Feker Emerald Cabbage Switch Review

For those of you based in the midwestern portion of the US like me, we’ve now officially entered what can only be described as our true annual “White Christmas.” See, ever since global climate change really started to kick in, the 5-6 inches of snow we used to get in the week leading up to Christmas has been pushed back further and further. This year it arrived almost an entire month late and of course had to dump on us on the last workday of the week. While this obviously delayed my transit to and back from work since I am not one of those lucky individuals that have a work from home option for my career, it also appears to be delaying my incoming packages of switches quite a bit as well. I guess I was fooled in thinking the creed for the US Post Service was “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”, as I’m now almost a week late on receiving my Gateron Melodic switches and coming very nearly late on my Tecsee Honey Peaches as well! Even though I had fully well intended to review one of those switches for this weekend’s review, it appears that the weather, or something else that I’m entirely going to blame on the weather out of annoyance for having to brush several inches of snow off of my car twice in one day, has pushed those back another few weeks. While Feker Emerald Cabbage switches weren’t exactly my first or second choice for a review, I have been holding onto them for some time as the context surrounding them speaks to an interesting part of the modern switch scene that I’ve not rambled on about quite yet. Rest assured that reviews for at least one, if not both of those aforementioned switches will come in time when the Pony Express breaks through the snowbanks.

**Figure 1:** "Oh great, it's that guy who gets dozens of boxes from China every week, again."

Switch Background

Yes, yes – I’m aware of the existence of both Gateron Melodic and Tecsee Honey Peach switches and have plans to review both of them in some capacity. As I pointed out in the opening paragraph that you skipped over above, snow, ice, and all that fun wintery stuff appears to have delayed my packages containing both of these switches at least a few days more. So, you’re stuck here with this instead. Be thankful, at least, that my Cherry MX Purple Switch Review arrived when it did, as my original Batch #1 shipment was entirely lost by the post office and prompted an emergency ordering of a second batch to get a review out in a semi-timely fashion. But you know what, not every switch breakdown or rambling review of mine needs to be at the most polished, cutting edge, and well marketed of switch releases. In fact, I’d argue that a large part of the modern mechanical keyboard scene occurs at the fringe edge of western consciousness, as eastern facing markets and forums like QQ, Bilibili, ZFrontier, and Taobao display a wide array of switches that hardly resemble anything currently on the markets in the North America and Europe. In addition to hosting a wide variety of switch colors and releases from popular western brands that won’t hit shores over here for a few months’ time, there’s an entire other world that exists outside of these recognizable names. Entire brands, series of switch releases, and companies exist in eastern mechanical keyboard circles that have little if any affiliation with what the rest of the mechanical keyboard community around the world would recognize or interact with. As a result of this, and the sparse information surrounding switches that are often released in these circles, there’s a surprising amount of switches that you and I will simply never see at all in person, and maybe only get to see in a single image or screenshot from somewhere. As a switch collector, I’ve always mentally categorized these switches as ‘unclassifiables’.

**Figure 2:** Just one of a couple regions dedicated to "unclassifiable" switches in my switch collection.

Unclassifiables – or switches which have no known manufacturer of origin, no recognizable brands tied to large companies, and no footprint anywhere online other than a sales page – are something that I’ve spoken very little about in reviews thus far. After all, what is there to say about them? By their mysterious nature, switches which get randomly included as extras in TaoBao orders or pop up in snapshots of QQ chats that are for Chinese-only audiences make for very boring stories without any of the rich history or context surrounding them. That being said, though, the phenomena of unclassifiable switches is hardly a new thing that has only sprung up since the explosion of switch releases starting in 2018. Since the earliest days following the lapse of Cherry’s patent on the MX platform for switches back in 2014, there have been releases of switches which today are more than worthy of the tag unclassifiable. While brands like Gateron, Kailh, Outemu, and TTC have all rise to prominence in the switch market over the course of the last handful of years, all of these brands started out vying for attention with dozens, if not hundreds of other MX-like switch clones released at the same time. As these brands have grown into household names, they’ve left switches branded with names like Rajoa, Xuhua, Chuangli, Jiate, and SwitchMaster to languish into obscurity, existing only as vague remnants of a bygone era in only a small handful of switch collections. As time has gone on and I’ve sunken deeper and deeper into documenting switches, I still have absolutely no clue about the history of any of these switches, where they came from, and very rarely ever see them still talked about or sold today – and those are just the switches with recognizable names. There’s well over a hundred mostly MX-Blue inspired nameless or vaguely named switches in my collection dating from the earliest days of modern keyboard switches.

