 Ever since buying my first mechanical keyboard, I've absolutely fallen in love with them. Everything from the sound, the feel, the community around it and all the different configurations that you can make with these things. I've wanted to buy more, but I've always been confused with the different types of switches, the sounds they make, the different types of components that you can put together and that's kind of held me back. So today I'm gonna be trying a bunch of different keyboards that I can see exactly what they feel and sound like, how they affect my typing speed, what I think of them. And of course I'm gonna be sharing all of that with you in this deep and detailed comparison with all of the different keyboards and switches timestamped below. And of course, a big thank you to Iconix for sponsoring today's video and sending me all of these keyboards and switches to test out. All the keyboards in this video can be connected with USB-C or wirelessly. They can come with or without RGB backlighting and each keyboard can be paired with several different switch types. They're easily interchangeable. Links to Iconix and all these keyboards will be in the description down below. So this is the second ever mechanical keyboard that I purchased. It is the LAT formula typing keyboard and I've absolutely fallen in love with it. I've been using it every day for about a year and a half. It has these really neat sort of kickstands that you can adjust here from the back at either full level or half level as well. I've got the RGB working in the backgrounds that every time I type, you have all these colors floating across the keyboard. I love the quality of it. It's heavy and sturdy and I just love what it feels like to type on. Now back before I knew anything about mechanical keyboards and I was deciding what kind of switch that I would get with this one, I chose the Cherry MX Brown switch and you'll know that because if you look at any one of these caps that I remove, you've got the Brown switch right there. Now the reason that I chose Brown at the time is because I heard that blue was very loud and clicky and I heard the red was a little bit quiet and I thought, let me just go for the one in the middle. As you can also see, it's pretty dirty down there because I've been using this keyboard every single day for last year and a half or so. I will clean it at some point. Don't get mad at me, keyboard fanatics. We'll get there one day. I've personally been a big fan of the sound but I haven't really had anything to compare it to. So I'm excited to do that with the future keyboards. Now these Cherry MX Brown keys are what are called tactile which means that there's a small bump as you push them down. Push, I've reached a point of resistance, which is the bump and then full push gives me the key press. So push, bump, full press. It's very subtle, but you can definitely feel it when you do it slowly and this kind of provides a more hard hitting key press than some of the other switches that you can use. So these are a bit, take a bit more effort to push down. So Brown keys are supposed to be really good for typing as opposed to something like gaming or making a lot of noise like the blue ones and this is what it sounds like. Now I personally love what this keyboard sounds like. I don't think it's too loud. My sister has never complained about it and she's like right next door to me but whenever I'm on a video call with my girlfriend and she hears me typing on this keyboard she finds it very, very loud, just a thought. And now let's do a typing speed test. So I wanna see how my speed changes using different keyboards and different switch types. So I'm gonna do two tests and we'll take the average of both. A hundred words per minute. I honestly don't know if that's good or if that's bad. I'm pretty sure Ali Abdaal has something like 150 words per minute or more. So, you know, I don't claim to be a fast typer. I'm definitely not. That's the baseline. This is a keyboard I've been using for one and a half years. This is the baseline. Nice round number, a hundred words per minute. And a major little choke there at the end but 92 words per minute. All right, baseline keyboard complete. Now let's move on to the fun stuff. So the first keyboard that we're gonna try is the Variable X. This is of the F97 version and we have the TTC Ace Gold Pink switches. Now that is quality control. This keyboard looks pretty old school. Kind of like one of those keyboards you would expect to see in like an old office in like the early 2000s or something. In here we've got this card on, you know, how this keyboard works and connects to the computer. A unique and complimentary charging cable that matches each keyboard. That's nice. And then most importantly for me, all the Mac equivalent key caps so I can switch them from Windows to Mac. Now this looks nice. What does it sound like? Ooh. I love this muffled sound of keyboards. Out of all the keyboard videos I've watched online, the ones that sound like you're walking on snow. So this is an F97 keyboard which means that it has the numpad here on the right hand side. Probably good for you, for you something like Excel all the time where you're doing a bunch of calculations. It's nice to have all the numbers over here for quick access instead of along the top. And then on the back over here we've got these two very nice little circular things to keep it up. RGB lights coming alive. I like it, I like it. Now this keyboard, like my previous keyboard, has what's called the cherry profile which is kind of this shape that the keys take where it's kind of like a curved U. It's