
Holy Panda Keyswitch - ecliptik
https://mechwiki.com/holy-panda/
======
jrockway
Is this linked because the switches reached $6 each?

I am not surprised. The mechanical keyboard community has a good contingent of
people that have a lot of money and nothing to spend it on. People post their
keyboard pictures to reddit with a Rolex Submariner or a $750 bottle of scotch
in the background. I don't mean this as a criticism in any way, but there is
very much that element to it. People pay $600 for a set of keyswitches to get
a $600 set of keyswitches, not because of the incremental value over a $0.10
keyswitch.

~~~
dkersten
I use mechanical key switches and definitely do have other things I’d rather
be spending the money on, but I find that they do substantially increase my
typing comfort (I didn’t spend $600, but did spend over $300 on my keyboard)
so do personally find they’re much better for me than $0.10 key switches.

~~~
jrockway
Oh, I'm talking about mechanical keyswitches when I cite 10 cents. That is
approximately what the Cherry clones run for in quantity. (They are about 30
cents at retail.)

You may cringe at "clone" but the reality is that after the MX patent expired,
the Chinese manufacturers are making way better switches than Cherry ever did.
Cherry got so bad that the competition forced them to retool; they would have
been perfectly happy selling you scratchy switches from decades-old tools if
it weren't for the innovation that is happening in China.

~~~
trampypizza
In my experience of Red and Brown switches, Gateron ones have always been more
pleasant to use than Cherry ones. On my desk at home I have a Cherry MX Brown
board (Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro L) that I am seriously considering taking
apart in order to replace the switches because a cheap mech I got years ago
with Gateron browns is probably the most plesant switch I have ever used.

Edit: Having said that - I admit my sample size is small and I did enjoy the
two Cherry MX Blue boards I have used.

~~~
jrockway
I'm pretty impressed with Gateron's switches, at least in the form of the
Healios switch that they manufacture. Very smooth. Very quiet. Tighter
tolerances than the Kailh switches I've used.

~~~
bloopernova
I'm saving up for an Ergodox split keyboard with Kailh Copper switches. Now
I'm wondering if I should try to find Gateron switches instead.

~~~
jrockway
The Ergodox EZ has "hot-swappable" switches; you just pull them out and snap
new ones in. So you can get the keyboard now and experiment with switches
forever.

Edit to add: I have two EZs. I also ordered my first one with Kailh's copper
speed switches and found them TERRIBLE. Speed switches are very hard to type
on. (Imagine pressing Enter when you mean Backspace. It's stressful!) The
hair-trigger on the switches combined with not knowing where backspace was on
that keyboard made learning a very difficult experience. I now run Healios
(linear) and Box Navy (clicky) on my Ergodoxen.

I would also recommend getting comfy with QMK before your keyboard arrives.
Install the build tools, make a Github fork for your configuration, and make
sure you can build images easily. You will want to tweak stuff extensively
when you are just getting started, as the default layout is pretty garbage.
(So are the online configuration tools.)

~~~
bloopernova
good to know, thank you for saving me from a lot of potential hassle!

------
falcolas
I’d be a lot more interested in this wiki entry if there was a bloody force
graph. Without that we have to rely on baloney like “a short rounded bump”.
What is the definition of short? Rounded? Why is “bump” quoted in the article?

If you can’t provide a force graph, at least publish the total travel, the
activation force and distance, the deactivation distance, and how far the
tactile feedback is from both.

~~~
CarVac
[https://plot.ly/~haata/377](https://plot.ly/~haata/377)

Most tactile mechanical switches have what I call 'slack' at the top before
the increase in force: following is my daily driver keyboard's switches, the
Novelkeys/Kailh Box Navy.

[https://plot.ly/~haata/415](https://plot.ly/~haata/415)

The Holy Pandas have the bump begin at the very top of the travel, which lends
to a firmer feel at the top and a smoother-feeling tactility.

~~~
falcolas
I thought I had replied earlier, but it appears it was eaten.

Thank you for posting those, that picture is worth a bunch of words.

That said, it doesn't seem like a mechanical switch I'd want to use. The lack
of correlation between the tactile feedback and the activation point would
drive me nuts. To me, the value of the tactile feedback is to indicate when
the switch has been activated, so I can type without having to bottom out the
switches.

~~~
CarVac
There are in my opinion two sorts of tactile switches: the ones where the
tactility exists so you can be reminded to not bottom out (like Cherry Brown),
and ones where the tactility induces you to bottom out, like rubber domes
(including topre) and Box Navy.

These have the heaviest point before the tactile 'collapse', so once you clear
the bump it's mostly smooth sailing all the way to the bottom, but there's
enough resistance to eat up most of the energy before impact.

This is of the latter sort.

~~~
falcolas
That's fair. But bottoming out is hard enough on finger joints that I
typically consider them to be a hard pass.

And, having used Topres, they don't really remove much of the energy you had
to use to bypass the peak. It's still a fairly hard impact at the bottom.

~~~
CarVac
Bottoming out depends on a lot of things.

Topre offers a little padding on the bottom as you squish the rubber.

Plastic plates or PCB-mounted switches offer a little give.

Personally, my daily driver has thick steel plates, but it's a small board and
I type on my lap, so my thighs cushion the blow.

And regardless of what keyboard I use, I bottom out, really heavily. Box Navy
switches are considered rather heavy, but I bottom them out with no trouble.

