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Catching up with Keychron’s CEO, Nick Xu, at Computex today, it wasn’t just carbon fiber keyboard concepts that caught my eye, it was a set of new mouse switches, and even a wee tease of something just over the horizon.
Keychron originally unveiled its new MagOptic switches a month ago, showing off a new type of mouse switch that combines both Hall effect sensing and optical sensing in a single switch. And you can change which option you want to use on-the-fly just in the web app software.
The idea being that Logitech’s G Pro X2 SuperStrike introduced gamers to Hall effect switches for gaming mice, but dispensed with the traditional click that has become the standard for mice since time immemorial in favour of a tuned haptic motor. Xu has had feedback from folk that they weren’t happy with the feel of the haptics, “a lot of people complain about this because it’s very different.”
“So we saw that kind of feedback, so we say, ‘why not just put in the traditional feedback?’ For people still missing the traditional feedback. But if they like the Logitech way, then they can try this one.”
He’s showing me three different switches with different kinds of feedback, the same as you would get with a keyboard switch. One is clicky, one has that tactile bump, and the other is completely linear.
“We combine this with a haptic engine—you know, just a vibrator—inside the mouse, then it’s just same trick,” he says.
Logitech will say it’s not quite the same trick, as it spent a long time trying out and tuning its haptic motors to get the click feel as close to a traditional mouse click as it could. And, personally, I don’t mind it. But with the clicky and tactile MagOptic switches, you don’t have to just get close to the feeling.
“Also in the software,” Xu adds, “you can change to the magnetic or optical, the Logitech one only had just the option to go the magnet.”
These switches are going to start appearing in gaming mice at the end of the month, with the G-series mice being the first. Just look out for the ‘HE’ suffix Keychron uses for its Hall effect keyboards.
Incongruously, it’s already being used in an office trackball mouse. “A lot of people say, ‘so Nick, why, why do you put in this in into your office mouse?’ I say ‘we have the best technology, why not?’ You know, it’s not that super expensive. Why not just put it in here? If they don’t use, they don’t use it, but it still performs like a normal mouse.”
Conspiratorially, he then tells me he’s holding the next generation in his hand. It’s a new mouse switch with something else baked inside to improve both optical and magnetic mice, but as of right now, that’s all under embargo.
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