Although they have been with us for some years, it is in these last few months that we are hearing more about them. teclados ‘Hall Effect’ —a concept well known in the field of physics—popularly called HE keyboards.
This type of keyboard uses magnetic technology that is very different from that used in well-known mechanical keyboards. The advantages of this option are especially striking in one area: that of gamers.
In the mechanical keyboards The key press is registered through physical contact between the switch and the board. In these peripherals, the key must travel a certain distance for the keyboard to register the press, and this distance is called the “actuation point”.
There is one more important element of that actuation point on mechanical keyboards: it is fixed and cannot be customized, so if you want a different actuation point, you must look for different switches for your keyboard.
Fully configurable actuation points
That's the first big advantage of HE keyboards. There is no fixed point of action as such, but it is the user who configures it to his/her liking. In these magnetic switches, a sensor measures the distance to the key, and the actuation point can be customized in a spectacular way.
In fact, we can set, for example, an actuation point of 0.1 mm (that is, the key barely needs to be pressed), or one of 4 mm if we want the keystroke to be registered only when the key travels that entire distance (a very “deep” keystroke).
This allows fine-tune latency and customize it for each user and scenario, and it is also very useful when it comes to “releasing” the key: it often happens that, for example, when moving sideways, this latency causes our character to move slightly more than we intended.
The reason is that there are a few moments between the time we start to release the key and the keystroke actually stops registering. On HE keyboards we can customize these actuation points so that this does not happen, which is another important advantage for competitive gamers. And to this option we can add two other unique options.
The first is the so-called “Rapid Trigger”, which dynamically resets the switch as soon as the user releases the key. The second is “Snap Tap”, which makes it unnecessary to release a key before pressing another one.
Those options They are super interesting for gamerssince they can count on minimal latency and prodigious keystroke precision. The advantages that these options pose are so striking that Valve has decided to penalize the use of such advanced features and automations in 'Counter-Strike 2'.
Extreme customization
The software that accompanies these keyboards also allows for an absolutely extraordinary level of customization of each key. In fact, each key can have different actuation points depending on the scenario: in video games it can be very short, but when typing it can be somewhat longer.
It is even possible to assign four different types of action to a single key depending on the actuation and how long we hold down the key, something that can offer almost unlimited possibilities to macro lovers.
That customization It also extends to the keyboard map. These manufacturers often offer really powerful configuration tools —the Wootility Wooting's is a good example—with which you can assign any input to any key, for example being able to assign the Xbox buttons to certain keys in certain games or change the location of any key so that, for example, the cursors occupy the traditional WASD or the space bar “sleeps” the computer if we press it too deeply.
The durability of this type of technology is also theoretically superior to that of mechanical keyboards, which, while good, are still impacted by the fact that there is physical contact with the PCB. While a mechanical switch can withstand up to 50 million keystrokes, magnetic switches promise 100 million keystrokes.
HE keyboards were noticeably more expensive on average than mechanical keyboards, but over time The proposals have dropped in price and above all have multipliedWooting, one of the clear leaders and pioneers in this type of keyboard, now has competitors of all kinds.
Among them are well-known manufacturers such as Razer, Corsair or Keychron, but also less popular brands with promising products, such as Womier, DrunkDeer, ATK or Akko, among many others. The advantages they offer are certainly promising, and it remains to be seen whether they become the new preferred peripheral for gamers.
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