New Cherry MX Black Silent Switches Announced

Cherry GmbH, the German-American computer peripheral-device maker best known for its mechanical keyboard switches, has announced a new addition to their Silent line of switches. The new Silent Black switches join the company’s Silent line-up of Silent Red, Silent RGB Red, and Silent RGB Black. Cherry MX Silent switches are not particularly new, but until now, they were limited to linear Red switches, and were used exclusively on Corsair products (such as the STRAFE RGB Keyboard). Now, though, Corsair’s exclusivity has come to an end, leaving other companies free to implement the Silent switches onto their own keyboards.

The “silent” operation is achieved via a rubber pad which dampens the sound of both the switch bottoming out and the rebound noise. Otherwise, the switches’ specifications are identical to those of their non-silent counterparts. It’s also worth noting that both Red and Black switches are linear, meaning there’s no extra click within the key travel. The Silent Black switches are specified for 60 cN +/- 20 cN actuation force (against the 40 cN of their Silent Red counterparts), 2mm +/-0.6 pretravel, 4mm /-0.4 actuator travel, <5 ms bounce time, and are rated at 50 million key presses.