Compare mechanical keyboard and membrane

Mechan­i­cal key­boards are very often opposed to mem­brane key­boards — as if they have a min­i­mum response time, and typ­ing is a plea­sure, and even cook­ie crumbs do not get stuck between the keys. True, such “input devices” cost more than one thou­sand rubles.

We will fig­ure out whether it is worth over­pay­ing and how a mechan­i­cal key­board dif­fers from a mem­brane one.

How keyboards work

A mechan­i­cal key­board dif­fers rad­i­cal­ly from a mem­brane key­board — although both devices are designed only to enter text and com­mands into a com­put­er. And these struc­tur­al dif­fer­ences deter­mine the usabil­i­ty.

How a mechanical keyboard works

Let’s start with the mechan­i­cal key­board. In fact, such devices were the first designed to enter text into a com­put­er. Then they turned out to be unrea­son­ably expen­sive and now occu­py only a small part of the mar­ket.

A mechan­i­cal key­board is a set of sep­a­rate switch­es, sim­i­lar to those in switch­es or start but­tons on a machine tool. In fact, each key is assigned a sep­a­rate switch. When the but­ton is pressed, the con­tact clos­es and the cor­re­spond­ing sig­nal is sent to the con­trol con­troller.

This con­fig­u­ra­tion pro­vides three impor­tant ben­e­fits. First­ly, the entire key­board can­vas is eas­i­ly divid­ed into sep­a­rate but­tons, so if one of them breaks for some rea­son, it will be pos­si­ble to replace the switch in the ser­vice cen­ter.

Sec­ond­ly, press­ing is deter­mined almost instant­ly, no char­ac­ters are “lost” even with very fast typ­ing. Key com­bi­na­tions, even very com­plex ones, are clear­ly defined. The “mechan­ics” are very sim­ple — and this achieves a high lev­el of reli­a­bil­i­ty.

Final­ly, the mechan­i­cal con­fig­u­ra­tion of the switch, which includes a plas­tic push­er and a met­al spring, is durable. It can with­stand up to 50 mil­lion clicks, so the device will last a cou­ple of decades even with active dai­ly use.

How a membrane keyboard works

The mem­brane key­board is much sim­pler. It has two lay­ers of con­tacts sep­a­rat­ed by a per­fo­rat­ed rub­ber band or plas­tic sheet. Above them is the same mem­brane made of rub­ber or sil­i­cone, which gave the name to the device. And the key cov­ers are attached to the mem­brane itself.

When the but­ton is pressed, the mem­brane flex­es and clos­es the con­tacts in the above lay­ers. The con­troller polls the mem­brane sev­er­al hun­dred times per sec­ond, check­ing which keys are pressed and which are not.

This con­fig­u­ra­tion has three advan­tages. First, the price. “Mem­bran­nik” can be bought for sev­er­al of dol­lars — and most of its cost will be “occu­pied” by the plas­tic case. Sim­plic­i­ty in pro­duc­tion, assem­bly, proven tech­no­log­i­cal process — all this makes mem­brane devices cheap.

Sec­ond­ly, mass. Such “claves” are light, they are con­ve­nient to car­ry with you or move off the table if nec­es­sary. “Mechan­ics” is much heav­ier, you can’t just throw it in a back­pack and go to work with your favorite input device.

And final­ly, the third advan­tage is silence. Such “claves” click only if they have to be hit with all their might. In gen­er­al, they are suit­able even for silent typ­ing.

How­ev­er, they also have sev­er­al dis­ad­van­tages:

1. You need to press a key. More­over, the depth of trav­el for dif­fer­ent mod­els varies. And, in the end, after work­ing for a long time on one device and then switch­ing to anoth­er, you can expe­ri­ence a lot of incon­ve­nience when typ­ing;

2. Reli­a­bil­i­ty is pret­ty aver­age. Typ­i­cal­ly, mem­brane mod­els with­stand 5–10 mil­lion clicks, after which the mem­brane itself breaks — and the device will have to be thrown away.

Which is better — membrane or mechanical keyboard?

Now let’s com­pare these two types of input devices:

Thus, it can­not be said that one type is bet­ter than the oth­er. Nev­er­the­less, for peo­ple who spend at the com­put­er from 3–4 hours a day, espe­cial­ly typ­ing “can­vas­es” of text, “mechan­ics” is def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

The con­ve­nience of the “mechan­ics” is man­i­fest­ed by non-stop typ­ing for more than half an hour, since it has a pleas­ant, nat­ur­al key trav­el, and a clear tac­tile response. “Mem­branes” lose in this — even with high-qual­i­ty mod­els, with pro­longed typ­ing, due to the pecu­liar­i­ty of the mem­brane, the fin­ger­tips begin to get tired or hurt.

In addi­tion, “mechan­ics” is also rec­om­mend­ed for gamers — but already due to increased accu­ra­cy in rec­og­niz­ing key­strokes, includ­ing short-term ones or in the form of a key com­bi­na­tion.