Why are mechanical keyboards so expensive?

I was trying to buy a mechanical keyboard, with the cooler master quickfire xt as my instant favorite.

But BOY! These things are expensive, I can get true 5.1 surround headphones for a shade under £45, why can I not get a mechanical keyboard (which from my untrained eye is just a circuit board sandwiched between a casing and the actual mechanical switches) for under that, £75 quid for a keyboard is ludicrous.

Can anyone shed some light here?

Check out Linus' tour of the Cherry MX factory. That should show you the amount of effort that goes into the switches. That is why they are so expensive.

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They are worth it.  I had this same feeling.....then I bought one.

Because value is what a damn' fool will pay for it.

Cherry MX switches are actually not cheap. They are made in Germany to ridiculously high standards. However, a full mechanical enterprise grade Cherry MX keyboard from Cherry itself is sold for about 60 EUR.

So buy those switches, get a cheap injection molded or aluminium folded frame made in China, save on the keycaps by fitting cheap ABS keycaps instead of PBT, put it in a nice box with gamer graphics, send a couple of hundreds of these keyboards for free to YouTube reviewers and other marketing costs compensate for the money you've saved on lowering the quality of the frame, and you can make 300-500 % profit on selling it to gamers that like to boast with gear everyone knows is expensive (or they would just buy the better quality Cherry keyboards themselves).

But it gets better: some manufacturers then go to China, and buy cheap knockoff switches (e.g. Kaihl) that are not certified for any enterprise standards, and probably won't last even half as long, fit even cheaper ABS or even PE or PVC keycaps, get an even cheaper frame without metal backplate, put a gamer logo on it, and sell it for the same price as the other "mechanical gaming keyboards" mentioned above, for an 800-1000 % profit.

OK, I get the idea, I still don't understand how assembly line production can't lower the cost of these keyboards to reasonable levels though. Hell I can see how much the switches cost from cherry's website.

They like to keep things to a high standard. I mean, why does Intel charge thousands of dollars for its upper end cpus? High standards (and profit). These things are expensive to make with the standards they keep. There are knock offs around if the price bothers you that much.

Markups. Most of the time that is the reason they are so expensive.

You can get plain genuine cherry keyboards cheap enough but G4m0Rz will pay extra for flashy names, extra macros, 16.8 million colour LEDs, and fashion. 

While I am going to spend a considerable amount of a WASD V2 I am also going to get exactly what I want. You pay for options.

Mechanical keyboards are more comfortable, I used to have a crappy membrane keyboard and my wrists would always hurt, but ever since I got my Unicomp they haven't hurt one bit, I don't recommend any Cherry switches, I would go with Buckling Spring, Alps, or Topre.  The only Buckling spring keyboards are made by Unicomp and you can only get them at pckeyboard.com  The Topre Type Heaven is a good choice though it costs a lot more than my Unicomp Ultra Classic did.  Alps keyboards are also much more expensive than Unicomps Buckling Spring keyboards.  I would suggest going with a Unicomp keyboard or getting a Model M because the price point is much lower than other keyboards.

It's not that mechanical keyboards are expensive, but keyboards for the last 10 years has been going up. I remember just 7-10 years ago, you could just be satisfied with a 20 dollar microsoft laser mouse, cuz wireless mouseless had input delay and drain batteries like no tomorrow or died in middle of a RTS/RPG game. And those microsoft 20 dollary keboards. Nowadays it's 20 dollar logitech.

But if you go to stores today, most 5-15 dollar keyboards are crap. I would say you had to pay at least 35-50 dollars for a decent one, and those aren't even mechanical. So if you compared enthuaist keyboards then to now it should be near 150-300 dollars for a elite keyboard. Most are under 200 so it's actually pretty cheap IMO compared to budget keyboards, which essentially you're paying for a 15 dollar Chinese made keyboard marketed at 35-50 dollars.

 

Fun fact: only virtual keyboards aren't mechanical ;)

Meh , depends what you want , personally a 60 € mech is good , but you can get a good membrane for 25 ( I use the MK 710 from logitech ) , this because I can't stand the sound of mechanical keyboard's .

 

If you can't handle the price , get a membrane ...

I personally think PBT keycaps are a more important feature than mechanical key switches. If you buy a membrane keyboard that has PBT switches, it means that it's top of the line in membrane keyboards, and then, the feeling and precision will be close to standard mechanical keyboards.

Some people need PBT switches more than others. I'm a guitarist, the fingertips of my left hand are hard as carbide, and I type a lot, at high speed, so I will rip through the texture of ABS keys in less than 2 days, and after a week, the letters will start to come off, and the surface of the keys will be polished to a showroom shine. On the other hand, I have keyboards with PBT switches that I've been using like crazy for well over 10 years, and they still look like new.

I find choosing a mechanical keyboard as hard as choosing a membrane keyboard, there's a lot of crap everywhere.

The big pitfall with mechanical keyboards fro the gamer market, is that the switches aren't transparent. That prevents a good backlighting solution. Individual LED's are a crappy solution, because WHEN (not IF!) the LED's start to fade and then fail, it will make the entire backlighting unusable, where on a membrane keyboard, when an LED fails, it's hardly visible even, and there are much less LED's to fail, much less points of failure. Also, when an LED fails on a mechanical keyboard, you have to rip out the switch and install a new one, and to do that you better have a really solid keyboard with a really overengineered PCB, whereas to replace the LED's on a membrane keyboard, basic soldering skills suffice, and there is hardly anything that can go wrong.

 

Why would you want backlight though? I can't see it as anything but a completely useless feature.

Why are PBS caps superior over ABS? Both are mere plastics. And switches are switches, either you press a button or you don't; either the input is 1 or it's 0.

Bonus feature for us who can't remember the layout when there's no light

gaming in the dark without a desk lamp to distract from the screen...

not a necessary feature for normal use, but handy for gaming...

PBT is way harder and more resilient, ABS really looks like shit within two days of me typing on it, PBT doesn't.

I have membrane keyboards for all my life. So everytime I see people buying expensive keyboards is so they won't break them over the head cuz of gaming. I have my for year and I seldom upgrade until I'm too lazy to clean them or I really like a design of a certain model. 

I just really don't get it when it come to mechanical, are they trying to be like 'steampunk?' going back to typewriters? Breaking keyboards every 3 months? rage much?

With that type of money I would tell them to make varible switches that could be programmed to be red/black/blue/white/brown. Also have predictive keystokes like how the PS/cellphone predicts your typing. To say, have a silent stealth keyboard with no sound at the very lease.

 

lol, that's awesome

The sound is partially why I like my cherry mx greens.