ever so slightly visible I think in this keyboard but some of the other ones have a much more pronounced one. And I personally find these more flat-ish keyboards a lot more comfortable for typing. This one doesn't have the adjustable thing on the back. It just has it slightly raised which is fine for me. I prefer them a bit more flat but it's good to know. I'd imagine you'd want to be using this type of keyboard if you're working in an office. It's nice and quiet and it has the number pad here on the side. So that's why I could imagine this being seen and I think it fits the aesthetic quite well. But anyways, let's get into a sound test. Honestly, amazing. I wish I'd got these keys from the very beginning. I love this. All right, moving on to the important stuff. Let's do the typing speed test. 101 words per minute. New record, let's go. Accuracy 90%. It's pretty good, I'll take it. 101 words per minute. Okay, great, so this is the new leader. Nice, honestly, overall opinion. Absolutely love the sound of this one. Feels amazing, it's so heavy. Every time I pick up one of these keyboards, I can't believe how heavy they are. It's ridiculous. So these TTC gold pink switches are what I think you guys describe in the community as linear. So when you press the key down, it goes down in one smooth motion. All right, let's move on to the next keyboard. Let's do this one, the LAT Cosmic Traveler. So this guy has TTC speed silver keys. Hopefully this will let me type even faster than the one before. Ooh, okay. Got a nice little design here with all of these little icons on the different keys. We've got some planets, a telescope, a rocket, a satellite. And that's a nice touch as well. We've got a couple of different key caps here that you can swap out so that you don't have the contrasting blue if you prefer. I think I'm gonna leave them as they are now. And then the matching color charging cable and also the 2.4 gigahertz wireless receiver. Now this LAT keyboard is similar in layout and function to the keyboard I've been using for a year and a half. But let's see what these things sound and feel like. Ooh. Okay, so right off the bat, these are linear switches. There's no bump as you go down. They feel very solid. And they have a bit of a louder sound than the previous one I was testing. We take a look underneath one of these keys. Little silver switch there. Just goes down in one smooth go. I like that this one has an interesting design as opposed to the sort of plain keyboards that you see everywhere. You know, this can really spice up your desk setup a little bit. All right, let's see what this TTC speed silver switch sounds like. All right, personally for me, I think the majority of the keys sound okay, pretty good. The space bar, I'm not the biggest fan of. It's quite clicky for me. But after all, this is called the speed silver switch. So let's see how fast I can type. 106 words per minute. All right, a new record. Speed silver was not lying. Let's try and replicate this again and take an average. Okay, 102 words per minute. So yeah, even though I don't think these keys feel as good as some of the other ones that I've tried, you can type faster with them. All right, now the next ones that I want to try are these pair of cute little cat ear looking keyboards. And I know exactly who would want to use these keyboards. My sister, she's absolutely in love with cats and dreams about having a cat all day long or maybe some streamer who loves cats. I feel like I've definitely seen that before. But anyways, we've got it in a pastel blue and this beige peachy color. That's very cute. Oh my God, that feels clicky. Oh my God, okay. I could already tell that's very clicky. And what are these? Silicon little tips for the ears. That's really cute. We've got some fish over here, a cat sleeping, a little bit of milk it looks like. Oh my God, this feels clicky. This feels like what I would imagine typing on a typewriter would feel like. Very strange experience. So right on the bottom, we've got these non-adjustable silicon tips over here. We've got some nice white backlit keys and each one of the keys themselves has a little indent in the shape of a circle. So your fingers kind of fit into those indents quite well. There's a lot of gap between the keys, as you can see, I think because of the shape of these little cat heads with ears on them. So this keyboard comes with cat ill blue switches. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. And oh my God, they are so incredibly clicky. Look at, have a look at this. This is what it looks like underneath. You can see quite clearly. They're very highly raised up above the keyboard and you've got this massive gap all around and underneath that gives you sort of a look and insight into it. If we take one of these keys off, very, very, you can even hear the click at the bottom. Listen. You can hear as the switch reaches the bottom, there's an audible click. Excited to see how I can type on this, but first let's do a sound test. It almost sounds like every time you press a letter, you have a key ring with a bunch of keys on it and you're like shaking it and it's going, and they definitely feel a little bit more difficult to push, I think, than some of the TTC ones, at least for me. I don't expect to have a good typing speed with this, but let's give it a go. Okay, well, as you can see, 82 words per minute, accuracy of 77%, obviously not good at all. I think if you're trying to type fast or like write an essay or a thesis or something, this is not the keyboard for you. If you wanna be on stream with a nice cute keyboard or if you're young and you