Is reliability reputation of mechanical keyboards overblown?
- by Rarst
A while back I worked up to finally buying mechanical keyboard (~$100 range, "black" switches) and was initially quite content with purchase.
However just outside first year (read it - as soon as warranty expired) it started to develop repeat issues (press once, get chain of letter repeated) on multiple keys. It doesn't react to generic cleaning (up to compressed air) and searching Internet shows noticeable amount of people with similar-to-identical issues, spanning years.
This makes me severely hesitant to buy another mechanical keyboard, considering:
every other keyboard I ever owned, including ultra-cheap crap managed to last longer than that
typing experience is nice, but not lifechanging-fan-forever nice for me
my choice of mechanical keyboards is severely limited
not many brands represented in local market and primarily crazy looking gamer models
russian (not to mention russian and ukrainian if possible) layout excludes international ordering
price tag for a meek year of use I got our of it is plain demoralizing
It is obvious mechanical keyboards have their fans, but shopping around for "best fit" or getting into multiple hundreds price tags is probably not something I am highly interested in.
Considering my constraints and bad experience with reliability, is it practical for me to sink more money into buying mechanical keyboard(s) again?
In other words - manufacturers are beaming about how crazy reliable mechanical keyboards are. Are active long time users of such keyboards confidently of same opinion?
