Cherry MX Northern Light Switch Review

While I have started out reviews numerous times in the past by pointing to the weird circumstances through which they were written, this one is especially deserving of such a start. Let me go ahead and list out the reasons as to why:

-1. This is being posted on a Thursday.

-2. This is the first review that I’ve posted in over two weeks’ time, making me effectively ‘late’ as per my normal posting schedule.

-3. This review is being written in spite of a low grade background humming of an impending economic collapse and potential rapid global socioeconomic shift that directly affects me as an individual living in the United States. (It’s so overwhelming in fact that even if I shut off the news it’s still popping up in messages from vendors in the mechanical keyboard hobby too!)

-4. This review is being started out via a numbered list rather than my normal, overly verbose run on sentence and paragraph style.

Don’t worry, though, as I can explain at least a couple of these points. The reason that I had to delay the review of the Cherry MX Northern Lights off a week or so is because they were under NDA until their day of release… which is today, plus or minus a couple of hours given that Cherry is based in Germany. Personally, I also had to push the review back as well as I was busy preparing to officiate my best friend’s wedding… which is also today. Yes, before and after my short window in which I am posting this review from a laptop at the wedding venue, I am in the process of continually practicing my lines to make sure I get through everything seamlessly and that I don’t somehow mix up something simple like ‘bride’ and ‘groom’. As for the potentially US-based keyboard hobby crushing global trade war, I don’t really have anything for that one.

Figure 1: Just mentally slap a suit on this image and you more or less have an idea of what the reception will look like.

Despite not actually wanting to face the music and properly addressing a situation that has caused me a great amount of stress over the past couple of weeks, I do feel that it is very much my responsibility as a content creator to acknowledge this reality as it is both relevant to and potentially impactful on the articles I write here. (If nothing else but for the contextual ‘price per performance’ discussion of switches, if anything.) The long and the short of my stance is that I genuinely have no clue of what to expect of the entirety of the tariff/trade war situation nor can I even pretend to have any strong claim to knowing what could be coming in the weeks, months, and potentially years that stretch into the future. The only that I do know for certain is that if the situation with tariffs, a trade war with China, or general governmental structure as we know it changes in the US in the near future, I don’t plan to stop working on content in both short and long form on this website any time soon. While long form switch reviews may not remain the most dominant form of content if a situation were to arise where it becomes prohibitively expensive for me to continue regularly importing switches in bulk, there’s still plenty of things that I could cover until the tides change once again. Reviews of old switches that I have lying around the apartment, stories related to the context surrounding other famous modern switches, and plenty of other nuanced discussions about other keyboard parts remain untouched here on the website and could just as easily fill the space as my normal review schedule. Hell, if it all really gets bad in the coming months or years, this could be one of the few sources left in the keyboard community in the US actively documenting its downfall and extreme contraction under unending price hikes. Whatever may come of the situation, though, you can feel confident in the fact that I expect to continue writing about switches, if not keyboards at large for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps it is even more serendipitous that I have these switches to review here today since they came from Germany as opposed to China.

