AEBoards Naevy EC Switch Review

Look – I can’t be the guy that reviews Topre “switches” okay? There’s dozens of other content creators out there in the keyboard space that do all manner of content from writing to long form YouTube videos and one of them out there can be the ones to deal with Topre. I mean if you ask me they’re not even really switches anyways, rather they’re just sheets of rubber, some springs, and maybe a stem that got thrown together with a keycap on top of it all to more or less produce something that could be considered a keystroke. You know what would also do that? A pile of good, old fashioned, and proper mechanical switch parts tossed in a bag and shaken around. In fact I think I’ve gone as far as accidentally making a “Topre switch” once by dropping a spring on top of a stack of switch films that I had out on my desk during a modding session. I wasn’t too impressed once I put a keycap on it. My own personal proximity to the origin of the “Copre” mod and genuine appreciation for those few sincerely dedicated Topre collectors and enthusiasts aside, I just can’t see myself as being a “Topre Guy”. In order to fit what I personally feel like needs to be there to be called a ”switch”, the Topre dome, spring, and/or slider would all need to come in some more or less self-contained, single unit piece that I could just plug and play into an existing keyboard. Something like the AEBoards Naevy EC or Raed HE switches, for example. See – it’s totally not hypocritical of me to review one of those switches while swearing off of all Topre things at all times forever because it fits my incredibly loose but also totally not overly specific razor that I whip out only when I get cornered for a response on Topre. I take it that you’re probably not buying it. Well, maybe you should just enjoy this review since it will almost certainly be the closest I’ll ever actually get to reviewing Topre “switches”.

Figure 1: It's a shame that their mascot is so damn cute. Really makes it harder to trivialize the validity of Topre as a mechanical keyboard option.

Switch Background

As time has gone on and I’ve grown in scope and scale as a content creator, I’ve found myself becoming increasingly closer to the development cycles of switches that I end up reviewing here in full. While I’m still just shy of actually doing the real leg work and designing a switch with a company from scratch, I feel like I’ve done just about everything I can short of that. Giving name and color scheme advice, full on prototype testing and feedback, learning all sort of inter-vendor and inter-company drama and fights, and even getting to hear about still to this day unreleased switches are all things that I’ve been lucky enough to experience in one form or another over the years. However, I can say with near certainty that I’ve never been quite as involved in the contextual background and community wide roll out of switches as I have been with the AEBoards Naevy EC and Raed HE switches. This is not because I’ve really given them any design input or helped steer the direction of these switches in any significant capacity whatsoever, mind you, rather it all came about just from me being somewhat nosy at a somewhat opportune moment. One question led to a couple of responses, and next thing you know I’m debuting some of the most sincerely coolest switches I’ve ever come across to the community at large at a meetup panel. It all really sort of happened out of nowhere. All of it. Neither the AEBoards Naevy EC nor Raed HE switches had really all that much marketing done of them, no mass pass around to content creators, and not even a single leak from AEBoards during their process of developing, prototyping, and releasing these switches. So here’s exactly how I managed to wiggle my way personally into the background of this switch review and what the development of these switches looked like from my end.

Figure 2: It was exactly this message that led to all of this unfolding. If ever there was a TLDR for the background section of one of these reviews this would be it.

It’s early July of 2024 and I am in the process of effectively blasting messages just like that one in the image above to every single keyboard switch vendor and person of note that I’ve ever talked to before. I mean full on emptying the rolodex of contacts from Discord, Instagram, and everywhere that I can to try and find some interesting switches. Only a short week or so before these messages got shotgunned across the community, SwitchOddities and I were told that we had been granted a speaking panel to talk about whatever we wanted at that year’s ‘That Windy City Keeb Meet’ in Chicago. Surprise, surprise – we chose to talk about switches. However, not wanting to talk about some esoteric details about leaf angles and stem leg slope or some drawn out discussion on what it’s like trying to communicate with manufacturers through less than stellar translating means, we concluded that we wanted to share something that very few people would have known about prior – prototype, pre-development, and failed to release switches from over the years. In a bid to get as many new and interesting prototypes and test switches as possible to add to our already massive list of historically relevant switches worth discussing, this led to me reaching out to one of AEBoards’ owners in Aeryxz. Aeryxz, who is a fantastic guy to sit and talk with for an hour or two about switches, is one of the many people over the years who has appreciated the reviews and was kind enough to donate switches to the collection and for documentation purposes in the past. As I previously covered in my original Naevy V1.5 Switch Review and a few other places, some of these prototypes and switches included unreleased AEBoards prototypes in bright yellow and green, original AEBoards no-slot housing production samples, and even fully transparent, Invyr-stamped top housings from prototype switch releases. Knowing that it had been a couple of years since the original development of the Raed and Naevy switches, I had simply hoped he had a few more new prototypes or failed test designs lying around somewhere that he wouldn’t have minded sharing photos and details of so I could toss it into our power point. What I had thought would just have been a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response turned into a call that went, well, completely beyond my expectations.

