Cherry announce new MX keyboard switch- RGB Nature White

This one came more or less as a surprise to some, including yours truly.  Cherry recently announced a new Cherry MX RGB switch that is a linear switch with little or no tactile or auditory feedback.  This new white switch slots itself neatly in between the MX red and MX black with 55g activation force.  It comes with all the latest bells and whistles such as clear casing for lighting and RGB color capability.  For some reason, Cherry designated this one as “nature white”, not to be confused with a previous, discontinued white switch.  To distinguish the two, Cherry added “nature” before white to denote the new switch.  Unexpectedly, this one does not use the new quieting polymer that Cherry recently announced.  So, this is a more traditional version.  However, since Corsair has an exclusive on the new quieting technology, thus this switch is either an exclusive to some other keyboard maker or available to all.

Yup.  Looks like Ducky’s flagship Shine-5 keyboard is the launch product as Ducky Channel has won the exclusive right to this particular switch, at least for a while.  I wonder if there was a bidding war going on in the background since Cherry has historically favored Corsair.  Maybe Ducky asked Cherry to make a special switch for them because Corsair kept getting mindshare.  Who knows…..  In any case, the one who’s laughing all the way to the bank is still Cherry.  This is another strong evidence that Cherry is still large and in charge despite the recent influx of cloners.

This also offers another indicator of the mechanical keyboard market: it’s largely gamer oriented.  Folks like me more or less benefited from this gamer wave and has elevated mechanical keyboards popularity and prompted recent innovations.  However, I am not a gamer, so I don’t really fancy these new linear switches.  Perhaps someday, Cherry will migrate some of these new hot technologies to a more traditional switches such as MX brown, blue and its cousins.  Let’s hope that’s the case.  Then again, maybe someday, I will try a linear switch to see what the hype is all about.