Switch Background

As discussed in the introductory section above, the Cherry MX Northern Light switches are ones that are officially being released by Cherry as of today and so they effectively have zero history to them whatsoever. Well, I suppose that is true depending on how pedantic you want me to be when it comes to “history”. While Cherry as a company has been rather good about keeping their lips sealed tightly on these switches during their development cycle and planned launch to the market, there was a small leak of their existence by Candykeys a few weeks ago in which they accidentally posted these switches for sale and available through their normal switch catalogue. As you could probably expect, switch collectors and connoisseurs became aware of this immediately and took full advantage of the opportunity to discuss these switches, document everything about them, and form their own a priori assumptions all before Candykeys took the page down less than a handful of hours later. While this page on Candykeys website has remained in 404 status ostensibly until April 17th, the day in which the Northern Lights were released, it was still searchable via SEO as a result of the influx of traffic from when it was briefly live. However, if you don’t count random vendor leaks as relevant historical context about these switches at all, then there really isn’t anything out there about them. But, as an owner and documenter of many, many switches, I can assure you that there are quite a few switches that I own in the collection that have both community wide, historical context to them as well as personal, me-specific context as well. My first Novelkeys Cream prototypes coming into the collection by way of an “anonymous” donation by Hineybush and my globetrotting Nixie Black which has traveled to more countries and gone on more of a vacation than I ever have come to mind when thinking of these sorts of stories that are fun to tell about switches even if they don’t mean anything to the broader community. I imagine that in the future I’ll look back on the Cherry MX Northern Lights with the same sort of contextually rose tinted glass as well, as after all I’ve clearly been with them for a couple of weeks now since I have a full length review written for the day of their release. Perhaps my own personal context for these switches can serve as a suitable stand in for the background of these switches until the community hashes out the rest in the coming weeks and months.

Figure 2: It all started here...

Sometime in the first full week of April, 2025, I received an unexpected package at my switch mailbox which initially seemed like another unassuming, brown-boxed AliExpress order until I noted the ‘Cherry’ branded tape sealing it and the attached paperwork. Having not spoken with anyone at Cherry since a month or two before the launch of the Cherry MX Purple switches that were released as a collaboration between Glarses and Cherry, I had not only no idea that these switches were coming but was also entirely unaware of the existence of more switches that were in the process of being developed. Opening it up, I was immediately greeted by a giant wavy white and navy blue giant 3D printed switch nestled amongst a bunch of bubble wrapping and a letter addressed to me from an individual at Cherry who I had never spoken to prior. Given the choice between the letter and the mysterious large switch from Cherry that I was completely not expecting, I very obviously chose to inspect the switch first. Removing the rubber bands that were holding the top and bottom housing together, I opened the giant switch to find a pile of what I now know to be the Cherry MX Northern Light silent linears with a small decorative fellow nestled on top of them. “Walter”, as I would soon to come to learn his name, was a fun little stowaway to the switches’ journey across the ocean and now serves as a decorative desk piece for the switch writing station at home and functionally is a decorative single switch holder with matching keycap hat similar to those of the Romly Keycappie toys that I recall selling on Drop several years ago. Buried beneath Walter and all of the Northern Light switches that came alongside him was a QR code that then directly took me Cherry’s data sheet for the MX Northern Light switches. After having thoroughly read over that, I then turned over to the letter that had been kindly written to me. While this letter did introduce the switches and Walter by their respective names, it also shared quite a few new bits of detail in it that immediately stood out to me as new and not quite what I remember of the last time that I had spoke with Cherry.

Figure 3: Contents of the giant Cherry MX Northern Light box including switches and Walter.

Figure 4: A more close up view of Walter, perched on the front edge of the giant switch packaging where he remains on my desk now.

The very start of the letter introduces the progenitors of the Cherry MX Northern Light switches not as Cherry as a company, nor the R&D team which I had become accustomed to expecting from previous interactions, but rather a small and dedicated team from within Cherry known as the “C-Lab”. Assumedly a shortened form of the name “Cherry-Lab”, this team went on to broadly introduce the Northern Light switches as their first completed project as a team and a culmination of countless hours of development, debates, and prototypes. After the introduction, it was suggested that I was free to do whatever I wanted with the switches – up to including reviewing them and talking about the publicly at length – so long as I did so after their release on April 17th. Wanting to learn a bit more about the new and mysterious team behind these switches, I then reached out to the contact who had formally signed the letter for the C-Lab team and filled his inbox with an email that had at least a dozen questions capped off on either end by two massive paragraphs. Seriously, I wrote him an email that is more or less the length of a normal switch review background. While I obviously can’t share everything that was divulged in his response back to me a few days later, what I can share still sheds more light on the “C-Lab” team and the development of these switches. C-Lab, as initially described in the letter, was in fact a small team of dedicated individuals working on switch development from within Cherry, but they were not a formal, core part of the R&D development pipeline. In fact, the team spanned members from all different ranks and areas of expertise from within Cherry and didn’t solely consist of members from just one department. More informal than a formally structured team, the C-Lab group was formed out of actual mechanical keyboard hobbyists from within the company that were pulled together to debate and beat around the design question of “What would a modern Cherry switch look like if we started from scratch?” This team that initially was pulled together just for idea generation soon grew to start having debates, experimentation, and even full on prototyping in pursuit of this overarching design goal, and alongside the development of the Northern Lights in response to this, they too coalesced into a team with the proper name of C-Lab. While there’s not much more that I can reveal about the team beyond what I’ve shared here so far, as an outsider I can say that this situation is certainly a first of its kind that I’ve seen in the switch side of this hobby thus far. We’ve had designers, external collaborators, and full force of R&D design efforts lead to the development of new switches by other manufacturers before, but we’ve yet to have a mixed background, enthusiast-led team from within a larger manufacturer lead the development and design of a switch before.

The first switch to be designed, tested, and released by the C-Lab development team from within Cherry, as I hope you’ve put together by this point is review, is that of the Cherry MX Northern Light switches. More formally known by their part number as MX2A-8C7D, these silent linears were released on April 17th, 2025 as a celebration of Cherry’s 73rd birthday and are the latest in a steadily growing stream of “Special MX” switches to be released by Cherry. While ostensibly different from these other special releases that preceded them as a result of having been developed from first principles rather than needing to meet specific marketing goals, these do follow the trend of these other releases in the Cherry MX ‘New Nixies’, MX Oranges, and MX Purples by having a unique color palette compared to Cherry’s other modern offerings. Priced at 26 Euros per 36 switches based on Candykeys’ temporarily live posting several weeks ago, these switches appear to be priced around $0.83 per switch if such pricing is to be believed. (As well, it should be mentioned that this could also be directly subject to recent, massive swings in conversion rates between USD and other currencies as of the current economic climate. Your mileage as of the time of reading this beyond April 17th may vary.) Likely available for quite some time given Cherry’s historical staying power as a company and present dedication to continually supporting these more custom community-driven switch initiatives, I have no doubt that these will be around for purchase for many years to come.

Figure 5: In addition to all of the other fun details about the package sent my way, I also discovered that they had multicolored LEDs glued inside of the housing for proper nominal 'Northern Lights' effect.

Northern Light Performance

Appearance

At the highest level, the Cherry MX Northern Light silent linear switches come in a three tone colorway with milky white translucent top housing over a medium tone, solid blue colored bottom housing and a darker grey colored stem. Initially seeing these for the first time, I imagine many keyboard enthusiasts will initially jump to assuming that these switches are “just” the top housings from the Cherry “New Nixie” (MX Black Clear-Top) switches tossed on top of subtly sparkly, vibrant, blue-colored bottom housings and with a normal stem. And while I can see why they may visually jump to those conclusions, they couldn’t be further from the truth. For one, the actual milky white Cherry-branded top housings used in these switches appear to be a different material than all other similar designs which Cherry uses – as they are both less yellow than Cherry’s RGB bottom housing material and noticeably less opaque than the ‘New Nixie’ switches. As for the blue bottom housings, while it is forgivable to have not seen this visually by looking at just the switches, it is stated in documentation on Cherry’s website that these are made of glass fiber reinforced housings – something which I have never seen before in switches made by Cherry. (In fact I kind of wonder if the sparkles that we see in the housings are the actual added glass fibers…) While my discussion with the unnamed individual from the C-Lab team did elucidate me to the fact that Cherry has used glass fiber reinforcement in some parts of some of their switches before, they’ve never done so for bottom housings of switches. In fact, this was a big design hurdle for them to overcome as injection molding fiberglass reinforced plastics is significantly more difficult than just normal polymers used in switch parts. Beyond these initial points of discussion, though, there are still many more sub-part details and interesting tidbits that made these switches fun to explore. All of these details can be found discussed in the paragraphs and photos below.

