You know them. You love them. You play games on them and work on them, and while some people might be trying to use chatbots to cheat on your essays, most people do their school assignments on them.

But keyboards are quite a topic that people might not give a lot of thought to. Many people have started their computing lives on a crappy rubber-dome keyboard, or if you were lucky, the great vintage keyboards your parents or grandparents had around, such as a Model M, g80-3000 or Dell AT101 Bigfoot.

For the sad sacks who grew up on rubber-dome keyboards, there comes a time when you realize there's better options out there. And that's when you start looking at mechanical, optical and hall effect. Lord knows, having more than two key rollover is a huge part of it, but you might also want something that feels a bit more pleasant to type on than rubber mush under pad-printed keys.

But what is better? Well, there are three general classes of keyboard switch types that you run into in the mechanical keyboard market.

Linear switches can be used to great effect by many gamers, as there's no bump or other obstruction. Your key just goes straight down. However, many of them (especially Cherry MX Red and their myriad clones) are very, VERY light, and Cherry switches in particular are often considered scratchy and not as pleasant to type on. A heavier switch might be more your speed if you want to balance typing and gaming, but there's also the next type of switch.

Tactile switches have a bump that serves as a physical feedback when typing, a little something to make sure you know that you're typing. The most common of these nowadays is the Cherry MX Brown (and clones), but they're also the weakest tactile, and it's not even close. Tactility in general is the main weakness of the modern switch, as they're based on Cherry's design, which employs a small notch on the slider to generate a frankly pathetic amount of tactility. Vintage keyboards are usually better in this regard, but Kailh's Box Royal is a heavily tactile options for those who really want to feel it, and there are endless hacks of various switches that claim to offer tactility, though some claims can be dubious. Of course, there's one last type of switch.

Clicky switches have that bump, but also an audible feedback via a click when you're actuating. The most popular of these is again taken from Cherry and cloned by everyone else, the MX Blue switch. However, they can be a bit loud. Not obscenely loud (no matter what gatekeepers like Hipyo Tech or Switch and Click might have you believe), but definitely something you can hear. Also, the mechanism that the blue switch types use to generate their click, a free-floating jacket that gets slammed by the slider, is much more rattly than the clicky switches of old. For a more precise, much more pleasant click, options like the Kailh clickbar series. What I'm using is the Kailh BOX Navy, which is a heavy, tactile clicky switch that feels great when typing, though more intermediate options BOX Jade and BOX Pink are options, as is the very light BOX White. Of course, you could also go high-end with the Zeal Clickiez, which use a traditional click leaf more akin to Alps clickies and their clones from Mattias.

Anyway, as you've probably guessed, I'm a sucker for clickies. I have board with Gateron blues (Gateron switches are usually smoother than Cherry), but my main keyboards use the BOX Navy. I know a lot of people don't like tactile and clicky for gaming, and my thoughts may be skewed by my preference for single player gaming, but I've never really had a problem. On the contrary, it's harder to hit keys CLOSE to the ones I'm trying to hit, making for fewer mistaken inputs. And of course, typing is an absolute pleasure. What about you lot, though? What kind of mechanical keyboard are you into? You still into the old school, rocking the titans of the classic keyboard space, or do you have a more modern solution? What kind of feel do YOU enjoy? I'm curious, so feel free to chime in!