really like cats and you'd prefer to have this, then the keyboard is for you. I think this is definitely more suited to more leisurely, simple typing than just trying to go as fast as you can. It's a very good looking keyboard. When typing fast, I found that I was hitting more than one key at once instead of the individual key that I wanted. I have a feeling it's because of this shape, but I'm not quite sure. Kind of feels like a really nice aesthetic piece for your desktop. Let's try the beige one. Okay, that's a lot less clicky right off the bat. So this keyboard comes with the cat-ill red switches. So those ones were the blue. These ones are the red, which I guess makes sense with the colors that we have here. Again, these silicone tips. I kind of prefer this color. I think it's a lot more sort of subdued pastel, which is kind of the vibe that I go for. And the switches are much less clicky, that's for sure. They feel a bit bumpy. I wasn't sure if they were linear or bumpy, but they feel bumpy kind of like the Cherry MX Browns as opposed to linear like the TTC ones. So yeah, much less clicky than the previous one. All right, let's do a little sound test. So this keyboard actually sounds quite nice. I think it has that kind of muffled sound that I was talking about with the F97 typing keyboard that we did earlier. And I'm definitely a fan of that. I like when it feels like you're walking on snow or it's just like nice and damp and quiet when you press the keys. They definitely feel a bit more hard to push than the previous one, which I think makes sense and makes me think that these are in fact bumpy switches as opposed to linear. All right, let's do a typing test and see what we can do. 103 words per minute. Not gonna lie, I was not expecting that. Clearly much easier to type on than the Kyle Blue keys, the ones that were very, very clicky. Another 101 words per minute. Okay, not gonna lie, this keyboard has taken me by surprise, looked a little bit playful, but actually was pretty good for speed. That's above the baseline of the keyboard I've been using for the last year and a half. I quite like the keys to be honest. They sound good, they feel good, they're not hard to type on, but I think my favorite is still this one, the first one that I tried. But let's see if I can find another one that I like even more. All right, now for the next keyboard, I wanna try something a little bit different. This is the OG80 dark side with cherry blue switches. Now I know from my research and from talking to a bunch of people that cherry blue switches are very clicky. So I'm excited to see what they look and feel like. For all of you, Matt Black, everything fans out there. Got the cable, switches, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, very interesting. This has kind of a see-through shell so you can kind of see deeper into the keyboard. And this is very, oh, oh, oh, okay, okay. Oh, back here you can really see deeper into the keyboard. That's very nice. So this is quite a big chunky boy with this big fan kind of grill thing on the back. And then the profile of this keyboard over here, as you can see, is kind of in a hockey stick shape. It starts low and then curves up. And so each one of these different shapes makes for a different typing experience. Ooh, okay. Some nice red backlit keys. Yes, please. That looks bad ass. The keys themselves, very, very clicky, but honestly not as clicky as that light blue cat keyboard that we used before. This has a hard bump halfway down. You can really feel it. I feel like if you're gonna be using this keyboard, you need to ask all of your housemates and roommates before you buy it. So I think they'll be able to hear it from the room next door. But it feels very easy to type on. I feel like this might be able to break the speed record. Let's do a quick sound test first. Really nice, honestly. I think it's cycling between purple and red lights. Very, very cool. Now, let's go for the typing test. 98 words per minute, not very fast. The accuracy was not very good either. I find that as soon as I start thinking about the fact that I'm doing this typing test, my performance goes down. But anyways, let's try again. 97 words per minute. It's not the fastest one by far. I suspect that it's because it's not linear and it has that little bump. So maybe it's a bit harder to press on the way down. You have to work a little bit harder to press the keys. And so I suspect it's not as fast for that reason. But super, super clicky. Very interesting sound if you're into that type of thing. I think personally I prefer the more muffled ones, but I know a lot of people who'd love to have a loud keyboard. So maybe this one is for you. OG Darkside tested onto the next one. This is heavy. Mechanical Keyboard Hitchhiker, F97. And this one comes with Cherry Red switches. Really liking the design of this one. Wow, that looks really, really nice. If you're like in an office environment or have roommates close by, this is the one to go for. Got a lot of space elements, loving this beige and gray sort of olive green color scheme as well. And yeah, got a little Rocket satellite spaceship. And it looks like it's backlit as well. It's currently on red, but that can be adjusted to anything that you want. Let's give this guy a nice little sound test. Kind of wish this is the original one that I had bought instead of Cherry MX Brown when I bought the Iconics keyboard ages ago. Really a big fan of this. Now this profile over here feels to me like the space bar area is a bit more curved up and then the keys in the middle are further down in sort of that U-shaped plateau. So it'll