In hindsight, it’s easy to understand how brands like Gateron, Kailh, Outemu, and TTC persisted and rose above the rest of the hundreds of switch releases from that era. If not for singular keyboard enthusiasts championing custom releases from these brands into the community like Zeal or Gazzew, each one of these companies owns their manufacturing facility and designers and leverages these to continually release upgraded, market defining switches year over year. For brands not as championed by manufacturers that are producing them, it’s a lot harder to maintain market relevance. Often relegated to simply cloning the most popular switches released at that time in order to actually sell, all some brands can simply strive for is capturing a copycat snapshot of the latest trends at the time they were produced. In fact, the only reason that brands like Rajoa, Xuhua, and Chuangli are recognizable to old switch collectors like me is because of the fact that they burned bright in their short life span and offered cloned releases of numerous common color offerings at the time. Many of these ‘old clone’ brands that have names in my head released Red and Black linears, Blue Clickies, Brown Tactiles, and even sometimes ‘RGB’ style housings in addition to full-black, opaque housing emulating the Cherry releases which inspired them. I would even go so far as to argue that they are some of my most cherished and rare switches to date. Even in the face of one off factory prototypes and historically important frankenswitches, these switches speak to a time and a place in the mechanical keyboard hobby that is simply inaccessible, and growing more so with each passing day as forums like Deskthority and OTD extinguish. That is not to say, though, that they will be the only unclassifiable switches of their likeness.

Like all good things in the keyboard community, what was once popular dies out and circles back around to relevance once again. With the absolute explosion of custom-colored switch offerings starting in 2018 and the paralleled resurgence of long-dead brands and newly minting manufacturers, the market for truly ‘unclassifiable’ switches is as strong as ever. Western facing companies like Mechbox UK and SwitchOddities, who are both lovely sponsors of mine and supporters of the collection, easily allow us to peer into a world of one-off tactiles, oddly named clickies, and switches with brands that you’ve simply never stood a chance of hearing before. From these websites, and what little we can easily gather from those aforementioned eastern facing communities, we can see that the modern unclassifiable switch scene is also circling around to traditions of the original market. Whereas cloned switches from 2014-2016 would emulate Cherry MX switches which were the pinnacle of market attention at the time, the modern unclassifiable market sees uncountable numbers of ‘Holy Panda’ clones, ‘Matcha’ clones, and releases which aim to match the colors and tactility of the most popular keyboard switches of the past few years. As well, there are also slews of continuously returning brand names which are helping to cement the legacy of these switches into the history books, even if they do burn out of relevance only a few months from now. Modern collectors of switches who frequent these sites may recognize names like Drinkey, Philikey, Magegee, Free Wolf, Attack Shark, TBCats, RAESHA, and countless others that we are seemingly encountering more frequently by the week. However, among the onslaught of vaguely familiar names that populate the modern switch minor leagues, there are a couple brand names which appear to have a slightest bit more sticking power and relevance than most - Feker and LCET.

**Figure 4:** Modern switches of unknown origin including Philikey Rainbow White, Attack Shark Yellow, Drinkey Green, and Kaicheng Red.

Focusing more on the former than the latter for the scope of this review, ‘Feker’ (sometimes seen in all capitals as ‘FEKER’) and ‘LCET’ are distinct brands of switches each with over a dozen different releases in the last few years and would be recognizable as a name to almost any modern keyboard switch collector. What could not be easily identified about these brands, though, is literally anything else at all. Hell, even the time frame in which these brands first appeared to western audiences is vague and can only be loosely bounded as ‘sometime after about 2018.’ What I can say more definitively about Feker, though, is that it is the smaller of these two brands and has regularly produced switches with a more budget friendly slant than most other modern switches. Whether Feker represents branding for a company or is the product of a singular designer much like 43Studios’ line of Durock/JWK offerings is up for debate, though I am personally leaning towards the company end of speculation. This company/person has emulated some popular switch releases in colorways such as that of the Matcha switches with the Feker Matcha Pro and V2s or the TTC Bluish Whites with the Feker Blue/Whites over the past year, while also going on to release offerings of their own design. The most recent of these brand-specific offerings has come to me in the form of Feker Emerald Cabbages, released sometime in late 2023/early 2024 at an incredible deal ranging from $0.30 to $0.23 per switch depending on store they were purchased from and quantity chosen. Not much else is known about these middle weight, dustproof linear switches, nor their origin as I think I’ve firmly beaten to death in the last few paragraphs, so we might as well jump right in to exploring this strange, new switch together.