Figure 3: Unnamed Green and Yellow 'AEBoards' prototypes that never led to a released switch design.

Figure 4: The approximately one cubic foot box of prototypes, samples, and other historical goodies that Aeryxz sent.

It turns out that I had reached out to ask this very specific question about any excess switch prototypes lying around at an almost unbelievably perfect point in time as Aeryxz had both a lot to talk about at the moment and a whole lot more from the last year or so of attempts. However, he was more than kind in not just showing me these switches and parts, but also sending them my way for sharing with you all here. The entirety of the box shown above in Figure 4 was the focus of our hour plus long call, including everything from the earliest production runs of original Naevy and Raed V1 switches, to an original bag of UHMWPE stems that were run by Invyr through Keyboard Treehouse, and even some fun stem material tests that they had conducted over the years for the development of their Snag and All Clack limited run switches too. What I thought was the big surprise that warranted an actual call and discussion was going to be the low profile Naevy and Raed prototypes shown below in Figure 5. Using the same set of housing molds as Tecsee’s original ‘Middle Switch’, AEBoards had managed to work the Raed linear and Naevy tactile stem designs into an MX pin out, lower profile switch that was a clear next stage evolution of the Naevy and Raed progression of switches. However, these prototypes that were put together in the first months of 2024 just didn’t quite impress Aeryxz and team all that much. Seeing both the willingness of Tecsee to want to research and develop entire brand new switch designs and not wanting to waste the connection that had been established between them and Tecsee by personal recommendation of Invyr himself, they went to work on developing the true next successor to the Naevy and Raed V2 switches. It turns out the true next evolution of these switches that he wanted to call and share with me were the Naevy EC and Raed HE switches – self-contained switches that fit MX plate cutouts, are usable with normal MX compatible keycap sets, and integrate Topre-like rubber domes directly into their respective mechanisms seamlessly in each design. Looking back now, I’m not sure I could have possibly appreciated just how awesome the very first photographs of these switches were.

Figure 5: Naevy and Raed Low Profile switch prototypes in front of the Blaeck, Naevy, and Raed V2 switches.

Figure 6: The very first image of AEBoards Naevy EC and Raed HE switch prototypes shared outside of AEBoards and Tecsee.

Having already been through multiple stages of prototyping, weight testing, and mold design tweaks of the two switches in the months leading up to our call, Aeryxz was confident enough that these switches would make it to market more or less how they were and so he gave me the opportunity to debut these to the world at that meetup panel I had initially reached out about. While he did also ask for some personal feedback from me about some of their features still being tweaked and for some force curves of them for promotional purposes, I was more than willing to do so to support the effort and for getting the opportunity to debut these switches. However, before I eventually received the switches, cobbled together some notes and photographs, and actually showed these switches off to the world, I felt like I had one massive hang up of a question still hanging over my head about these – How would these switches end up actually getting used? Without traditional pin outs and entirely different mechanisms that were then at the time still fairly niche, I didn’t initially see how these would become as widespread as Aeryxz seemed to think they would be. The answer was because of two rather talented PCB designers – Cipulot and Gondolindrum. With Cipulot working on EC-compatible PCB designs for the AEBoards Satellite and Gondolindrum working on wireless EC PCBs and HE-compatible PCBs for the Satellite boards by the time that I had reached out, Aeryxz had shared that the larger plan is to make many, if not all previous AEBoards keyboard backwards compatible with upgrade kits that would allow people to simply swap out their MX PCBs with either EC or HE PCBs (and plates if required) and keep everything else the same. Rather than hoping these switches would take off with future board designs, the plan was to retrofit all of their existing products with more options. Furthermore, after having reached out to Cipulot directly about his work on such, he had shared that all of his EC compatible PCBs that he had designed over the years would work with the switches and that he would be continuing to adapt newer designs to make more use of these switches. With MX-EC or MX-HE PCBs also being technically and demonstrably viable, but somewhat limiting in terms of costing, implementation, and layouts as of this the time of writing this review, even the further cross compatibility of these switches with other keyboard designs in the future seems quite bright. And to think all of this had been planned out and being worked on starting almost a year ago…

Figure 7: Example of an EC 'Upgrade Kit' for AEBoards' Sattelite keyboard as currently seen on Keyboard Treehouse.