be interesting to see what that feels like when typing. Well, let's get started. Let's do a typing test. All right, 102 words per minute. So definitely of the faster keyboards that I've tested today. We really like the feel of typing on this keyboard. Honestly, it's really, really nice. Let's try that again. All right, 95 words per minute. Had a lot more trouble there, but it goes to show that you can type fast on this keyboard. Honestly, might be one of my favorites, Cherry Red, eh? This is a really nice and quiet keyboard. You know, if you want something that's not gonna make a lot of noise, that's gonna have, you know, a subtle sound profile on your desk. I think this Cherry Red is the way to go. And it has that quiet sound without feeling muffly. Kind of almost a little bit clicky, like the Cherry Browns and the Cherry Blues, but just a lot more quiet. All right, very interesting one. Definitely one of my favorites. Let's move on to the next keyboard. All right, let's do this bad boy, ZX-75 Gravity Wave. Now this has TTC Ace key switches. Let's see what this sounds like. It's a bit of a shake. Ooh. Ooh, this is interesting on the back. What do we have here? We've got these little magnetic removable feet. This is a very nice looking keyboard. I think it's very plain, simple, and fits the overall aesthetic of my desk quite well, where I have mostly whites and blacks. This little knob over here, you can use to turn the music volume up or down on your computer, and you can press to play, pause as well. That's very, very interesting. I like that quite a lot. And then yeah, the adjustable feet in the back, that's quite cool as well. It's a pretty loud space bar. Oh, that lights up when you turn the caps lock on. Let's do a quick sound test. All right, so this keyboard definitely feels muffled. So I really like that. I like the sound of that muffled feeling when you press down on the keys, but it's still quite loud. It still has a little bit of that clicky sense to it. The keys are definitely linear, so there's no bump when you push down. It kind of just pushes it down in one go. Nice, I'm really liking the overall package of this keyboard. Let's see how fast I can type on it. 103 words per minute. That's pretty good, honestly. Types fast, feels nice to type on. I like the sound of it as well, that nice muffled sound. Let's get that second one. All right, 96 words per minute. I'll take it. Really happy with this keyboard. I think it's in the top two for me. All right, moving on to the last two. Here we have the F97 Dark Side, and this is running the Cherry Red Switches. Silent Red Switches. Ooh. These really are silent Red Switches. So very similar weight and feel and look to the other F97 keyboards that we've seen. Really, really nice. Honestly, the quality is just ridiculous. These really are very silent. It's almost like they have a cushion at the bottom, which is like grabbing all the sound. Okay, got some very nice RGB lighting over here, which is coming across the whole keyboard. Love that. Again, if you're a fan of matte black everything, keyboard like this, I think is kind of the way to go. It's a very simple aesthetic piece that you can have on your desk and doesn't sort of attract too much attention to it. And of course, you can have these lights on or off as you wish. Let's give it a little sound test. This is a really quiet keyboard. I'm honestly even surprised that I'm pressing keys as I'm typing. It feels incredibly soft. Kind of like you're pressing into, I don't know, like a fruit or something. It's a pretty weird description, but it's kind of what it feels like. Linear keys, there's no bump as you go down. Let's do a quick speed typing test. 102 words per minute. Wow, that was really good to be honest. It barely felt like I was typing. I don't know, can you even hear that on the microphone? It felt really, really quiet. Let's do that again. All right, 102 words per minute again. Think this is the most consistent keyboard getting the same score twice? Very, very nice, honestly. If you're looking for something quiet that feels good to type on, this is it. And last, but not least, we're gonna do the OG80 wormhole. So this keyboard comes with Cherry MX Brown switches. So it feels like we're going full circle. We started off with Cherry MX Brown and now we're ending with Cherry MX Brown. Geez. Okay, let's get this bad boy out. All right, so right off the bat, this keyboard has a pretty transparent case. And wow, damn, at the back you can really see into the keyboard over there. Now let's see what these keys feel like. Yep, exactly what I'm used to. All right, let's give this a good sound test. So yeah, these keys definitely feel harder to push. You can feel that little bump as you press down. They're not linear. They're bumpy or tactile. I think it's how they're described. Decently loud compared to the muffled ones, but nowhere near as loud as the clicky clicky ones. Ooh, also the RGB lights flowing from the left to the right. Nice touch. All right, let's do a typing test and see how that goes. All right, all right, I'm happy with that. I'm finally done testing all of these keyboards. I feel like I've learned a lot about what all the different switches sound like and feel like. And you know, hopefully you watching this video learned something as well and it can help inform your next purchasing decision. If you're interested in any of the keyboards that you see here or saw in the video, I'll leave links to all of them in the description down below. And that's it from me. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed and I will see you in the next one. Peace.