**Figure 5:** Other Feker branded switch releases including Peach, Matcha Pro, Kiwi, and Bluish White.

**Figure 6:** Marketing photo from Feker Emerald Cabbage sales page on AliExpress detailing some spring weights and housing materials.

Emerald Cabbage Performance

Appearance

At the highest level, the Feker Emerald Cabbage switches remind me of the colorway used in GMK Botanical more so than they do any emerald or cabbage that I’ve ever seen. I guess that since ‘botanical’ quite literally is defined as “relating to plants”, and that cabbage is a plant, I have to begrudgingly give this name it’s due credit as it is technically descriptive. In spite of this, the Emerald Cabbages come in a three-tone construction with a dark green dustproof stem, a bluish, off-white top housing, and a flat, muted leaf green bottom housing. Aside from their unique colorway, they are immediately recognizable as belonging to the ‘Feker’ brand of switches given the inverted, stylized, and capitalized ‘FEKER’ nameplate that has been seen on all of their switches released to date. While not seen in the enclosed switch, the Feker Emerald Cabbages also come with a normally threaded silver spring rated at 62 +/- 5 gf. of bottom out. All other details of note worth discussing for the Feker Emerald Cabbages may be found in the paragraphs below.

**Figure 7:** Feker Emerald Cabbage switches and their components.

Looking first at the bluish off-white top housings of the Feker Emerald Cabbage switches, these appear fairly normal and in line with design trends seen in most modern switches to date. In fact, unlike a decent chunk of unclassifiable switches before them, most of Feker’s switches released to date would not immediately stand out in a line up as being oddly designed relative to the likes of other more popular western brands like Tecsee or Durock/JWK. The supposedly polycarbonate Emerald Cabbage top housings come in four-pin attachment with an inverted, stylized ‘FEKER’ nameplate, and a mildly restricted LED/diode slot in the front. Specifically, the LED/diode slot is long and rectangular with both a center-line bifurcating strip as well as centered circular indentation to support more rounded LEDs. Internally, the Feker Emerald Cabbages appear for the most part normal save for two distinctive features which I’ve not previously documented here. First, the mold markings for the Emerald Cabbages come on the left- and right-hand side internal edges of the housings with the left-hand marking being a double-digit number in a shallow rectangular indentation and the right-hand marking being a single capital letter marking in a similar indentation. The other distinctive feature of note is the extra structuring underneath the nameplate region which is seen in the form of extra plastic in each corner in the upper left and right hand sides. In the vast majority of other modern switches which I’ve seen to date, this region underneath the nameplate is often entirely open to the surface of the nameplate as to maximize open space for the bottom housing leaves.

**Figure 8:** Feker Emerald Cabbage top housing external design showing inverted 'FEKER' nameplate and thinly bifurcated rectangular LED/diode slot with centered indentation.

**Figure 9:** Feker Emerald Cabbage top housing internal design (faintly) showing mold markings on left- and right-hand edges and increased structuring underneath nameplate region.

Moving next to the dark green POM stems of the Feker Emerald Cabbage switches, these are by far the least adorned parts of the switch and look, again, very similar to most other modern switch releases. There appear to be no mold markings on either the front or back plates of the stem and the slider rails are not tapered, leaving only a tiered, fairly average-length center pole as a similarity to other brands out there today. Seen much more rarely in other switches but also here in the Emerald Cabbage are thin sets of raised edges on the faces of either slider rail which are often implemented to reduce contact area between the stem slider rails and bottom housing guider rails and improve overall switch smoothness. Beyond these features, though, these are fairly bog standard dustproof linear stems.

**Figure 10:** Feker Emerald Cabbage stems featuring raised edges on non-tapered slider rails, tiered center poles, and no mold ejector marks on front or back plates.