Figure 8: Very real 'proof of concept' dual EC and hotswap MX compatible PCB designed by Cipulot for the Blue Ridge keyboard interest check.

The timeline from when that call with Aeryxz ended and where we are today in this review could really only be described as a blur. I debuted these switches on July 27th of 2024 and then re-introduced them again via a short article on November 3rd, with Aeryxz shortly thereafter pushing the marketing and announcements about these switches up quite a bit. Only a few short months and quite a handful of DMs later, they first popped up for sale starting in early February of 2025. Looking back, though, I do wish I had asked where the initial inspiration and then further drive to realize these switches actually came from. While I’m sure an appreciation of Topre and its trademark rubber domes certainly initially inspired these switches, I imagine that the Naevy EC and their Raed HE siblings were propelled into reality by the growing current of hobbyists seeking designs ‘outside’ of the traditional, conducting MX switch platform. The past six months of switch development has shown us that if there ever was a switch that could rival the traditional, once patented MX switch design – it would be that of Hall Effect switches. Though certainly not the designs of RAFI Hall Effects (my beloved), nor the original Honeywell Hall Effects either, rather switches that look, feel, and are operated at a high level just like MX style switches. The issue with introducing new types of mechanisms into enthusiast level mechanical keyboards has always been the lack of enthusiasm and adoption of them. The cross-shaped keycap mounting post for keycaps is standardized, keyboard plates have been cut with the same hole sizes for decades now, and all of the décor, layouts, and community acceptance of “different” have been narrowed to the singular point of being built by, with, and for MX style switches. In order to compete with something as standardized as that, you have to have your new designs be as seamless to integrate as possible. Gateron’s Optical line of switches failed to sell outside of prebuilt keyboards because they didn’t make their PCBs compatible. Hall Effect switches outside of Wooting and other prebuilt keyboards failed to take off in the aftermarket via switch-only sales until PCBs began being designed by brands like Matrix and Geon for their keyboards. Suddenly, now everyone is producing and utilizing Hall Effect style switches of their own, and there’s no misgivings as to why – they’re easier to produce using existing tooling, likely cheaper to make, even easier to throw together in manufacturing, and provide functionality that conventional MX switches do not. In my own view of how the switch landscape has changed so far and is continuing to change, these Naevy EC and Raed HE switches – and all of their associated pull through via PCB designs and keyboard compatibility – are the first sincere niche, enthusiast grade attempts at fully driving away from the classic MX switch mechanism.

Future implications about the trajectory of the mechanical keyboard hobby pushed to the back burner for later, the Naevy EC and Raed HE switches first made their debut for sale in early February of 2025. Priced at $24 per set of 35 switches, or $0.69 per switch, these Tecsee-made and Topre-like MX-EC and MX-HE hybrids were primarily sold via Keyboard Treehouse though also made available worldwide via proxies in the UK (ProtoTypist), NA (Omnitype and Divinikey), and OCE (KeebzNCables). Utilizing newly developed molds for both switches that were designed in partnership with Tecsee, Aeryxz has directly stated that these will be a continuation of the AEBoards Raed/Naevy lineup of switches and may even altogether supplant the MX-only versions that currently exist should they gain enough public traction. This traction will certainly not be hindered by availability, though, as it is expected that these switches will continue to be stocked, supported, and with increasing compatibility with other keyboard kits as time goes on. I also would not be surprised to see other Tecsee-led versions of these designs be sold into the Chinese market in the coming years either.

Naevy EC Performance

Note: This is an extremely abnormal switch design relative to what I typically review here on this website. As a result, the following sections may have additional work in some places and less work in others than you would anticipate if you’re familiar with my reviews. Additionally, some references will be made to the prototype versions of these switches as well as their siblings in Raed HE switches in these sections and clearly marked when and where they occur.

