The best way to clean a keyboard is… the DISHWASHER?

on the surface it's simple enough right get a keyboard make it dirty wash and dry video over but this is Linus tech tips you guys want the nitty gritty you want the details so here's what we're gonna do all of these keyboards were taken from around our office some with many years of use on them and for you guys we are gonna sacrifice all of them for science the reason for that is that if we were to put just one keyboard through this gauntlet and it survived that's the literal definition of a sample size of one that doesn't give us the bigger picture you can get studio-quality stock video clips for a fraction of the cost with story blocks video check it out today at the link below to learn more obviously we're not gonna want any actual dishes in here this looks like a problem for future Linus so this g.skill one uses Cherry MX switches these happen to be Cherry MX browns a Logitech g7 10 plus the main difference here is that this is a plastic versus a metal chassis whether that'll make a difference or not I suspect it won't I don't think we're gonna have really any more like that it's gonna be like six keyboards there's a brand new dishwasher I like it should hit all the angles right I think we can get away with it wow it's crusty finally we've got a Logitech G 9/10 Orien spark that's using Logitech Stromer G switches now you guys might be looking at this going what do you guys nuts that's like five hundred dollars worth of keyboards in the dishwasher already you guys what you want to ruin them we're putting high-end keyboards in because we want to know if you put your good keyboard into the dishwasher does it have a chance of surviving you know the one with all the electronics and macros and rgv and all that good stuff before we do that though one important question well should we use soap the pros are that soap loosens dirt and also that dishwashers are designed to run with so the cons are that soap can leave some residue that could cause a short circuit also this is not really a con but just to consideration the heating element in our dishwasher probably handle the sanitation component of our keyboards without soap anyway but then depending on the plastic makeup of our keyboards we could risk damaging them if we ran it at the hottest setting ABS plastic the more common type should be fine at your typical hot dishwashing temperature but many keyboards higher end ones in particular contain PBT plastics that could warp at as low as just 66 degrees so I think what we're gonna do is run it cold no soap and then see how we do now while that's running the eagle-eyed among you might have noticed this conspicuous garbage bag that was sitting on the counter this is a completely separate batch of keyboards oh that is disgusting for a separate experiment that we're going to be running in parallel but to explain that experiment we first need to take a look at what we call our golden sample we borrowed this from a colleague again on the condition of anonymity alright so here we go this is disgusting like I can clearly see the build-up of skin cells on the keys here I see definite hair in there okay that's definitely food remnants that cheese what a meal that must have been more like a feeding frenzy it brings us a question like are you eating over the board like these are high up in the row like I don't know what means chip happens so back to these keyboards then we have three each of the amazonbasics membrane keyboard and the corsair k70 RGB mk2 mechanical keyboard thank you corsair by the way for sending these to us if you knew what we were easily for I'm sure you wouldn't have fit so as you can see each of these was put through an artificial fill fuh-fuh keishon process based on what we found on our golden sample and we're gonna use these boards to discover two things one if taking the key caps off before dishwashing makes any appreciable difference and two manually cleaning your keyboard compares to easy mode over here so one of our Paris is gonna go in with the keys on one with the keys off and then one will be painstakingly cleaned by hand now to give us the definitive answer to which of our cleaning methods works the best we're gonna be taking microbial swabs of each of our keyboards both pre and post wash these swabs are going to be taken to a local lab and they will be transferred to a growth medium after an incubation period the number of bacterial growth will be counted from this data we'll be able to tell if our cleaning method actually worked when we compare it to our baseline samples I guess with the machine running all we have to do right now is pick a couple of these boards and start the manual cleaning process our first round of keyboards is done whew steamy I guess we can have a look at this Hey yeah okay you know what we'll try it we'll try it later let's have a look at our next board I wouldn't have thought it possible but this one's even more full of water than the last one is how to look at the cleanliness though that is a big improvement so you know what though there's still some grunge so most of it is pretty good do you mind grabbing the key boy so what this tells us Oh grungy part is that even if our microbial swabs come back good that doesn't necessarily mean that our dishwasher is gonna do a perfect job of removing everything it looks like wherever there's hair you're gonna have quite a bit of difficulty so this is good so this shows us that you should review gasps yeah so regardless of what the microbial swabs tell us if there's hair or anything that's you know really caked on there's really only one way to go to be sure that it's actually deep cleaned now with that said all the surface parts of this keyboard the parts that you actually touch everyday well those are definitely clean all right let's move on to our next one why does this thing have an Ethernet port on it so what's fascinating to me about this one is that even though all the shmoo between the keys has there's actually still dust on the board see that crazy right honestly though I think what we learned just now more than anything else is that the dish is at the edge of my new dishwasher are really not getting hit as hard as the ones in the middle there's a brand-new dishwasher like it should hit all the angles right that's good to know I mean either way the test here was whether it's gonna survive being drenched so it doesn't really matter but we need to bear that in mind when we load up the next round of keyboard call-outs to put them all facedown for the best chance of blasting out the gunk and I think he's right about that but the thing that I'm worried about is if we put them all facedown then some of them are gonna be at the edges and others of them aren't what if we took our our two keys on samples and had those ones facing each