Figure 6: Color comparison between Cherry MX2A RGB Silent Red bottom housings (Left), Cherry MX 'New Nixie' top housings (Right), and Cherry MX Northern Light top housings (Center).

Figure 7: Cherry MX Northern Light silent linears and their components.

Looking first to the milky white, translucent top housings of the Cherry MX Northern Light switches, there’s clear evidence of the presence of Cherry’s MX2A switch design platform present within them. While it would be easy enough to assume as much as a result of the Northern Light switches having a part number of ‘MX2A-8C7D’, visually these have all of the details that have been seen in Cherry’s switches since the debut of this platform back in 2023. In total, these features include the stylized ‘CHERRY’ and logo nameplate externally and the raised guiding rails on the south side of the housing opposite from that of the nameplate on the inside. Unlike the conventional MX2A platform though, or at least the other silent switches which were released with the platform like the Cherry MX2A Silent Red (MX2A-71NB) switches, the LED/diode slots are not closed off with a small, light diffusing step pyramid but are rather open and incredibly restricted. The LED/diode slots on the Northern Lights only exist in the form of a narrow rectangular slits within centered circular impressions in this region. Like almost all other modern Cherry switches which I’ve reviewed on this website, just to the left of this slot is where the external housing mold marking can be found, with the matching corresponding internal mold marking being present on the western outer edge of the housing in the form of a three digit number. Additionally, it is worth noting that marketing for these switches from Cherry has also stated that the top housings are “slide-optimized” and with “polished upper housings”, though admittedly I’m not specifically sure what this means nor was I able to readily point to it via visual inspection. (Although I’m not sure how I would really be able to tell apart polished from non-polished translucent plastic pieces with just my eyes…)

Figure 8: Cherry MX Northern Light top housing exterior showing modern, bubble letter 'CHERRY' nameplate and severely restricted through-switch LED/diode slot.

Figure 9: Cherry MX Northern Light top housing interior showing MX2A-like design features and three digit mold marking located on edge of housing in the bottom left-hand corner of image.

Moving next to the darker grey silent linear stems of the Cherry MX Northern Light switches, I was a bit surprised to find that the stems are virtually almost identical to those of the Cherry MX2A Silent Red stem as far as I was able to visually tell. Even down to the mold markings on the front portion of the stems of the two switches I inspected, the Northern Light stems appear to be commonplace Cherry MX Silent Linears through and through, with their two part dampening construction, normal stem lengths, and normal slider rail sizes. Unlike more contemporary dampening mechanisms from companies like LICHICX that use embedded, center-of-stem thick dampening plastic rings and also unlike more traditional silent linear switches which use guider rail bound silicone rings to dampen bottom out, Cherry’s silent linears straddle the line between both with a white inner layer that fits both of the aforementioned descriptions and the colored, outer stem part that comprises the rest of the traditional stem. While I imagine these are probably joined together with precision robots from two different standalone components that are injection molded, the outward, finished good appearance of them almost gives them a sort of ‘doubleshot injection mold’ like look. Unlike the MX2A Silent Reds, though, I did notice a bit more factory lube up near the internal crevices of the stem – something which may help point to the validity of the “improved lubrication” and “premium grease” marketing points suggested in Cherry’s details for them.

Figure 10: Cherry MX Northern Light stem front and back side showing Cherry's two-part dampening mechanism, non-tapered slider rails, normal length stem poles, and features generally expected of Cherry silent linear stems.

Figure 11: Top down view of Cherry MX Northern Light stems showing increased lube agglomeration deep within the internal crevices of the stem.

Finally arriving at the sparkly, nebula blue glass fiber-reinforced bottom housings of the Cherry MX Northern Light switches, we’re again greeted with quite a few details that perfectly align with the MX2A design platform that Cherry has moved to with their switches. Internally these features include raised sections of the sliding rails in either side of the stem as well as a more rounded, “socket dome” structure to the internal pole hole in the center of the housing. While the bottom housings of the MX Northern Light switches were also stated in marketing to have been polished, and I do feel as if the slider rails of such reflect light more than other previous MX2A switches I have in my collection, it could also very well be due to the increased presence of factory lube as seen in the MX Northern Light switches. Both around the base of the center pole hole as well as within the grooves of the slider rails in these switches, abundant factory lube can be seen which definitely feels more heavily applied than in other Cherry switches that I’ve seen. Externally, all of the features of the Cherry MX Northern Lights align with other modern offerings, including PCB mounting pins, a three number mold marking, and a through switch, small squared-off LED hole that is effectively all where it should be. It should be noted that as of the time of publishing this review that there is no stated plans by Cherry to make plate mount/3-Pin variants of either these housings or the Cherry MX Northern Lights available.

Figure 12: Cherry MX Northern Light bottom housing interior showing design features expected of Cherry MX2A platform switches and factory lube present on the leaves and internal base of the housing.

Figure 13: Cherry MX Northern Light bottom housing exterior showing PCB mounting pins, three digit mold marking, and shiny nature of the blue, fiber glass reinforced housings.

Figure 14: Closer view with increased lighting of the subtle sparkles present in the bottom housings of the Cherry MX Northern Light switches.

Push Feel

Upon testing the Cherry MX Northern Light switches out in hand, the most immediate thing that jumped out to me, much to my initial surprise, was how smooth they were. While Cherry has generally been dogged on by the more enthusiast, customized end of the mechanical keyboard hobby for years because of the scratch present in the majority of their older switches, something which even I myself am guilty of, I think that they may finally be getting to a point where they’ve improved their factory lubing to move beyond that meme. Does this mean that this lubing is perfect? No, not entirely – there are some switches in the batch that I received for testing that are a touch inconsistent on this fact, with uneven and non-uniform parts of the strokes of some switches which feel more ‘sticky’ than smooth. However, none of the switches that I tested had anything to their feeling that I would describe as “scratch”. As for the rest of the performance of these silent linears, they are certainly good but not great when it comes to the under finger feeling of their silencing mechanism. Much like how the design of Cherry’s dampening pads in the Northern Lights straddles the line between contemporary and classic designs, so too does their performance. The bottom outs of the MX Northern Lights are definitely compressive and have a tiny bit of a give to them when being typed on, though it is not nearly as squishy, soft, or as gummy as traditional slider rail only dampening pads. That being said, though the bottoms outs are still definitely dampened and recognizable as being from silent switches when compared to conventional linear switches which bottom out onto hard plastic. Similarly straddling that line of old and new is that of the Northern Lights’ topping outs – which are unbalanced and a bit more noticeable in feeling than their bottom outs, though also still soft and dampened in their own right. While it’s easy to say this given the totality of the circumstances, I really do mean it when I say that these feel exactly like what initially comes to your mind when I tell you to envision the feeling of ‘classic’ Cherry nylon housings but with softer, slightly fuzzier feeling edges to their housing collisions.

Figure 15: Force curve diagram for the stock Cherry MX Northern Light switch.

Sound

While I really don’t want to keep rhetorically returning to the well of the Cherry MX Northern Light switches being somewhere better than the old school silent linears before them and yet not at the cutting edge of this switch type, it even rings true here in the description of the sound of these switches too. On the whole they are definitely recognizable as being ‘silent linear’ switches and are free from scratch, pings, or any other generally unwanted tones in any mechanical keyboard switches. However, they are certainly not perfectly silent and do still make some amount of noise depending on how they are actuated. At a slow, normal, and even typing pace, the Northern Lights are only very subtly noticeable with the only sounds really being the occasional sticky tone that shows up near the bottom out and matches that of what was described in the push feeling above. (Without proof, I feel like this may be related to the greater presence of factory lubing in the base housings of these switches like all MX2A platform Cherry switches, though I could be completely wrong on that.) At more moderate or even “as per my last email” typing speeds, though, the silencing effect of the Northern Light’s stem designs begin to wear off and the switches become more audibly noticeable. While still quiet relative to normal linear switches, rapidly actuated MX Northern Lights pick up a medium pitched and sticky-forward sound profile that makes them come across as not nearly well lubed, solidly dampened, or as balanced as one might initially be led to believe when trying them out in hand or at slower typing speeds. That being said, though, a lot of this variability can be mitigated (or accentuated) by the choice of keycaps and/or cases used with these switches.

