Membrane vs Mechanical vs Optical Keyboards | Everything You Need To Know!

mechanical membrane optical these are the three keyboards that are mainly used in the pc community but which one will work for you this is a question played by many pc users ah maybe not plagued but it is something for you to know about and your boy chucka valley is here to keep you in the know okay so as you guys know i just recently got my first ever mechanical keyboard and what an experience that was but then i got a little deeper into it learning about all the other keyboards that there are and yes there's really just about only three mechanical membrane and optical keyboards there's also a few other you know size you know sidebar keyboards like razer's mecha membrane keyboard or and ergonomic keyboards and just a lot of different types of keyboards but really it just always comes down to mechanical membrane and optical the main differences we'll be discussing concerning these keyboards are pricing feel durability sound customization and precision let's start with pricing by far membranes are the cheapest of the three why because they're the cheapest to make typically what membrane keyboards are made out of are combinations of plastic polyester silicone and rubber what happens is that when a key is pressed it pushes the top layer down through a spacer layer of holes and makes contact with the circuit at the bottom now that may sound a little confusing but basically in layman's terms all that happens is that when a key cap presses down it then presses on the rubber which will then press on the electrical conductive ink which will signal throughout the keyboard which key is getting pressed then it tells the computer to display that key press after which when you release the rubber will pop back up and then you'll be reset whereas mechanical and optical keyboards work much differently mechanical switches have an actual metal switch that works a little bit like a button or a lever so when you press it that's when the key gets registered and when you release it that's when the key gets stopped registering there's no middleman unlike with membrane keyboards that require that little rubber to pop back up kind of like a bubble which makes it so that with mechanical keyboards the accuracy feel precision and speed of a key press is completely in your control the faster you can click it the faster it gets registered as for optical keyboards they look and feel just like mechanical keyboards but they do operate differently with optical keyboards they use light induction to trigger the switches when a switch is pressed it blocks a light beam that is emitted in the pcb and when this light beam is blocked the actual key is registered and when you lift up from the key and the light beam is no longer blocked the key will stop being registered which tends to make it a very fast keyboard literally making the keyboard as fast as the speed of light in comparison with mechanical keyboards even though mechanical keyboards are 100 in your control the problem is that when you press down on a keycap in a mechanical keyboard for it to fully stop registering the keycap needs to lift up a certain distance from the keyboard for it to stop registering whereas optical switches don't have that problem whether it's a millimeter off the keyboard or 10 meters off the keyboard doesn't matter once light is in it stops if light is out it goes it's that simple so now that you understand what makes up these keyboards you could also probably imagine which ones are more expensive membrane keyboards tend to be much cheaper because there's just not they're not that hard to make you just need some rubber some plastic some conductive ink and then boom you have a membrane keyboard and because that's all that it really takes the membrane keyboard industry has pretty much peaked which means that they can focus on being able to make these keyboards at a cheaper price thus making them more affordable for the everyday consumer whereas mechanical keyboards are still getting better and that makes it a little trickier when it comes to pricing because every key is you know individually created and it uses metal parts that tends to jump up the price for mechanical keyboards because making these keyboards are not easy at all but then you have optical keyboards that are at the highest part of this rung because optical keyboards require the same metal and physical switches that mechanical keyboards require but then on top of that it requires light inductions and triggers and you know beams and all these different sensitivities to make it work even better than a mechanical keyboard so optical keyboards are much more expensive to put a little bit more perspective on this you can get a good membrane keyboard for less than ten dollars whereas mechanical keyboards a good mechanical keyboard you really starts at fifty dollars and gets all you know hundreds of dollars higher then a good optical keyboard and technically speaking if you're getting an optical keyboard there really isn't such a thing as a bad optical keyboard but a good optical keyboard will start at the 100s and only get higher so that's how the pricing works for these three keyboards now as for feel membrane keyboards tend to feel a lot more mushy and spongy because of that silicone rubber components that the keyboard is made out of whereas mechanical keyboards and optical keyboards tend to have a much more physical feedback something that's much more delightful to press on you see right here is the keyboard that i used in the video and when you press on them there's actually a response there's if you you know that you press the keyboard and depending on how sensitive you really are you can actually know which key that you press that's how that's how customizable these mechanical keyboards can really get along with optical keyboards they're pretty much one in the same though some argue that mechanical keyboards are a little better feeling than optical keyboards but the the feeling is so minuscule you really wouldn't notice the difference but both mechanical and optical keyboards feel way better than membrane keyboards a membrane keyboard it's just a sponge now at the end of the day the feel is preferential uh there are people especially office workers that may like membrane keyboards way more than any mechanical one because mechanical ones do require a little bit more force and you may want something that's a little easier to use which would be a membrane keyboard but if your person is more more aggressive and like everything else then you might enjoy a mechanical keyboard now let's talk about sound in office spaces membrane keyboards are the go-to keyboard because they're pretty silent you might hear a bunch of keyboards when you walk into an office but you can't even imagine how loud an office would sound if every that if all of them were using mechanical keyboards you take a hundred membrane keyboards you get a lot of which is something to hear but if you had mechanical keyboards you get more of this much louder now when you exponentialize it you can see how certain things can be really annoying but if you're a more asmr kind of person and you really