The 5 switches in the initial release were the linear Black Ink, Red Ink, and Yellow Ink, the silent linear Silent Black Ink, and the clicky Blue Ink switch, all of which were sold at $0.75 per switch with the exception of the Silent Black Ink which were sold at $0.85 per switch. The original Gateron Ink family of switches, to the best of what I could find online, first was released around January of 2019, consisting of 5 translucent, monocolored Gateron switches. In order to supplement this, I will unfortunately have to be providing some of my own takes and recounting rather than the exact details, but I will try and be as cautious as possible in doing so and note it where I can. More directly on point, though, with switches that are as ubiquitous and as old as Gateron Black Inks, its not always the easiest to exactly pin down exact release dates and announcements. Tangentially, this makes me feel rather weird when people do refer to me as an ‘OG’, as I hardly view myself as that relative to other vendors, content creators, and people that I remember interacting with when I first joined the hobby my self who are still active today. While a lot of people have joined the hobby since I started reviews and thus do not know of a keyboard community without my reviews, I am still fairly new in the hobby relative to some of the people who have been around to see a lot of change over double or triple the amount of time that I have spent here thus far. In order to preface this ‘Switch Background’ section a little bit, I do want to remind you all that I’m not exactly eternal. Who knows, you may even get to meet cool animals like me there assuming I’m not shackled to my desk again at that time. So, while I know that the pandemic is still present to various degrees depending on where you are in the world, you should really take some time to look into when and where the next in person keyboard meetup is around you or to simply get in contact with the people, forum, etc. In addition to giveaways and free door stuff, which is always pretty nice as well, you’ll genuinely get to really go deep on keyboards with people who don’t just roll their eyes and ask why you’ve bought another keyboard even though its only your third. Meetups of any scale, plain and simple, are a chance for you to get to try out keyboards, keycaps, switches, really everything you’ve never had a chance to buy in person while also getting to meet and interact with people you might see on Discord, Reddit, or the other various forums we all occupy. With all that in mind though, I know there are at least a few of you wondering what exactly the draw is of meetups or why I feel so compelled to mention their existence aside my rampant jealousy of the NK meetup I’m missing. For example, I know that there are usually big meetups at least once a year in the Washington DC area, SoCal, Texas, Ohio, as well as ones in other countries like Japan, the UK, Australia, etc. Regardless of if you’re the time traveler I’m referencing here or someone who caught this hot off the presses and aren’t really that deep into the hobby: keyboard meetups are a thing! While I can’t exactly promise the frequency nor proximity of you to a meetup as where, when, and how they are hosted is very much a regional thing, you should absolutely go exploring to see if you have one in your region. Hell, there is someone out here reading this probably six months or even a year later feeling a little bit weird by the dated references that I make in all of my articles about stuff going on in my life, the keyboard world, or the intersection of the two. Aside letting me vent my jealously just the tiniest bit, part of the reason I am bringing this up is because I know that not all of my readers are necessarily within the same ‘space’ in the hobby that I or people who would be going to this meetup are.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |