Ajazz x Huano Banana Switch Review

Who would have ever thought that graduate school could be so time consuming? All rhetorical jokes aside, I can assure you that the past few weeks of my life has been quite far from that idealized, cinematic scientist you can picture mixing mysterious red fluids and slightly ominous blue fluids together until something either starts glowing, explodes, or some combination of both. Instead, pre-advisor graduate students are effectively doing this with their brains instead juggling classes, homework, meetings with faculty, and social events so that they don’t live entirely up to the graduate student stereotype. While I have been busier in the past week of my life than I have been in several months, or perhaps even years now, I can honestly say that I am feeling rather fulfilled with the process and am really enjoying the start of classes, even if all it has been is rehashing entropy in fourteen different ways.

Figure 1: Turns out that by assuming my brain is just air that I do tend towards disorder over time naturally. — **Figure 1:** Turns out that by assuming my brain is just air that I do tend towards disorder over time naturally.

With all of that in mind, quite a few people have reached out to me over the last week or so to ask me questions about, inform me about, or let me know about every new switch that is coming through the works, both big manufacturer and small manufacturer alike. And of those conversations, I’ll be the first to cop to the fact that I’ve not been the quickest on the draw with response time nor the most coherent at times when I finally do respond. So, I hope that by keeping you guys a little bit keyed in on my 8 AM to Midnight work schedule every day of the week that you’ll understand that I’m not doing it out of spite or anything, I’m just out planting plastic and recycling trees. Or was it the other way around?

Know that at the end of the day, the website, the switches, and above all my connection to you all in my audience is one of the few things I specifically carve time out to enjoy during my weeks. If that’s not entirely evident through this review that I’ve posted here, I do want you to understand that I will be giving a ton of effort to keep things exactly the same and all neat and polished as the pre-graduate school days where I was able to sleep twice the amount in one night as I am now. As things progress and I pick up projects like grant proposals, papers, etc., I may have to move content around but you have my word that I’ll never outright cancel content without making up for it in some other way. Regardless of the commitment to you all about that, there’s still way too many interesting switches out there that I want to get to try so there’s not a chance in hell I’m slowing down until I absolutely have to.

Ajazz x Huano Fruit Switch Packaging — **Figure 2:** I mean just *look* at these incredibly fun switches that definitely are totally not candy.

Switch Background

In the last two reviews I’ve done on the TTC Wild and Taiwan Jet Axis Yellows switches, I’ve stepped through the history of them with pretty decent rigor due to the fact that there was both a sizable amount of details and history surrounding them out there and yet not much of it written in a singular place. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for Huano at large, who is the manufacturer of these Banana switches. Much like Content, more recently known as KTT, Huano was one of the manufacturing brands that existed during the 2014-2016 era of switches in which the Cherry MX patent had recently lifted and every push button manufacturing facility was racing to produce their own set of clones. While today’s clones seem to be much more colorful, inviting, and Holy Panda-centric, clones of that era were almost entirely OEM-style Red, Black, Brown, and Blue stemmed switches in fairly mundane housing colors like stock Gateron switch offerings. Huano, to this end was no exception, though they did have a relatively unique thing about them in their almost adamant willingness to change nameplates between switch offerings.

Huano Mechanical Keyboard Switches — **Figure 3:** A few of the Huano nameplates not seen elsewhere in this review including a Swirl Brown, Firstblood Blue, and Holyjerry ‘Melon’.

Some of the very first Huano switches that existed alongside the Huano branded, “classic” aforementioned clones, were a set of Red, Black, and Blue switches in all-black housings featuring the name ‘Switch Master’ on the nameplate. Interestingly enough, one of the only marketing photos of the Switch Master switches includes an orange colored one as well, though I nor any collector of any size to the best of my knowledge has ever witnessed one in the wild. Unfortunately, beyond the classic clones and the Switch Master line, much of the original Huano switches from this era are left entirely undocumented, uncollected, and unknown and thus I sadly can’t speak much to their history. Beyond MX-style keyboard switches though, Huano has existed since at least that early in time producing switches for mice, and they anecdotally appear to be one of the more popular brands as they are still producing mice switches fairly frequently to this day.

Switch Master Mechanical Keyboard Switches — **Figure 4:** Switch Master brand advertisement showing the elusive, otherwise unmade Switch Master Orange.

Again paralleling Content in their switch design history, Huano effectively dropped off the map of mechanical keyboard switches until late October of 2020, wherein they announced their first “new” switches in several years – a pair of yellow, dustproof style switches with clear and red translucent housings. While several names have been used in marketing and discussion of these two switches, such as “American Rose Garden” for the red colored ones, I’ve not yet come across a singular, distinctive name for them and thus still refer to them in my collection by their color and design. (This is surprisingly not all that uncommon with more clone-oriented brands (e.g. LCET) as they very rarely have names for all their varieties of switches.) Soon thereafter, though, Huano appeared to not only rapidly uptick the production of their keyboard switches, but also returned to old habits with respect to frequent swapping of nameplates. Since their rejuvination in late 2020, the ‘modern era’ of Huano has featured confirmed nameplates of Huano, Ajazz, Firstblood, Elecom, as well as a ‘Swirl’ symbol as provided from a factory-direct sampler set that was sent to me by way of a generous proxy. Other modern nameplates are further suspected of association with Huano such as ‘HolyJerry’ and ‘HolyTom’ due to strong similarity in molds, though there is still some mild debate amongst switch people as to the veracity of this given a lack of direct one-to-one ties to the best of my knowledge. Additionally, given the rapid uptick in production and variety of associated nameplates, its also debated whether or not Huano is producing in a shared factory with another brand or in fact constitutes an entirely separate production house, the latter of which seems more likely given their production of other push button switches.

HolyTom Mechanical Keyboard Switch — **Figure 6:** Picture of another Huano-made nameplate ‘HolyTom’.

Of Huano’s modern era releases, the most recent line of switches to be released are the Ajazz x Huano “Fresh Fruit Line”, featuring unique packaging and a fruit based thematic design. Unlike previous releases from Huano which tend to be static, individualistic releases, this appears to be the first “family” of switches they’re attempting to create arguably attempting to mimic C3 Equalz’s choice in the Tangerine, Kiwi, Dragonfruit, and Blackberry fruit family of switches. First making their apperance in an eastern-focused groupbuy in July of 2021, the Banana switches were the first of this line to be released with later arrival in a singular western vendor, ThocKeys, in September of 2021. Shortly after the release of the Bananas, Peach switches were announced in August and a newer, still unreleased as of time of writing Kiwi switch was announced in mid-September. Aside the relatively unique packaging of these switches, the Kiwis especially boast an interesting design with early photos of their housings showing black, kiwi seed-like dots dispersed throughout their translucent green housings. Further releases in the Fresh Fruit family have yet to be announced, but its anticipated at least a few more releases will occur within 2021.

Ajazz x Huano Kiwi Switch Promotion — **Figure 7:** Exciting albeit grainy marketing photo of the Ajazz x Huano Kiwi Fresh Fruit switch.

Specifically looking at the details of the Bananas, since that is what all of this writing is about, the initial groupbuy sale price and current stock price are slightly different. The initial groupbuy, hosted through Huano’s TMall page launched on July 23rd of 2021 for an unspecified length of time at a price of 99 RMB (~$15 USD) for 45, or 69 RMB (~$11 USD) with a special discount code. The only known western release of these switches at ThocKeys started on September 1st of 2021 as part of their ‘Switchtember’ marketing event, at $16.75 per 45 pack with an extra loose switch for a total of 46 packs. The Peach switches, also sold through ThocKeys, followed a relatively similar pattern of sales both in the east as well as in the west after their release.

Banana Switch Performance

Appearance

The Ajazz x Huano Banana switches are 50g. tactile switches coming in a unique translucent yellow over opaque yellow housing with white stem design. The 4-pin, translucent yellow polycarbonate top housing features an italicized and inverted Ajazz nameplate and is similar in color to the translucent yellow top housings from TTC Gold V2 switches. The opaque yellow bottom housing is made of nylon and is more of a goldenrod yellow, which is unfortunately one of my least favorite crayon flavors I’ve ever tried, but similar in color to an unnamed, recent LCET switch release. The white stems are quite immediately recognizable as long-poled and are made of nylon, which is a notable point of differentiation from most modern switch releases which feature stems made of POM rather than nylon. Overall, the color scheme appeared to read to me as a “peeled banana”, though then again, I was never much of a modern
art person.

Yellow Mechanical Keyboard Switch Comparison — **Figure 8:** Banana switch color comparison to unnamed LCET switch (Left) and TTC Gold V2 Red (Right).

Looking into the mold details of these switches, as I have yet to do such for any Huano release, I was eager to note several minor design differences in the top housings than in previous noted reviews. First of all, aside the italicized ‘upside down’ nameplate of Ajazz, the internal structure of the bottom housing features two rather unique points. First, towards the top of the underside beneath the nameplate, there are a pair of stand-alone ‘guiding pin’ like regions which do appear to interlock with the bottom housing, as discussed below, in a relatively unique fashion to other switch releases. Secondly, the mold marking for the top housing is along the left-hand or right-hand side outer rim in the form of an inverted capital, single letter marking. Beyond these details, the housings appear fairly standard with respect to features with the only other detail worth noting being the bifurcated LED slot design, which was also kept in the Peach switch releases

Ajazz x Huano Banana Top Housing Externals — **Figure 9:** Internal structure of the Banana switch top housings.

Ajazz x Huano Banana Top Housing Internals — **Figure 10:** Internal structure of the Banana switch top housings.

Moving next to the white, nylon stems of the Banana switches, they are overall the most unremarkable of the mold designs being inspected here. These feature a pretty standard offering of features among modern stems including a long, stepped center pole, tapered slider rails, and a set of wide, medium-sized mold circles on the front plate of the stem. Looking up from the underside, it’s rather immediately apparent that the internal layout of the negative space is a bit different than previous releases, though given that I’ve not focused on that particular aspect too much previously, I won’t here. The final point of note about these stems is that they appear to feature a fairly decent, but not overwhelming amount of factory lube targeted directly onto the slider rails, the legs of the stem, and also the center pole, which is a relatively unorthodox lubing location. This is due to the fact that over lubing of the center pole of a switch, by hand or by factory, can lead to unwanted sticking, popping, and mushiness in the bottoming out.

Ajazz x Huano Banana Stem — **Figure 11:** Banana stem wide shot with emphasis on features as well as factory lube application.

Ajazz x Huano Banana Stem Internals — **Figure 12:** Banana stem underside, hollow space design.

Transitioning to the most interesting design of the entire switch, the bottom housing features design choices both inside and out that are distinguishing from other manufacturers. Looking internally, first, the most immediately noticeable feature is the pair of ‘wings’ in the top corners of the housing which appear to line up with the aforementioned guiding pins on the top housings. Beyond this, the internal design features a pair of rounded, rectangular bottoming out pads at the bottom of the slider rails and a north side spring color with a semi-constrictive ‘collar’ design on the south side. While the upper rim of the top housings feature four mold circles with one in each corner, the most interesting feature in this region is the sort of ‘stepped’ panels in the front, interior corners of the LED slot.

Ajazz x Huano Banana Bottom Housing Internals — **Figure 13:** Internal design of the Banana switch bottom housing.

Ajazz x Huano Banana Bottom Housing Externals — **Figure 14:** External design of the Banana switch bottom housing.

On the underside of the housings of these Banana switches, there also are several relatively unique features. The first, and most noticeable is the relatively square LED slot design as well as the adjacent, diode pin holes on either side. Just to the north of these features on the left-hand side appears a pair of mold markings with a right side up, single number mold marking with an upside down, double number mold marking just to the north of that. Finally, the last detail of note on the bottom housings are the LED pins, which are threaded through recessed circles inside of the extra stepped regions that they normally reside in. These circular cutouts effectively create three different vertical faces of the bottom housing unlike other bottom housings which tend to have only two, at most (not counting the bottom of the PCB mount pin as a ‘face’ in this instance).

A final and often undiscussed feature of switches in my reviews are the springs of the switch. Coming in a silver, single stage and constant threaded design, all I really have to say that you would not be disappointed if big springs are your thing. Holy shit, are these things long, coming in around 21.5 mm. in total length.

Ajazz x Huano Banana and Spring — **Figure 15:** Stock Banana spring compared to the size of the stock, as delivered switch.

Push Feel

People often like to ask me what exactly inspires me to write reviews about the switches that I do choose every other week, and to be quite honest I do give a wide variety of answers depending on context. Broadly speaking, I like to choose switches that are some combination of new and unexplored, deep in background or with interesting historical/contextual notes, and/or simply downright interesting with respect to a specific performance feature. While what exactly the ‘spark’ of inspiration is for certain past reviews has left my brain over time, I do want to make note specifically here that this review was motivated primarily by the following force curve diagram from the Ajazz x Huano Banana spec sheet:

Ajazz x Huano Banana Force Curve — **Figure 16:** Damn boy. Damn boy, he’s thick, boy. That’s a thick ass boy.

Aside the immediately recognizable, and sizable margin of difference between upstroke and downstroke forces reported in this curve, the range over which this curve operates is something quite strange. Taking into consideration that the peak of the bump, labeled as the ‘pressure point’, and the bottom out both peak at 50g. of force, this means that this depth stretches all the way down into the ‘ultralight’ spring weight range of 35g. of force, with the return reaching stupidly low at 10g. of force. And, further compounding the strangeness of all of these features, it done in a significantly reduced travel distance of only 3.3 mm, much shorter than even other ‘reduced travel distance’ or long pole switches.

To this end, though, many of you are wondering if you can actually feel the differences in the force diagram mentioned above or if it’s simply me nerding out about a chart because I’m an engineer and I like weird data as such. With respect to the downstroke, I feel like you definitely do feel most of these features decently well. While there does feel like there is a bit more of a noticeable linear pretravel region in these than what the diagram may belay, the relatively short, sharp, yet still rounded tactile bump is present as well as the ‘operating point’ valley at 35g. Interestingly, the sharp jump up to the linear post travel region in terms of force demonstrated around 2 mm is actually noticeable and when pressed in slowly given a sort of “two stage” stroke design. The upstroke also seems to fairly well match this force curve diagram, minus the absence of the two-stage feeling through the return of the stem to the top housing.

Beyond the high set, but not out-of-gate well rounded and short tactile bump of the Banana switches, they’re also decently smooth but have a tiny bit of scratch with them. While we’ve all become a bit accustomed to near perfect levels of factory lubing from some of the more lauded switch houses of this year, these are still fairly competitive for a relatively rusty producer in modern Huano switches. As well, the housing collisions are both fairly solid, firm, and balanced, without much sharp, jarring, or strange impacts from both the bottom pole and the polycarbonate top housings. That is not to say, though, that the bottoming out on the pole is imperceptible. It is noticeable, but simply doesn’t carry the same short of stabbing sharpness that switches such as Moyu Blacks have.

Sound

The sound of the Banana switches is actually surprisingly solid in spite of the design features of it has like its tactile bump, polycarbonate top housing, and long stem pole which all generally tend to be antagonistic to the overall sound of switches. Sitting squarely at a medium in terms of overall volume, the tactile bump is equally matched in volume to both of the housing collisions. Matching the well-rounded, yet still decently sharp tactile bump in push feel, the sound provided is a slappy, bass heavy type sound with very subtle higher pitched notes present. The housing collisions are both a bit snappier with a more bass focused, heavy sound to them though incredibly well balanced. I would have no problem being convinced, personally, that they accidentally mislabeled their top housings as polycarbonate instead of nylon.

That being said though, there are some weak points to the sound of the switches. Across the batch the aforementioned collision sounds remain fairly constant but there is a semi-noticeable inconsistency in both sound from scratch and spring ping. While neither is egregious and the range of variability is quite narrow across a batch tested, subtle ping sounds as well as scratch undertones can be picked up in some, but by no means a majority, of switches in a batch.

Wobble

The stem wobble of the Ajazz x Huano Banana switches is by no means poor, but definitely among the worst details of its overall performance. The average switch has very little stem wobble in the N/S direction on the verge of potentially unnoticeable, whereas the E/W direction suffers from a bit larger amount with likely noticeable, potentially problematic levels depending on the user’s sensitivity to wobble and the height of keycap profile used. That being said, the biggest issue with the wobble in these switches is the range of variability in both N/S and E/W stem wobble across the batch that I received. There’s a pretty large distribution from significantly more wobbly than the ‘average’ to nearly perfectly toleranced, with very little reason for this save perhaps issue with the stem molds and/or nylon warpage during manufacturing. Ultimately, I don’t think that the worst of these switches are intolerable with respect to wobble, but the sheer variability across a batch is a noted point of concern if they’re all going into the same board. Or you could just put the more wobbly ones on the function row, that works too.

Measurements

If you’re into this level of detail about your switches, you should know that I have a switch measurement sheet that logs all of this data, as well as many other cool features, that can be found under the ‘Archive’ tab at the top of this page or by clicking on the card above. This sheet typically gets updated weekly on mail days, and has been a subtle project I’ve been developing for some time now!

Other

Bringing home a close to the performance section with the ad hoc packaging review section, the packaging of the Banana switches as well as the entire Fresh Fruit line from Ajazz and Huano is honestly some of my favorite ‘fun’ packaging as of late. Coming in rather pretty decorated boxes as can be seen below, the packs of 45 switches come in a sealed plastic container with metallic screw lid that when opened reveals a pull top tap as if it were a can of fresh fruit, or SpaghettiOs if you had a fucking awesome childhood like I did. Additionally, the sale on ThocKeys includes an additional single switch outside of the packaging so that collectors (hey that’s me!) can add one to their collections while keeping the packaging all nice and pretty for display. While I’ve said it before in previous reviews that all of the extra fancy packaging is unnecessary and a tiny bit wasteful, it does make the most overlooked component of keyboards as a whole that extra tiny bit more special.

Figure 18: Obligatory reusing of a photo that just turned out too well to be beat. — **Figure 18:** Obligatory reusing of a photo that just turned out too well to be beat.

Figure 19: Ajazz x Huano Fresh Fruit box front and side 1. — **Figure 19:** Ajazz x Huano Fresh Fruit box front and side 1.

Figure 20: Ajazz x Huano Fresh Fruit box back and side 2. — **Figure 20:** Ajazz x Huano Fresh Fruit box back and side 2.

Figure 21: Ajazz x Huano Fresh fruit box top and bottom side. — **Figure 21:** Ajazz x Huano Fresh fruit box top and bottom side.

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 pieces to the Ajazz x Huano Bananas side by side.

Various Mechanical Keyboard Switches — **Figure 22:** Switches for comparison. (L-R, Top-Bot: TTC Blueish Whites, Naevy V1.5, C3 Equalz Dragonfruit, Cherry MX Brown, Massdrop x Invyr Holy Panda, Gateron Kangaroo Ink.

If you would like to learn more about these switches, I’ve already completed reviews or scorecards for some of them. If the names below are highlighted in a grey color, click them to be taken to my other content or reviews on them!

TTC Blueish White

- While the tactile bump of the Banana switches is much more clear and resolute than that of the Blueish Whites, the bottoming and topping out of the Blueish White switches is distinctly more noticeable than the Banana switches.

- Overall, the Blueish Whites are both louder as well as more high pitched in their sound than the comparatively mid-pitched Bananas.

- The average Ajazz x Huano Banana switch has less stem wobble in both the N/S and E/W directions than the Blueish Whites, with the more worse ones being on par with the Blueish Whites in terms of this metric.

Naevy V1.5

- In much the opposite fashion as the comparison to Blueish Whites, the Naevy V1.5s are significantly deeper, quieter, and more bass-heavy in their overall sound than the Banana switches.

- The stem wobble, in both the N/S and E/W direction of these switches is quite similar with perhaps the average Banana switch ever so slightly edging out the Naevy V1.5s in terms of N/S direction stem wobble.

- The tactile bump in the Bananas is not only stronger than the Naevy V1.5s, but it feels more ‘crisp’ with a well-defined tactile bump region compared to the Naevys.

C3 Equalz Dragonfruit

- Surprisingly, the Ajazz x Huano Banana switches even feel a tiny bit stronger in the tactile bump than the Dragonfruit switches, as well as if the bump is more crisply defined.

- Overall, the sound of the Banana switches is much louder and a bit higher pitched than the Dragonfruits. That being said, though, the occasional spring ping in the Banana switches pales in comparison to the contribution to the overall noise that the Dragonfruit springs add.

- The smoothness between the two switches is fairly comparable with perhaps the Dragonfruits being a tiny bit more consistently smooth throughout the stroke.

- The Dragonfruits do not look nearly as close to their respective fruit as the Banana switches do, but then again, we can fight about that if you’d like.

Cherry MX Brown

- Compared next to the Cherry MX Brown, the Ajazz x Huano Banana switches feel much closer to a mid-strength tactile, which is surprising simply given how light the springs are reported to be.

- At all activation speeds, the Bananas are noticeably louder, higher pitched, and distinctly free from scratch compared to the stock, Cherry MX Brown switch.

- As well, the Banana switches on an absolute scale beat out the stem wobble in the Cherry MX Brown switches, with even the worst of my batch still being leagues better than the Browns on this metric.

Massdrop x Invyr Holy Panda

- While the relative size and sharpness of the tactile bump between these two switches feels the same, the Holy Pandas feel significantly heavier due to their increased spring weight and thus many people may want to kneejerk call them “stronger” tactile switches in this regard.

- The sound of the tactile bump versus the housing collisions is much more uniform in terms of overall tone as well as volume in the Banana switches than the Massdrop x Invyr Holy Pandas.

- The average stem wobble of the Banana switches, as well, is quite a bit better in both N/S and E/W directions than the Massdrop x Invyr Holy Pandas.

- “Massdrop x Invyr” is much easier to type than “Ajazz x Huano”.

Gateron Kangaroo Ink

- Both the tactile bump as well as its force from the spring is much greater in the Gateron Kangaroo Inks than the Ajazz x Huano Banana switches.

- The Banana switches are not only significantly quieter than the Kangaroo Ink switches, but they fall much more in line with conventional desires in tactiles from the community compared to the relatively loud and high-pitched Kangaroo Inks.

- The stem wobble in the average Banana switch is a bit better in both the N/S and E/W direction than the Gateron Kangaroo Ink switches.

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.