other in the middle ish and then we took our two keys off samples and we had those ones facing each other on the outside dish that way we've got at least equal opportunities for cleaning now did we have heat dry on last time no cut it off yeah okay cool so now we're good cool I'm gonna transform into filming another video lioness and head back to the garage where we're shooting that LG video for those wondering at home yes this definitely voids your warranty by the way oh it's still pretty foodie I mean they're loose well maybe we were being a little bit unfair well I don't know is this one anyway yes it is that is quite a lot better so this one because it's so much easier for the water jets to get at is basically clean and clear look at that it also actually doesn't hold nearly as much water because obviously the key caps are little you know little water reservoirs basically that's the last of them okay so we'll submit those to the lab so that's one part of the experiment today and then the other part is do all these keyboards still work unfortunately the only way to find that out because guys electronics and water do not mix is to let them dry out that's gonna take about a week fortunately thanks to movie magic it's been a week we've had these drying so in theory they should be completely free of water have we actually find that what we want to do now is see just how clean they got and more importantly if they survived the dishwasher so we're gonna start then with the variety pack of keyboards that we took from around the office yes yes for Tyler's keyboard yep accelerates hey this one totally works so now all we got to do is check if the backlight works and it sure is working yeah not very bright oh yeah no it definitely works ha one-for-one baby didn't come particularly clean yeah this one might have needed like a couple runs through and also to remove the keys before we put it in I know right and this prototype hoody I'm wearing LT t stored on every key is lit that is a very good sign nice working okay so here we go bat bat bat bat bat bat my love to sing this song on video probably not okay dang we good oh wait we need to check and make sure that the pass-through USB port works on this one and my mouse and ladies and gentlemen I'm mouse in two for two and this one actually looks really good so if you're not too crusty looks like this method can actually be a quick fast and not dirty way to clean your keyboard more of this crust might have come out if we actually had soap yeah three four three yeah this one I had pretty high hopes for in the first place just because it's got such an open sort of design that's see that's another thing that makes me think maybe a soap run then a water run might be in order alright let's check our RGB lighting all looks fine oh yeah it looks good mute yep we all get up here Nasr looks good volume wheels good mute buttons working brightness control backlight is working five four five absolutely freakin fantastic I mean to be clear this is still sample size of five but there's so much variety and the keyboards that we used that I'm at the point where I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence yeah as long as you let it dry for long enough it is safe to dishwasher keyboard however what we still need to answer is whether you should so in front of me now are the six keyboards that we artificially filter fide from there like a new condition but there's a few questions we still need to answer about these ones one is how clean did they come the keys and the mesh bags definitely still have some gunk I don't know if there's a perfect method maybe run it through the dishwasher and then kind of hand pick it a little bit before putting it back together one thing that's nice those you can see even in the hot wash we still have a fair bit of lubricant left on our stabilization bar on this space bar I wouldn't necessarily expected that but that's that's good to know if it all comes off though guys may want to add a little bit of like lithium grease or similar lubricant so what we want to do now is determine just how clean these gods so our cultures are back from the lab and the results are really interesting or so says my script Colin hasn't actually shared them with me yet oh right of course you didn't actually bring them back to the office because that would be dangerous so this guy right here our gold standard ended up with a bacterial count of 160 growths after incubation each of our artificial leader defied boards ended up with over 2,000 growths making them a bit of a worst case scenario but that's that's good because that's what we want so the dishwasher works yay but there's a caveat you should definitely remove your key caps it does add a little bit of time but it ensures that any of the larger gunk that's stuck underneath the keys will be effectively washed out so of the six boards in this test every one of them had a post wash bacterial count of less than 10 except the amazonbasics board where the keys were left on so as far as the results go cleaning by hand and using the dishwasher as long as you remove the keys are both safe and effective though as Corsaire asked us very nicely to point out only one of them allows you to keep your warranty yeah thanks to our sponsor for this video story blogs you can get studio-quality stock video clips for a fraction of the cost with story blocks video you can download all the stock video your heart desires from their member library including HD and 4k footage After Effects templates motion backgrounds and more we use it here quite a bit on our tech quickie channel and all the content is royalty-free so you can use it for commercial and personal projects such as YouTube videos new clips get added regularly so there's always something fresh to download and you can check it out today at the link below to learn more so massive thank you to you guys for watching hope you enjoyed the video if you're looking for something else to watch maybe check out our ooh budget keyboard roundup you know maybe it's a lost cause right and you just want something fresh that link below

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 2,881,233

Rating: 4.8989987 out of 5

Keywords: dishwasher, keyboard, corsair, gaming, rgb, bacteria, dirty, logitech, mechanical, keyswitch, cherry, mx, cherry mx, gateron, otemu, gunk, clean, junk, filth, dirt, gross, dishwash, cleaning

Id: pgnF42ZoRSw

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ydoowoody]

I spilled like an ounce of water on mine the other day and it was freaking out opening 1000s of windows and crashed my computer. All I did was unplug it, cover it with rubbing alcohol, and dry it off with a hairdryer. Works perfectly fine now

[u/Black-Neegurs]

I spilled a whole beer in my keyboard and just kept using it and it works fine a year later