Mechanical Keyboards: Switches, Sizes and Picks
The short answer
For most people the right buy is a tenkeyless or 75% board with tactile switches, and the money is better spent on the switches and keycaps than on the RGB. Of the three keyboards below, the Keychron K6 is the one that fits the most desks, the Razer BlackWidow V3 is the one to buy if you want a full-size board with a wrist rest included, and the Glorious GMMK Pro is only worth it if building the keyboard is part of the appeal. If the budget is tighter than any of those, the budget mechanical keyboards compared here cover the sub-$100 end.
That last point about the GMMK Pro is the one nobody mentions often enough: it is sold as a barebones kit. No switches, no keycaps. The advertised price is not what you will spend.
Switches decide how the board feels
A mechanical keyboard puts an individual switch under every key instead of a single rubber membrane sheet under all of them. That is the whole difference, and it is why two keyboards with identical cases can feel nothing alike. Everything else - the case material, the lighting, the software - changes the experience far less than the switch choice does.
There are three families, and the names matter less than the behaviour.
Linear. The key goes straight down with no bump and no click. Cherry MX Red is the reference, Razer Yellow is Razer’s version, and Gateron makes cheaper equivalents that feel smoother than their price suggests. Linear switches are the default recommendation for gaming because there is nothing to push through on the way down, and they are the quietest of the three families. The cost is that nothing tells your finger the key has registered, so people who are not touch-typists tend to bottom out every key, which is tiring over a long day.
Tactile. A bump partway down the travel signals the actuation point. Cherry MX Brown is the usual example. This is the family that suits most people who both work and play on the same keyboard: the feedback is there when you are typing and it does not get in the way when you are gaming. It is also quiet enough for an office or a shared room, which linear switches match and clicky ones do not.
Clicky. The same tactile bump plus an audible click built into the switch mechanism. Cherry MX Blue and Razer Green are the ones people mean. They are genuinely satisfying to type on and genuinely antisocial. If you are on calls, share a room, or record anything with a microphone in it, this is the family to avoid regardless of how good it feels.
Switch brand matters less than switch type. A Gateron linear and a Cherry linear differ in smoothness and in how consistent one unit is against the next, but the gap between two linears is much smaller than the gap between a linear and a clicky. Buy for the family first, the brand second.
Size decides whether it fits your desk
Layout is the second decision and the one people regret more often, because a switch can be swapped on a hot-swap board and a layout cannot.
- Full-size (100%): numpad, function row and navigation cluster all present. Worth it if you enter numbers all day. Otherwise it is desk space spent on keys you touch once a week.
- Tenkeyless / TKL (80%): the numpad is gone and roughly 10 cm of width with it. The most common choice for gaming, because the mouse sits closer to the keyboard and your shoulder ends up in a more neutral position.
- 75%: the navigation keys are condensed into a column beside the main block, so the function row survives in a footprint close to a TKL. This is what the GMMK Pro is.
- 65%: the function row goes, F1-F12 move onto an Fn layer, the arrow keys stay. This is what the Keychron K6 is, and it is the smallest size most people adapt to without complaint.
- 60%: arrows, navigation and function row all move onto layers. Compact and portable, and a real adjustment.
The practical argument for going smaller is mouse room. A TKL frees somewhere around 5-8 cm of lateral space at the same seating position, which matters if you play at low mouse sensitivity and need wide sweeps - the same reason a lightweight wireless mouse is worth pairing with one. The argument against going below 65% is that layer combinations slow you down for the first few weeks, and if you write code and lean on Home, End, Page Up and Page Down constantly, that slowdown never entirely goes away.
Glorious GMMK Pro
A 75% board with a CNC aluminium case, gasket mounting, a rotary knob in the top right corner, a hot-swap PCB and QMK/VIA support for remapping. It arrived in 2021 and it is the board that took gasket mounting - a construction where the plate is held between soft pads instead of screwed hard to the case, which softens both the typing sound and the impact - from enthusiast forums into a mainstream product.