------
cpr
Or skip all this Holy lubed Pandelioz nonsense and get a Steelseries Apex Pro.
Astounding smoothness, Hall effect action (no contact), very close to the
original TK Microswitch keyboards I used and loved back in the late 70’s at
MIT.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_keyboard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_keyboard)

Great review at [https://youtu.be/jfz9TgeZ9m0](https://youtu.be/jfz9TgeZ9m0).

~~~
tdy_err
Why yes that is also a keyboard.

What do you suppose the odds are that a gaming-peripheral manufacturer sat
down and came up with a better switch implementation than any that the
mechanical keyboard community could?

~~~
sleepybrett
Optical/Hall Effect switches generally require special PCBs some part of the
sensing is often surface mounted to the pcb instead of integrated into the
switch housing. There is a hall effect board coming out the mechanical
keyboard community called the Keystone
([https://kono.store/blogs/keyboards/the-future-of-
keyboards)](https://kono.store/blogs/keyboards/the-future-of-keyboards\))) but
generally speaking such an undertaking is to big for the community in general.
Requiring both full switch design (generally new switches from the community
are simply tweaks to existing designs, maybe just a slight adjustment to the
stem, spring, or leaf) or new layouts using existing switch footprints
(generally speaking just the cherry mx footprint, but there are quite a few
pcbs that will support cherry mx and old ALPs/Matias switches.

------
userbinator
_Weight: 67g bottom out if using Panda springs, 100gf bottom out if using Halo
True springs_

That is ridiculously stiff. I wonder how comfortable they are for extended
periods of typing.

~~~
jrockway
Switches do not activate at the bottom of the travel, they typically activate
about halfway down. The force increases linearly to the bottom-out point. (For
tactile switches like these, there is an additional spring that is unrelated
to the bottom-out force, which makes the first half of the travel non-linear.)

The travel after the activation point is just to prevent your fingers from
pushing the keys all the way to the bottom. Once you hit the bottom, infinite
force yields a movement of 0mm, so it's "infinite grams". So you should look
at these numbers as how much cushioning you need after you hit the activation
point. With purely linear switches, you don't need a spring to "catch" you, so
you can go lower. With tactile switches, the force abruptly goes to almost
zero, so momentum will carry your fingers farther down the travel. The bottom-
out spring is designed to dissipate that energy before you slam the slider
into the bottom of the switch. (As a thought experiment, imagine a car
suspension spring as a keyswitch that requires 1 nanometer of travel to
activate. You would not tire yourself out typing on that, and you would never
bottom out.)

I use 67gf bottom-out switches, "Healios", and they are very middle-of-the
road in my opinion. I have used lighter switches, I have used heavier
switches. I do not bottom out on them, but they do feel about as light as I'm
willing to go. (I use Box Navy as my daily driver, which are quite a bit
heavier in terms of activation force. Also louder!)

------
nlh
Two relevant links here for those interested:

1\. If this has piqued your interest in mechanical keyboards, head on over to
[http://old.reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards](http://old.reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards)
and fall deep into the rabbit hole; and

2\. Massdrop or Drop or whatever actually went out and manufactured these — I
think the first batch sold out but keep an eye here if you’re interested in
Holy Pandas: [https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-x-invyr-holy-panda-
mechanical-...](https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-x-invyr-holy-panda-mechanical-
switches)

(Looks like they’re doing another batch - good timing)

~~~
davidbanham
Holy hell I never knew the old.reddit.com domain existed.

Thank you!

~~~
_-___________-_
Pretty much the only way to make Reddit usable these days!

~~~
rhexs
Another good tip is to always request google.com as a desktop website in
mobile safari. If you don't, you get mobile google, which forces you to go to
the AMP reddit, which then pops up multiple banners every page load asking you
to install mobile reddit so Reddit can track you. Entirely unusable and
endlessly frustrating.

I think I'm an oddball who uses google.com to browse reddit, but I prefer to
to the apps.

------
tartoran
Anybody can recommend a decent unconspicuous full mechanical keyboard that
does give the feedback but doesn’t bother everyone around? I’ve seen plenty of
gamming kbs that I wouldn’t use in an office, I’d like to find one that looks
just like a regular keyboard.. Don’t care if it’s wired or not

~~~
ThreeFx
Do you consider Topre to be "fully mechanical"? IMO Leupold has nice keyboards
which look decent.

~~~
tartoran
I have no idea, I'll check them out. The problem is that I am not sure how
noisy these are, I'm sure the feedback is good enough. Btw, I don't care if a
keyboard is fully mechanical as long as it has a nice feel to it. Leopold
looks nice too.

~~~
Slippery_John
They're pretty quiet on their own, but also have further silenced variants
(often called type-s or some such). Also look for Topre Realforce or HHKB Pro
2. The latter is what I generally recommend to folks that want to get a good
board without having to wait around for the typical group buy periods. The
small form factor takes getting used to, but I love it. There's a newer model
called HHKB Pro Hybrid that has both wired and bluetooth, but iirc it's a bit
hard to find right now.

------
firemelt
I wish these switch could be cheaper and mass produced

------
UI_at_80x24
How do they compare to buckling springs?

~~~
chaoticmass
They are very different, but as someone who has been a die-hard buckling
spring user since childhood, I found I actually really like them.

I wen to a Mechanical Keyboard meetup (for the first time) last year. I
brought my model Ms for people to try out. Someone there had brought his
boards and had one of them for sale. Without knowing what it was, I typed on
his board he was selling and instantly liked it. He was only asking $200 so I
bought it. He was telling me it was using Holy Panda switches, but I had no
idea what that meant. I just liked how it felt.

It has a very strong tactile bump, right at the top of the travel.

