Glorious Pale Blue

For my “balcony iMac,” I’ve been using a Das Keyboard Model 3 Pro with Cherry MX Blue switches. It’s ... okay. The keys are very light and I find I really prefer a stiffer feel. Right now my daily driver is a Keychron K8 with Kailh Box Jade switches; I also have a Keychron K2 with Kailh Box Navy switches. For this “build” (mod? swap?) I wanted a full sized keyboard, and to try a slightly quieter, lighter, but stiffer than the Cherry Blue, switch. (Apartment living. Didn’t necessarily want to be blasting my neighbors with “thick clicks” at 2 am.)

I started with a Glorious GMMK full-sized I got “used - like new” (can also order it directly from the source), and hot swapped the Gateron Brown switches it came with (blech) for Kailh Box Pale Blue switches. My understanding of the various switches is (spec sheets linked; take with the usual grain of salt):

  • Box White: Thinner click bar, lighter spring.
  • Box Pale Blue: Thinner click bar, heavier spring.
  • Box Jade: Thick click bar (greater tactile feedback; deeper and louder click) with the lighter spring from the White switch.
  • Box Navy: Thick click bar and heavier Pale Blue spring, the stiffest and clickiest of these switches.
I’ve only had a chance to spend an evening with this setup so far, but it was typing intensive (writing a legal brief, and hacking some code and working in the shell getting a database mirror and indexing operation working again). So far, I really like this keyboard. Much better than the Das Keyboard it’s replacing.

As far as Mac compatibility: I had to remap the Alt key to be Command, and Windows to be Option (Alt), par for the course. The GMMK pre-built comes with media and shortcut keys and keycaps. Fn + F5-F7 control media playback (the “stop” meta key at F8 doesn’t do anything); Fn + F9-F11 controls volume. The application shortcut keys at F1-F4 are inoperative. ScrLk and Pause control screen brightness. I’ll tweak the board a bit later using hdiutil or Karabiner. The Win/Alt/Application (menu) keycaps are all the same size and easily interchangeable.

I think I still prefer the Jades, with the Navy switches a close second. The Jades experience slots in somewhere between the Navy and Pale Blue, as you’d expect. Others have complained the Jade switches, with the weaker spring, feel like they’re going to stick on the return, but I haven’t noticed that.

I like the Navy switches most initially, but after a full day with them, they get to be kind of fatiguing. The Jades don’t feel as awesome at first, but I can go all day with them. Then there’s the Pale Blues. For this application, where a less noisy switch was desired, these are just about perfect. The Cherry MX Blues sound and feel weak. The Das Keyboard doesn’t have the keycap float I had with, e.g., the Keychrons with the stock switches, but it still feels ... I’m not sure what the right word is. It’s not “mushy,” but it’s mushy adjacent. The Pale Blue switches feel crisp. The force needed when typing is significantly lower than with the Jade or (especially) Navy.

I’m still tempted to try the GK705 with White switches (one of the pre-built options); the price is certainly right! But at the moment I just don’t need another keyboard...



A cheap eBay find, a “Mid-2010” Core i3 at 3.06 GHz I bumped to 12GB RAM and swapped the spinning rust storage for a 500GB SSD with a handy OWC kit (the iMacs have some complications, like needing suction cups to get to the drive, and a thermal sensor that has to be attended to). It does the job (barely, these days; it can’t realistically be upgraded past High Sierra). I hooked up a pair of Edifier R12U speakers I picked ’cause they’re USB powered and I only have a long power cord running out there; for tiny $20 bus powered speakers, they sound incredible. The above keyboard, a $20 Bluetooth mouse from Best Buy, the Edifier speakers, and that iMac make for a nice “don’t really care if anything happens to it” setup for the usually dry weather around here (chance of a wet day peaks at 21% on February 20; from May to October you can leave electronics sitting out with basically no chance of precipitation).

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