Appearance

At the absolute highest level, the dark blue Naevy EC and maroon red Raed HE switches from AEBoards look like a cleaner, singular, and more well branded version of a combined Topre stem slider, stabilizer, and stabilizer housing unit. In fact the mental connection between this design and that concept is so strong that it led me to looking up Deskeys’ DES-Sliders and stabilizers in the process of writing this background and I was shocked at just how similar looking those sliders and stabilizers are to those here. Coming out of the packaging from Tecsee as fully self-contained and immediately operational units, the main ‘platform’ of design for the Naevy EC and Raed HE switches consists largely of two distinct groupings of parts – the attached (but separable) stem and slider housing combination and everything beneath that including, but not limited to, domes and electrocapacitive springs. The Naevy EC switches, which are tactile in nature and come in dark blue colorway, feature metallic springs that friction fit into the domes of the housing and act to activate the electrocapacitive mechanism on appropriate PCBs. The Raed HE switches, on the other hand, are the ‘linear’, maroon red variants of these switches which do not feature any springs but instead sport a magnet attached to the bottom of the slider that slides up and down to activate the Hall Effect mechanisms on appropriate PCBs. There is quite a bit of neat design features and engineering present within these two switches, though almost all of it occurs at a part-by-part level. All of these design features and engineering details that occur at the part and sub-part level may be found in the numerous paragraphs and photos below.

Figure 9: DES Topre style sliders, stabilizers, and stabilizer housings as currently sold on Deskeys.

Figure 10: Size comparison between a conventional MX switch (LCET Christmas Star, Left) and the AEBoards Naevy EC switches (Right).

Figure 11: AEBoards Naevy EC switches and their components.

Looking first to the housings and stems of both the Naevy EC and Raed HE switches, I must admit that I find them hilariously deflated when they are still combined and absent of their respective domes to prop up the stems. Able to slide freely up and down within the housings without falling out, the stems are effectively locked into the housings by a small protruding nub on the outer rim of the dustproof housing wall that can be seen facing NE or SW when viewed from a top down perspective. (The orientation of these nubs is neither specific to the switch nor strictly consistent within a batch of produced switches either.) With a gentle enough push directly on the keycap mounting post when the stem is pushed all the way flush with the housing, the stems are able to be separated from the housings of both the Raed HE and Naevy EC switches and fall apart to look even more like the DES sliders mentioned above. When separated, though, the stems come away from the housings of these switches with a thin, fairly high durometer soft plastic O-ring which is put on from the top side of the stem, rests upon is outstretched ‘stem legs’, and serves to dampen the upstroke of both switches. The keycap mounting post and subsequent dustproof wall are the majority of the structures of the stems of these switches, with this being firmly mounted to what I’m referring to here as a “bottom plate” that has two stem legs protruding downwards at both SE and NW angles. When slotted into the housings, these legs act as sort of ‘slider rails’ and slide against the SE and NW corners of the housings to keep the stems moving vertically up and down in a not dissimilar fashion to MX slider rails on stems and guiding rails in bottom housings. On the underside of the bottom plates, the Naevy EC switches are completely barren save for a two digit number mold marking and small notch located in opposite corners from each other and the stem legs. The Raed HE switch stems, on the other hand, have a small, centered round magnet encased by stem material walls to activate the Hall Effect mechanism and similar mold marking and not locations.

Figure 12: Naevy EC (Left) and Raed HE (Right) switch stems in housings with supporting domes removed.

Figure 13: Underside of Naevy EC (Left) and Raed HE (Right) switch stems in housings with supporting domes (and electrocapacitive spring) removed.

Figure 14: Naevy EC (Left) and Raed HE (Right) switch stems as removed from housings. Note the black dampening O-Ring sitting around the base of the dustproof walls.

Figure 15: Underside of the Naevy EC (Left) and Raed HE (Right) switch stems emphasizing their identical mold marking locations and the presence of the Hall Effect magnet embedded in the Raed HE stem.

Returning back to just the housings of the Naevy EC and Raed HE switches without their sliders, it can be seen that they are internally and externally identical to one another. Likely designed in this fashion to reduce the number of molds that need to be developed, rather than intentionally trying to maximize cross compatibility between switch components, each housing contains four squared off walls and one top side portion which has a larger circular hole to accommodate the large dustproof walls of the sliders. Both housings feature branding on the sparse amount of flat real estate that exists on top of the housings, with ‘TEC’ (short for ‘Tecsee’) being seen in the NW corner of the housings and the stylized ‘AE’ logo of AEBoards being found in the SE corner of the housings. I suppose these spiritually must be the nameplates of these switches if I had to assign a name to such a part. On the north and south vertical sides of the housings, the Raed HE and Naevy EC switches feature small attachment clips that help them slot into the 14 x 14 mm cutouts for MX-style switches and are effectively identical in execution to those seen on traditional MX-style switch designs. The east and west walls, by comparison, are functionally flat and do not have any features. Internally, the housings initially appear almost completely devoid of detail without further, closer inspection. Most pedantically, there are mold numbers located in the SW corner of the inside of the housings, which sits below that of the unlabeled corner of the top side of the housings. (The AEBoards logo would be to the right of that on the top side and the ‘TEC’ branding would be above that of this location on the top side.) The real functionality in these housings, though, comes in their corners. In the NW and SE corners of both housings, there are guider rails that act to join with the stem legs in their combined state to keep the sliders moving vertically. In the opposite NE and SW corners of the housings, there are small positive end pins that stick up from the housings. These form the attachment points for the domes of the housings – which as can be seen below have two small holes on opposite corners of their design. When friction fit together, these domes do not separate from the sliders or housings without a great deal of effort.