Wobble

If the sheer overlap in design features between the Cherry MX Northern Light switches and other MX2A platform silent linears released in recent years would lead you believe that they would have effectively similar stem wobbles, then you would be correct. Slightly greater in the E/W direction than the N/S direction, the Northern Lights have a small, likely unproblematic amount of stem wobble that won’t bother most custom keyboard enthusiasts. That being said, though, it could definitely be problematic for more picky users if used in conjunction with taller keycap profiles like SA or MT3.

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 which can be found under the ‘Archive’ tab at the top of this page or by clicking on the card above. Known as the ‘Measurement Sheet’, this sheet typically gets updated weekly and aims to take physical measurements of various switch components to compare mold designs on a brand-by-brand basis as well as provide a rough frankenswitching estimation sheet for combining various stems and top housings.

Figure 17: Numerical details regarding the stock Cherry MX Northern Light 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

17,000 Actuations

- Even after 17,000 actuations on the break in testing machine, the Cherry MX Northern Light switches did not appear to change really all that much at all. Their stem wobble did not increase (shockingly) and their overall sound profile didn’t really change either. It did seem as if there was a slightly smaller amount of ‘sticky patches’ in the feeling of the switches that were broken out this far though, in such fashion that it leads me to believe the presence of this phenomena in the stock switches is related to unmigrated, fresh out of the box factory lubing.

34,000 Actuations

- At 34,000 actuations, the improved switch to switch consistency and general lack of bad sticky tones/feelings spreads to the overall sound profile of the switches as well. Switches broken in to this degree just simply sound, feel, and come across as more uniform and slightly improved over that of their stock counterparts.

- That last statement is, of course, with a slight caveat towards stem wobble. The Cherry MX Northern Light switches broken in to 34,000 actuations had slightly more N/S and E/W direction stem wobble than their stock counterparts.

51,000 Actuations

- After 34,000 actuations, the Cherry MX Northern Light switches did not appear to change to really any appreciable degree at all. While I’m sure that they would continue to morph and adjust with further actuation cycles beyond 51,000 presses, that’s all I’ve got for the purposes of this review. It’ll take most users who aren’t writing reviews like me on the regular a pretty long time to get beyond 51,000 actuations of single switches anyhow.

Figure 19: Comparative force curve diagram showing no substantial change in the force curves of the Cherry MX Northern Light switches throughout the break in process.

Comparison Notes to Other Notable Silent Linear 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 Cherry MX Northern Light switches side by side.

Figure 20: Switches for comparison. (L-R, Top-Bot: LICHICX Lucy, Kinetic Labs Gecko, JWICK Semi Silent, Haimu Heartbeat, Gateron Silent Ink V2, and Cherry MX2A Silent Red)

LICHICX Lucy

- Despite the extremely similarity of the force curves between these two switches as can be seen in the comparative force curve section below, the LICHICX Lucy switches definitely feel as if they have an overall shorter stem travel distance and bottom out much closer to 3.50 mm than 4.00 mm.

- While these two switches have comparable amounts of N/S direction stem wobble, the LICHICX Lucy switches have marginally less E/W direction stem wobble than the Cherry MX Northern Light switches.

- In terms of their overall sound profiles, the Lucy switches are a bit more quiet and substantially more ‘bass heavy’ in their housing collision sounds than the Cherry MX Northern Lights. As well, the Northern Lights also have a bit more imbalance in the sound of their topping and bottoming outs when compared next to the Lucys.