enjoy the sound mechanical keyboards are the way to go optical keyboards are the way to go there's just no debating it but mechanical keyboards are much more customizable so mechanical keyboards you can adjust the sound you can adjust the pitch these are all things that especially if you're a new keyboard enthusiast it probably isn't hard to imagine but yes you can do all these different things so that the sound of a mechanical keyboard can make it sound much better it can sound it can go from this to this crazy right as for optical keyboards they're not nearly as customizable as mechanical keyboards mainly because their parts are a lot more expensive and a lot more rare so if you do get an optical keyboard i mean good luck really trying to have any fun customizing it i mean understand this mechanical keyboards are hard to customize getting your hands on keycaps switches cases lubes pcbs that stuff is already very hard to get for mechanical keyboards and it only gets 10 times harder with optical keyboard so if customization is your thing you should really leave optical keyboards alone and as for membrane i mean you're not going to you're not going to be able to customize a membrane keyboard maybe a mecha membrane but not a membrane keyboard i mean some people still do it but it's it's it's is you're not it's not it like don't waste your time i would really direct i'm begging you don't waste your time trying to customize uh membrane keyboard unless you're gonna do it for youtube video views and if that's the case that is a clickable video and then send me the link i would love to watch it as for durability mechanical keyboards win hands down because of their ease of customization and fixing and tweaking you know if you drop the mechanical keyboard you can always fix it by the new parts exchange things replace them you can you can have a mechanical keyboard for decades and it can still feel just as good as its first year so long as you maintain it whereas a membrane keyboard i mean there's no customizing it there's no fixing it it's it's made out of spongy material you know it's once that thing starts to wear away it's you can do you can pretty much throw it out like it's it's not going to do much now understand that keyboards are built to last membrane keyboards being the cheapest and the least durable of them still are supposed to last at least 5 million keystrokes per key so it would take years before you really wear down a keyboard especially if it was by yourself maybe if you had like a family keyboard you guys might be able to get to that 5 million keystroke and more within with much less time than the average person who's living on their own but keyboards are really built to last so whether you go with membrane mechanical or optical you really wouldn't need to buy a keyboard again for years truthfully speaking unless of course your profession required intense keyboard activity you will be fine now as for precision no keyboard is beating optical switches they're literally as fast as light the moment the light is blocked on the keycap the key will actuate then once light comes back the key will deactuate it's really that fast whereas with mechanical keyboards though the switch will actuate once you press it down there is a five millisecond debounce delay which optical switches don't have in fact switch and click found that razer optical switches actuate 30 milliseconds faster than normal mechanical switches which would make them by far the fastest keyboard out here i don't really want to talk too much about membrane because if you haven't gotten the point so far then i don't really know what's going on with you membranes are they're they're they're made out of rubber you see with membrane keyboards the speed of the key registration is dependent on how fast the rubber can bounce back so the more you use a membrane keyboard the rubber will be less responsive which means that it won't bounce back as quickly that's how you get sticky keys though the rubber might just stay down for a little bit and then slowly come back then when you press it again it'll slowly come back and so as a result it causes a large very serious delay after probably only maybe a few months of use you'll start to notice the difference so in short once that silicone goes so does your performance also membrane keyboards have a problem with key rollover basically meaning that if you press a key many times very quickly on a membrane keyboard you'll find that many of those presses won't actually get registered because the rubber didn't pop back up to restart the key press you won't have these issues with a mechanical or an optical switch keyboard so overall which keyboard should you use well it just depends on who you are what you're doing and why you need it if you're an office worker who's just trying to chill out and get work done and then you know have dinner at the end of the day just get yourself a membrane keyboard for less than ten dollars you can get a keyboard that will literally last you years probably upwards of five even even when the material starts to degrade the keyboard will more or less still be very usable my family's keyboard is a keyboard that we've had for almost a decade now and i have a big family so there's like get the keyboard that's going to work for the situation that you that you need now if you're maybe a professional gamer or a professional typer or maybe an enthusiast you might want a mechanical keyboard just because not only will it feel more fun you'll look cooler you'll feel cooler your performance will be better because it'll be a faster response time and you'll also be able to adjust and customize and fix the keyboard whenever things are having a problem so uh you could so you could turn a keyboard that maybe was only going to have a 10-year lifespan into a lifetime lifespan of a keyboard now for optical keyboards honestly if you aren't a gamer then i don't recommend optical keyboards they're just they're just way too expensive and they come with what they're what they're giving you is some heavy duty stuff that really only a gamer would need i mean what do you need 30 extra milliseconds of response time for i mean i don't know people can find a way people always do but i don't know it really depends on what your pockets are looking like like a good optical keyboard is going to be like 150 dollars you know like now you're not going to have nearly as much fun customizing it because parts are rare for optical keyboards so that's something you got to remember it's a little tricky so it does come down to you as for me i got myself a membrane keyboard i got myself a mechanical keyboard and i got myself a mecca membrane keyboard so i'm living life and i hope you're living yours chucker valley came in gave you some knowledge and now chucka valley is leaving the building have a great day guys love you

Channel: Chukavelli Gaming

Views: 33,553

Keywords: Gaming, Chukavelli, PS5, Xbox Series X, PC, Video Games, Xbox Series S, Tech, Technology, PC Gaming, Membrane, Mechanical, Optical, Keyboards, Versus, Ergonomic, Customizations, Precision, Feel, Sound, ASMR

Id: XkNJSvnk0Ug

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 03 2022