Figure 16: Side by side housing comparison of the Naevy EC (Left) and Raed HE (Right) switches showing the identical nature of their design.

Figure 17: AEBoards Naevy EC switch housing external design showing 'TEC' and 'AE' logo nameplates in opposite corners and south side plate attachment clip.

Figure 18: AEBoards Naevy EC switch housing internal design showing stem-interacting guider rails (Top, Bottom) and rubber dome mounting posts (Left, Right).

Moving next to the matching dark blue and maroon red domes that prop up the slider rails and provide these switches their respective character, we once again see an extremely similar design that suggests inter-compatibility with one another. Externally, both domes sit at roughly the same height and consist of one large hemi-circular dome that is affixed to a flat square ring and topped off with a smaller, concentric thick walled dome. While the main dome is what gives the linear (red, Raed HE) or tactile (blue, Naevy EC) nature to their respective switches, the smaller concentric dome on the top is for either slotting on the electrocapacitive spring for the EC variants of these switches or the magnetic portion on the bottom plate of the sliders for the HE variants. In this instance, both magnetic post and springs effectively friction fit into this point and do not separate from the domes under normal operating conditions. As covered above, the smaller open circles on opposite corners of the square bases of these domes are for slotting into the attachment posts of the top housings. On the undersides, these domes have no functional differences nor mold markings, though it is interesting to note that the there are different grooves in the square edges of the domes. On the Naevy EC domes in blue these grooves are thin and run in the N, E, W, and S directions whereas on the Raed HE domes these grooves are present in addition to thicker grooves that run in the corners opposite of that of the attachment posts. While it is entirely possible that these grooves may play some role in giving these domes more linear or tactile natures, that much is lost on me at this point in time.

Figure 19: Naevy EC (Left) and Raed HE (Right) switch domes. While outwardly identical in appearance, note the present thin plastic film and spring of the electrocapacitive mechanism in the Naevy EC dome.

Figure 20: Naevy EC (Left) and Raed HE (Right) switch dome underside emphasizing differences in patterns present on each. Electrocapacitive spring and film have been removed from the Naevy EC switch for the photograph.

One final design feature worth noting that is exclusively present on the Naevy EC version of these switches is that of a small, very thin plastic film that appears stretched over the top, narrow neck of the springs in the complete version of these switches. Not directly attached to the spring by anything other than friction and fairly easily able to be removed, these films have been integrated into the designs of these switches to reduce spring ping that is otherwise present in some electrocapacitive switch spring mechanisms. In the prototype versions of these switches that I’ve previously documented, this dampening mechanism can be seen as a thin plastic O-ring that was free floating through the spring and capable of being jostled around when held in the hand. The implementation of this mechanism as well as its success was one of the main remaining design points that was being hashed out at the time in which I both received the prototypes and provided by feedback to Aeryxz and AEBoards. Additionally, they were still in the process of deciding on rubber dome weights and feelings as can be seen by the different colors of domes in those same prototype photos.

Figure 21: Complete Naevy EC dome and spring combination as well as the constituent parts which make it up.

Figure 22: Prototype Naevy EC and Raed HE switches. Note the thin, white rubber dampening ring present in the spring of the upturned orange prototype dome.