What it does well is everything about the physical build. The case has real weight to it, the knob is genuinely useful for volume, and VIA remapping means the layout ends up being yours rather than the manufacturer’s.
What it does poorly is price honesty. It is a barebones kit: the box has no switches and no keycaps in it. A set of decent switches and a decent keycap set together can add most of the kit price again, which puts a finished GMMK Pro well past what a complete premium keyboard costs. Glorious has since moved its lineup on to the GMMK 3, so the Pro is now the older product in its own catalogue rather than the flagship, and buying one today means buying into a platform the manufacturer has already moved past.
Buy it if choosing your own switches and keycaps is something you actively want to do. If you want a keyboard that works out of the box, this is the wrong shape of product entirely.
Razer BlackWidow V3
A full-size board with an aluminium top frame, doubleshot ABS keycaps, Chroma RGB, a multi-function roller wheel with a media key, and an ergonomic wrist rest included in the box. Razer lists it at $139.99 with up to two years of warranty, and it is regularly discounted well below that.
It ships with a choice of two switches, and that choice is the whole decision. Razer Green is clicky and tactile. Razer Yellow is linear and silent, with sound dampeners built into the switch to cut the bottom-out noise. Same keyboard, completely different situation for whoever shares the room. Razer’s doubleshot keycaps are worth a word too: the legends are moulded from a second layer of plastic rather than printed on top, so they cannot wear off the way painted legends on cheap boards do within a year.
The weaknesses are the ones that come with the brand. It is not hot-swappable, so the switch you buy is the switch you keep for the life of the board. The lighting and the remapping both run through Synapse, which is heavier software than this job needs. And it is full-size, so it takes back the desk space a TKL would have given you.
There is a dedicated review of the BlackWidow V3 on the blog with the longer version of that assessment.
Keychron K6
A 65% board that connects over Bluetooth or as a normal USB-C wired keyboard, with Gateron switches and both Mac and Windows keycap sets in the box. It is the most practical of the three for anyone who moves between machines, because switching from a work laptop to a desktop is a key combination rather than a cable swap.
The detail to get right when ordering is that hot-swap is a version here, not a property of the model. The K6 is sold in hot-swappable and non-hot-swappable variants, and only the former lets you change switches later. Ordering the wrong one is a decision you cannot undo afterwards.
Its limits are the ones the format implies. There is no dedicated function row, so anything on F1-F12 needs the Fn key held down. Remapping is more limited than what QMK and VIA give you on the GMMK Pro. And 65% is small enough that a spreadsheet-heavy job will want a separate numpad on the desk beside it, which partly undoes the space saving that motivated the small board in the first place.
Keycaps are the cheap upgrade
Changing keycaps costs less than changing keyboards and changes the result more than any amount of RGB tuning does.
- PBT is the sensible default. The plastic resists the shiny patches that develop on well-used keys, and a set costs a fraction of a new board.
- ABS is smoother out of the box and is what most keyboards ship with. It develops shine over time unless it is doubleshot and thick, as Razer’s are.
- Artisan caps are hand-made single keys, usually for Escape. They are decoration and priced like it.
The one thing to check before ordering is profile and layout compatibility. A set cut for a standard bottom row will not fit a board with a non-standard one, and 65% and 75% boards frequently need a kit that includes the extra key sizes those layouts use.
What is not worth paying for
Per-key RGB on a board you use in a lit room. Software suites that want an account to store a lighting profile. Any keyboard sold on the strength of its polling rate, which stopped being a differentiator years ago. And a wrist rest bought separately when a board in the same price bracket includes one.
Verdict
Pick the switch family first, the layout second and the brand last. Tactile switches on a TKL or 75% board is the combination that suits the widest range of people, and it is available at every price point from around $50 upward.
Of the three here, the Keychron K6 is the most useful to the most people, the BlackWidow V3 is the straightforward full-size buy if you want it working out of the box with a wrist rest, and the GMMK Pro is a project rather than a purchase - excellent if that is what you are after, and an expensive surprise if it is not.
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