the reds. I was worried initially about the browns being a bit louder, but I can’t tell a difference. Where I CAN tell the difference is the button press: the reds felt like you were sliding two pieces of plastic together. The browns meanwhile have a good bit of pep on them, like you can feel the switches bouncing satisfyingly under your fingers. Friends and I agree that this is best described as a chonky feel.
However, some of the red switches were VERY tight in the board, so removing them was a pain, and then reinstalling the browns was VERY nerve-racking due to applying more pressure than I normally would to a PCB. The cap puller provided by Keychron works well, but the switch puller is a little lackluster and difficult to use w/o scratching anything. That said, I’ve never done this before and it took me all of 2 hrs to completely replace all the keys, worked first try and I enjoyed the process. The lack of pins is also very nice: normally you run the risk of bending/ damaging the pins, potentially leading to PCB damage, but here the opticals don’t have any metal parts jabbing into the PCB.
TL;DR - chonk good, some minor gripes on the install, but overall very happy with this!