Push Feel

Unfortunately for me, my general lack of experience and potentially pathological horror in handling anything related to Topre and similar mechanisms has left me perhaps a bit clueless as to some of the finer details that I should really be picking apart in the performance of these switches. And yet, with this being my first formal and written experience with a push feeling as such, I can understand why people who are fans of tactile MX switches also tend to be fans of Topre domes as well. While only very recently have traditional MX style switches finally unlocked the ability to have a tactile bump with no linear pre-travel or post-travel, as seen in my Sillyworks x Gateron Type R Switch Review, on paper the domes used in the AEBoards Naevy EC switches offer exactly that same thing – one large, overarching tactile bump that starts whenever you touch the switch, peaks somewhere near the middle, and concludes only to be instantaneously countered by a sudden but incredibly muted bottoming out feeling. The Naevy EC switches almost entirely deliver on that promise as outlined above. Now, I have to be a touch pedantic here and point out that I can detect an extremely tiny amount of ‘linear pre travel’ in these switches that I can both rock my fingers on when the switches are in normal resting position and also more plainly see in the force curve of these switches below. While I’m not entirely sure what exactly is causing this phenomena to show up, my best guess is that it has to do with the elevated, smaller rubber dome on top of the larger tactile domes that holds the springs in place first collapsing into the larger hemi-spherical dome that then actually depresses to form a tactile bump feeling. Or at least in my head that would somewhat explain the inflection point around 0.30 mm into the downstroke in their otherwise smoothly curving rainbow of a bump. In practice this pedantic point is quite hard to notice. Under any normal typing speeds or usage, the Naevy switches pop up and pop down through a rounded, arching bump that is firm, present, just the tiniest bit snappy, and take up the entirety of the stroke both going down and up. In fact it almost feels as if pushing through the tactile bump in the downstroke portion of this switch is only temporarily pushing something away that will want to pop right back up at you.

Figure 23: Force curve diagram for the stock AEBoards Naevy EC switch.

One thing that experientially separates the tactility that you get from a rubber dome like the AEBoards Naevy EC switches and that of conventional, MX style switches is simply just how “big” the tactile bump feels. I certainly don’t mean that claim in a peak force or even bottom out force sense as the highest force these switches register is only around 56-57 gf on average, rather the actual bump itself feels much more fuller and as if it has much more volume to its feedback than that of MX switches. In practice this is almost certainly due to the fact that a significantly larger amount of the mechanism in the Naevy EC switches and other Topre-like dome mechanisms is being thrust into the actual tactile event; the entirety of the domes in these switches are snapping with tactility. By comparison, normal MX style tactile switches only receive their tactility as a function of two small stem legs raking over narrow portions of a bent leaf. In a metaphorical sense, this gives the AEBoards Naevy EC switches a tactility that feels almost double proof when directly compared side by side with the “light beers” of conventional MX tactiles. And for all of the benefits that this degree of tactility and mechanism do bring to the table for users typing on them, there are some performance notes present in these switches that are not better than all MX style switches. For one, both the bottoming and topping out of these switches is not nearly as clean, crisp, and composed as their otherwise solid tactile dome mechanism. In the Naevy EC switches, both housing collisions (and especially the topping out) feel a bit plasticky, with the full spring plus dome compression and return of the slider giving a cheaper feeling than what most people might want out of premium feeling switches. Despite their best attempts, it’s almost as if the dampening rings around the sliders do hardly anything at all other than make me want to go buy stiffer or thicker gauge O-rings to really dampen and fully mute out the topping out of these switches. At least in my opinion this would make the topping out feel much more dark, muted, and like that of the other end of the tactile bump. As well, the sliders and housings of the Naevy EC switches aren’t the absolute smoothest I’ve ever felt either. While there isn’t scratch present in any of the switches that I have tried, there is enough plastic on plastic contact there to imbue the strokes of these switches with some degree of friction is noticeable albeit minor next to the magnitude of force of the domes.

As a further detail of note about the push feeling of the AEBoards Naevy EC switches, these are listed on Keyboard Treehouse currently as having “45g Tactile Domes”. Now despite this number not being labeled as a peak force, bottom out force, or (very misleadingly) as an actuation force, I don’t think that this is an incredibly accurate label for any of these numbers. As can be seen in either the solo force curve above or the comparison curve below which contains the curves of the 35g, 45g, and 55g prototype domes that were sent to me for testing, the stock Naevy EC switches are quite a bit heavier. Feel free to make whatever judgement you’d like of such.

Figure 24: Comparative force curve emphasizing the differences in weight between the final stock Naevy EC switch and the various prototype dome weights tested.

Sound

In totality, the AEBoards Naevy EC switches are incredibly quiet at all normal operational speeds and are certainly on par with good to great level silent tactile MX switches in terms of what little volume they do produce. (That is if you can actually find silent tactile switches anymore.) However, I suppose that this is a bit to be expected when you consider that the entirety of the mechanism actually making the Naevy EC switches tactile is just one giant soft, pliable piece of plastic. It probably is a touch easier to stop that from making noise than a plastic on plastic friction or hard collision point in a conventional switch. In addition to the domes not making any noise at all, the plastic film applied to the springs during manufacturing to prevent their ping also appears to be effective here as none of the switches that I tested exhibited any ping. Wanting to verify the efficacy of such for my own sanity, I did remove the films from a few switches and was surprised to hear that some of them did actually produce a pinging sound without them present. As crazy simple as this fix may seem, it actually works to deaden spring ping. While the general up and down silent progression of the dome and spring mechanism is quite impressive to someone not used to such technology, its utter silence does unfortunately make plenty of room to highlight the less than savory aspects of the sound profile of these switches. Those less than savory parts, in this instance, are just all of the noises made by the hard plastic components of these switches. The topping out is especially rough in the sound profile of the Naevy EC switches with the thin dampening O-ring doing absolutely nothing at all to stop the upper housing collisions from sounding thin, ploppy, and even a touch plasticky at times. These upstrokes also aren’t all that consistent in their tonality from switch to switch either. Tossing in some thinness that can be heard from the plastic on plastic interface between the housings and stem legs, I’m really only left with the conclusion that these switches could use some more lube. In fact I’d double down on the claim that an adequate coating of factory lubing on the internal portions of the rigid parts of these switches would greatly improve their overall sound profile.