Kinetic Labs Gecko

- In a head to head comparison, the Northern Lights don’t stand a chance against the Kinetic Labs Geckos when it comes to stem wobble. The Geckos that I have in my collection have very little if any stem wobble in either direction – even enough so that it is surprising even for Gateron-made switches of the era.

- Of all of the switches on this comparison list that aren’t made by Cherry, these are the two that feel the most similar in that they are smooth but not overly smooth and dampened while not horrendously soft and squishy at bottom out. The factory lubing on the Kinetic Labs Geckos, though, is just a touch more heavy than that of the Northern Lights.

- The Cherry MX Northern Light switches are a bit louder than the Kinetic Labs Gecko switches, though again largely due to the differences in housing collisions between topping and bottoming outs than anything related to smoothness or their respective dampening mechanisms.

JWICK Semi Silent

- Even though these switches both appear to bottom out at more or less the same weight as one another, the undampened bottom out of the JWICK Semi Silents makes them feel a bit heavier and more substantial at bottom out than the dampened Cherry MX Northern Lights.

- The JWICK Semi Silent switches have a fair bit less N/S and E/W direction stem wobble than the Cherry MX Northern Light switches.

- In terms of their head to head sound profiles, the Cherry MX Northern Lights are much more clearly the ‘silent linears’ out of these two options. While this comparison isn’t entirely the most fair given that the JWICK Semi Silent switches are only dampened on their upstroke, the bottom outs of these two switches both really constitute the majority of their respective sound profiles.

Haimu Heartbeat

- In a batch to batch comparison, the Haimu Heartbeats on average sound much more enclosed, muted, and deep in what little sound they do make than the louder, slightly higher pitched Cherry MX Northern Light switches. Personally, I believe the biggest cause for this is not differences in design of these respective switches nor their dampening mechanisms, but rather differences in factory lubing between Haimu and Cherry.

- The Haimu Heartbeat switches have comparable amounts of N/S and E/W direction stem wobble as the Cherry MX Northern Light switches.

- While the linear portion of the strokes of these two switches feel quite similar to one another, the housing collisions are much more balanced in the Haimu Heartbeat switches than the Cherry MX Northern Lights, and resultingly they don’t have quite as many rougher, more plasticky collisions at either end of their stroke.

Gateron Silent Ink V2

- The toughness of the bottoming out dampening mechanism in the Silent Ink V2 and the Cherry MX Northern Light switches are surprisingly similar to each other. Both definitely feel ‘muted’ though not nearly as soft, squishy, and giving as the conventional silicone dampening pads in used in most other silent linears that came before them.

- In terms of their head to head sound comparison, the Cherry MX Northern Lights are a touch louder than the Silent Ink V2 switches, though only at more elevated typing speeds and as a direct result of their upstroke housing collisions. The bottom outs between these switches more or less sound the same as one another.

- While these two switches have comparable N/S direction stem wobble, the Cherry MX Northern Light switches surprisingly have quite a bit less E/W direction stem wobble.

Cherry MX2A Silent Red

- Unsurprisingly, these two switches come across very similar to one another across the board – from push feeling to sound and even to stem wobble. The differences that do exist between these two switches, or more specifically batches of them, are definitely subtle.

- The Cherry MX Northern Light switches feel not only slightly smoother but also more heavily factory lubed than their MX2A Silent Red counterparts. While I’m sure quite a few of you immediately want to chalk this up to me falling victim to the marketing from Cherry, I was able to differentiate these switches from each other blindly based on this metric.

- Another subtle difference between these two switches comes at the point of bottom out. While the end of these two switches’ strokes are clearly muted by dampening pads, it does feel as if the housings of the MX Northern Lights are a bit more dampened, solid, and substantial feeling than the RGB style housings used in these MX2A Silent Reds.

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.