AcademyMechanical Keyboards: Do Switches Make You Type Faster?

The short answer: a keyboard won’t replace practice, but its feel matters at the edges. Studies have measured real differences between key switch designs, and much bigger ones between physical keys and a flat touch surface. Among decent keyboards, the best switch is the one that lets you type accurately and comfortably for a long stretch.

What makes a keyboard mechanical

A mechanical keyboard has an individual switch under each key, and the switch design decides how the key feels: how hard you press, how far it travels and whether it gives you a bump or a click. CHERRY’s MX range shows the three kinds of feel:

• Linear: smooth from top to bottom, with no bump. The MX Red has “linear switching characteristics” and no click.
• Tactile: a noticeable bump partway down the press. The MX Brown is tactile with no click.
• Clicky: tactile with an audible click. The MX Blue is listed as “tactile & clicky.”

Actuation: you don’t have to bottom out

A switch registers before the key reaches the bottom. CHERRY lists the MX Red at a 45 cN operating force, with 2.0 mm of pre-travel and 4.0 mm of total travel: the keystroke counts at the halfway point, and pressing all the way down adds nothing to it.

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What research says about switches and speed

The evidence is limited but useful:

• Tactile versus linear. In a 2018 study, 64 people typed on five mechanical gaming key switches. The switch with a linear force curve had the worst outcomes, including lower net typing speed than two tactile switches. Switches with shorter tactile travel (1.2 mm), shorter operating travel (2.0 mm) and a lower bottom force (35 to 40 g) did best overall, and participants preferred shorter travel and lower forces (Miller et al., 2018).
• Very short travel. A 2019 study had 20 people type on four short-travel devices. The one with a 0.55 mm dome switch was linked to 8% slower typing, 12% higher typing force and twice the discomfort of the other three, which included another 0.55 mm design with a different switch. The authors concluded that key travel alone does not predict typing force or muscle activity (Coppola et al., 2019).
• Physical keys versus flat glass. In a 2014 study of 19 people, typing on a virtual keyboard with no key travel came with a 60% reduction in typing productivity compared with notebook (1.8 mm) and desktop (4 mm) keyboards (Kim et al., 2014).

Read together: feedback and travel matter, and the biggest gap is between real keys and a flat surface. The one speed difference between physical switch designs that these studies put a number on, 8% in the 2019 study, is far smaller than that gap, and preferences played a part. None of these studies shows that a mechanical keyboard makes an experienced typist dramatically faster.

Rollover: does your keyboard keep up?

Fast typists overlap their keystrokes. In a study of 168,960 typists, the fastest pressed 40 to 70% of their keys before releasing the previous one, with an average overlap of about 30 milliseconds and up to 100 (Dhakal et al., 2018). A keyboard has to register those overlapping presses correctly. That ability is called rollover, and a keyboard that registers any number of simultaneous keys has “n-key rollover.”

The basic USB keyboard report that computers can read even at startup carries up to six non-modifier keys at once, plus modifiers such as Shift. If more keys are down, or the keyboard can’t tell which keys are pressed, it reports a rollover error instead (USB HID specification 1.11). Typing rollover involves only a few keys at a time: the key you are pressing, the one you haven’t released yet and sometimes Shift. If a keyboard drops letters when you type quickly, its rollover handling is worth checking; otherwise rollover is no reason to buy a new keyboard.

Layout and size

• ANSI versus ISO. The two common physical layouts differ around the left Shift and Enter keys: ISO keyboards have a vertical Enter key and a shorter left Shift with an extra key beside it. If you touch type, stay with the layout you learned on, or expect to relearn the reaches for Enter and left Shift.
• Size. Compact keyboards drop the number pad, the function row or both. That changes nothing for letters, but if you enter figures often, you lose the keypad; TypeTrance’s digits mode practices keypad entry.
• Alternative shapes. Split and tented keyboards aim to promote neutral wrist postures. OSHA notes that research does not conclusively show they prevent discomfort or injury. See typing ergonomics.
• Letter layout. The switch type is a separate question from QWERTY versus alternatives such as Dvorak or Colemak, which keyboard layouts compared covers.

Keyboard terms, decoded

• Actuation point: the depth at which a key registers. On the MX Red it is 2.0 mm down, after the pre-travel.
• Pre-travel and total travel: the distance to the actuation point, and the distance to the bottom of the switch.
• Operating force: the force needed to actuate the switch, often given in centinewtons (cN). One cN is about the weight of one gram, so a 45 cN switch needs roughly the push of a 46-gram weight. Research papers often give forces in grams instead.
• Bottoming out: pressing the key all the way down. It isn’t needed to register the key.
• Tactile bump and click: the feedback a tactile or clicky switch gives partway through the press. Clicky switches are audible, which matters in a shared room.
• Rollover, n-key rollover and ghosting: how many simultaneous keys a keyboard can report, and the false or missing keys some keyboards produce when it can’t tell which keys are down.
• ANSI and ISO: the two common physical layouts, which differ in the shape of the Enter key and the size of the left Shift key.

How to choose

1. Comfort over a long session comes first. You will type better on a keyboard you can use for an hour without strain.
2. Pick feedback you can feel. The research favors some tactile feedback with shorter, lighter travel, but preferences differ. If you miss keystrokes or press much harder than you need to, try a tactile switch; if the bump gets in your way, try a linear one.
3. Match the layout you know. ANSI or ISO: the one your hands expect.
4. Check the rating if durability matters. Makers publish switch lifetimes; CHERRY, for example, rates the MX Red for over 100 million keystrokes.
5. Test it yourself. Use the method below rather than reviews.

Test a keyboard fairly

Take three 1-minute tests on your current keyboard and note the typical result and your accuracy. Use the new keyboard for a week, then take three more on the same test and compare. Test at the same time of day and after the same warm-up, so the keyboard is the only thing that changed. TypeTrance doesn’t know which keyboard you used, so keep your own note; the only input it separates automatically is a touch screen versus a hardware keyboard.

If the new keyboard doesn’t move your numbers, it may still be worth keeping for comfort. If speed is the goal, how to type faster is where the bigger gains are.