Wobble

As I would have expected from an entirely new switch design and mechanism developed in recent years, it’s clear that AEBoards and Tecsee paid close attention to the stem wobble of these switches and have done about as much as they can to remove it. There is only the most faint amount of N/S and E/W direction stem wobble in these switches and I would be hard pressed to find anyone in this hobby which would have a realistic contention with such.

Measurements

Figure 25: Numerical details regarding the stock AEBoards Naevy EC switches.

Have you ever wanted to be bombarded with more switch data than you’ve ever seen at any point in your life before? Consider checking out the ‘Force Curve Repository’ hosted on my GitHub that contains all force curves that I take both within and outside of these full-length reviews. In addition to having these graphs above, I have various other versions of the graphs, raw data, and my processed data all available for over 1000 different switches for you to use however you see fit. Check it out via the ‘Archive’ tab at the top of this page or by clicking any of the force curve cards above.

Break In

Break In Notes

As a general note, at no point during the break in testing of the AEBoards Naevy switches did the domes come loose from the housings, springs come loose from the domes, nor did the plastic films present at the top of the springs break. The entire complete unit of these switches remained intact for all cycles.

17,000 Actuations

- At 17,000 actuations, the biggest change noted in the AEBoards Naevy EC switches was that of a pleasant reduction in the plastic-on-plastic tones that permeated the sound profile of the stock switches and especially their topping out. The Naevy EC switches broken in to this degree still had this feature somewhat, though it was greatly reduced in magnitude.

- Like almost all switches, MX or otherwise, the AEBoards Naevy EC switches too seem susceptible to break in based increases in stem wobble. There is a tiny bit more N/S and E/W direction stem wobble in these switches broken in to 17,000 actuations than their stock counterparts.

34,000 Actuations

- At 34,000 actuations the only real change that was noticeable in the AEBoards Naevy EC switches was that of an increase in the plastic-on-plastic feeling in the downstrokes and upstrokes of the switch. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they’ve become scratchy, these points definitely feel ever so slightly more noticeable than in the stock forms of these switches.

51,000 Actuations

- It does appear that the AEBoards Naevy EC switches stop changing in their performance metrics tracked here beyond 34,000 actuations. These switches broken in this far did not appear to have any more changes to their performance that wasn’t already noted in the previous two categories.

Figure 27: Comparative force curve diagram showing no substantial change in the force curves of the AEBoards Naevy EC switches throughout the break in process.

Other

While the overall packaging design of both the AEBoards Naevy EC and Raed HE switches is fairly commonplace and has been seen before many times over with other Tecsee made switches, I still did want to share photos of them here as I think they are incredibly clean, concise, and explanatory of what is present in the box. If all switches could be packaged in boxes that were this ‘to the point’, detailed, and clean in their execution, I think it would make all of our lives a little bit easier.

Figure 28: Front side of the Naevy EC (Left) and Raed HE (Right) switch packaging. Each box contains a plastic tray which holds 35 switches in already assembled, ready to use fashion.

Figure 29: Naevy EC switches in storage tray present in box. (Note that a top side plastic enclosure was removed for this photo.)

Figure 30: Back side of the Naevy EC (Left) and Raed HE (Right) switch packaging.

Comparison Notes to Other Notable Tactile Switches

Note – These are not aimed at being comprehensive comparisons between all factors of these switches as this would simply be too long for this writeup. These are little notes of interest I generated when comparing these switches to the AEBoards Naevy EC switches side by side.

Figure 31: Switches for comparison. (L-R, Top-Bot: Gatreon Green Apple, Sillyworks x Gateron Type R, Hojicha Reserve, Cherry MX Purple, Zaku II, and MODE Tomorrow)

Gateron Green Apple

- The comparative force curve between these two switches below does a fairly good job at contrasting their tactility as it cleanly represents how the Gateron Green Apple’s bump feels initially stronger but not nearly as long lasting or as large as those of the AEBoards Naevy EC switches.

- There is a fair bit less stem wobble in both N/S and E/W directions of the Gateron Green Apple switches than in the Naevy ECs.

- In terms of their overall sound, the Gateron Green Apples are a fair bit louder than that of the Naevy EC switches and almost entirely because of their soft striking bottom outs that still have some bass tones to them. What little sound is present in the Naevy EC switches, by comparison, occurs largely because of the stem and top housing and not so much their bottoming out or tactile mechanism.

Sillyworks x Gateron Type R

- Of all of the switches on this comparison list, the Type Rs are the most similar to that of the Naevy EC switches and it’s pretty clear as to why. The full stroke tactility of these switches is a bit shorter and less overbearing than that of the Naevy ECs, but the increased peak tactile force of the Type Rs really balances this out.

- Much like with the Gateron Green Apple comparison above, the primary driver of sound in the Type R switches is that of their bottoming out onto their stem poles – something which causes them to be much more loud and pointy at the ears than that off the AEBoards Naevy EC switches.

- While the Sillyworks x Gateron Type R switches were fairly decent with their N/S and E/W direction stem wobble, it is still more noticeable than that of the AEBoards Naevy EC switches.

Hojicha Reserve

- Despite that the appearance of the comparative force curve between these two switches would suggest that they have wildly different tactile strengths, the Hojicha Reserve switches only feel a tiny bit more strong than that of the Naevy EC switches. As with all other switches on this comparison list that aren’t the Sillyworks x Gateron Type Rs, though, the Reserve’s tactile bumps feels much less short and brief than that of the Naevy EC switches.

- Even though the Hojicha Reserve switches are notably better than the average when it comes to their stem wobble in both directions, they still don’t have nearly as tight of tolerances as that of the AEBoards Naevy EC switches.

- Of all of the switches on this comparison list, the Hojicha Reserves are the most similar to the Naevy EC switches in terms of their overall volume as a result of their more muted and bass heavy tones. These deeper and darker tones line up with the more muted overall nature of the Naevy EC switches as a result of their domes not really making any noise at all.

Cherry MX Purple

- As a result of the sharper, more abrupt, and overall shorter nature of the tactile bump in the Cherry MX Purple switches, these tactiles feel as if they are ever so slightly stronger than that of the AEBoards Naevy EC switches.

- While the AEBoards Naevy EC switches could benefit from some increased factory lubing on their plastic-on-plastic points of contact between the slider rails and the housings, they still are overall much smoother than that of the Cherry MX Purple switches – even in spite of the fact that the MX Purples were made with Cherry’s ‘improved’ MX2A platform.

- To the surprise of probably almost nobody, the Cherry MX Purple switches are significantly louder and noticeably higher pitched than that of the AEBoards Naevy EC switches.

Zaku II

- While there aren’t many similarities to be had between the other tactile switches on this comparison list and the AEBoards Naevy EC switches, the Zaku II switches by far feel the most different as a result of their two-stage tactile bump that exists at both parts on a higher peak force than that of the Naevy ECs. Toss in the fact that these bumps are also not full stroke length like the tactile bump in the Naevy ECs and these switches really couldn’t get more different from each other in terms of their tactility.

- There is significantly greater amounts of N/S and E/W direction stem wobble in the Zaku II switches than there is in the AEBoards Naevy EC switches.

- As a result of the aggressive stem pole bottom out of the Zaku II switches, they are much more loud, sharp, and higher pitched than that of any portion of the AEBoards Naevy EC switch sound profile.

MODE Tomorrow

- Despite what the comparative force curve between these two switches below would suggest, the MODE Tomorrow switches do not feel anywhere near as tactile as that of the AEBoards Naevy EC switches. In direct comparison the Tomorrows almost make the Naevy ECs feel more tactile than they actually are.

- While there is a fair bit of noise in the MODE Tomorrow that arises from the plastic on plastic housing collisions at both bottom out and topping out, these switches too are more or less on the same level as the Naevy EC switches in terms of their overall volume and presence when being typed on.

- There is a fair bit less stem wobble in the AEBoards Naevy EC switches than the MODE Tomorrow switches in both the N/S and E/W directions.

Scores and Statistics

Note – These scores are not necessarily completely indicative of the nuanced review above. If you’ve skipped straight to this section, I can only recommend that you at least glance at the other sections above in order to get a stronger idea of my opinion about these switches.