Finally arriving at the flat, pale green nylon bottom housings of the Feker Emerald Cabbages, we are met with a slew of design features that have been seen across many different reviews here but never in the same switches before. Internally, the Feker Emerald Cabbages have a minor south side spring collar as well as dampening pads at the bases of the slider rails that are connected to a raised, circular ring around the center pole hole of the switch. As well, these switches have mold ejector marks along the upper left- and right-hand edges of the housing and in its corners – features all which have been seen in various other modern switches. Unlike all of those other, more popular switch releases, though, the Feker Emerald Cabbages have small rectangular indentations outcropping into the LED/diode through-hole region of the bottom housing, a feature which doesn’t appear to have any practical effects on the switch’s feeling, though is distinctive enough to be worth mentioning. Additionally, the mold markings on the underside of the Feker Emerald Cabbages are unique in coming in small font above the left and right bottom ledges facing the LED/diode slot and come in the form of a capital letter and one or two digit number marking, respectively. As can be seen in the photos below, Feker Emerald Cabbages also only come in 5-Pin/PCB mount structure.

**Figure 11:** Feker Emerald Cabbage bottom housing internal designs showing padded bottoming outs, mold ejector circles around upper ring, and unique outcroppings in the upper corners of the LED/diode through hole.

**Figure 12:** Feker Emerald Cabbage bottom housing external design showing pair of mold markings in lower corners and PCB mounting pins.

Push Feel

In a sort of ostensibly obvious way, when you strip away all of the marketing, branding, hype, and historical relevance surrounding a switch, you are truly only left with the raw, functional performance that it provides as a testament to its character. While I often strive to remain as impartial as I can to the performance of switches with lengthy backstories and a whole slew of community interest in them, in sitting down to detail this part of the Feker Emerald Cabbage switches I realize that I feel oddly free. And in this space, I feel lucky to have been accompanied by a very plain, no frills, fairly technically sound linear switch. While the Feker Emerald Cabbages do in fact bottom out onto their stem pole and have a reduced overall travel distance below that of 3.50 mm, you would be hard pressed to notice it when using these switches in hand. Rated at 62g but bottoming out much more frequently around 65g, or so, in my testing, these switches very smoothly go down to a just barely pointed bottoming out and rebound solidly to an equally thin, but well composed topping out. Unlike many other switches which try hard to emphasize their polycarbonate top housings here, or their stem pole bottoming out onto nylon there, the Feker Emerald Cabbages do well in showing off both of these in a complementary fashion without making them feel like they are the sole focus of the show. Round them off with being quite smooth with only the faintest, and slightly common amount of stickiness at various points throughout the stroke, and you’ve got a surprisingly well orchestrated linear choreography that doesn’t do anything to go above in beyond or step outside of its intended role.

**Figure 13:** Force Curve diagram for stock Feker Emerald Cabbage switches.

That is not to say, though, that the Feker Emerald Cabbages are without their flaws, though admittedly they’re subtle at that. As mentioned above, there are some inconsistencies in the factory lubing across the batch of switches I’ve received which do cause odd, marbled points of sticking at random parts of the stroke of any given switch, though its not frequent nor incredibly distracting. As well, the pointed bottoming out is a bit inconsistently harsh between switches at different typing speeds, indicating perhaps some inconsistencies in the bottom housing molding, though again that’s being quite a bit picky of me. The flaws are definitely there in the Feker Emerald Cabbages, but given their quaint, unassuming, no-frills sort of execution and force curve above, it feels as if these issues are acceptable flaws that make the switch have a touch more character than something technically perfect.

Sound

At normal typing speeds, the Feker Emerald Cabbages are, much like is spelled out in their push feeling notes above, sounding off with a rather unimposing, quaint, and well executed sound that registers like what one would ideally guess of a linear switch. These switches are neither loud nor soft, have bits of pointier, ever so slightly sharper tones at topping out, and parts of more deepened, bass-heavy notes as is subtly heard in the bottom out, but all together they just sound like very middle of the road switches. At higher actuation speeds this balance of sound throws off a noticeable bit with the bottoming out becoming a bit higher pitched, sharper, and departing from the topping out sound noticeably, but I’d imagine in a full build this wouldn’t be quite as drastic as is in hand. As well, the noted stickiness at random parts of the push feeling provides some odd quirks in sound in these switches and is occasionally matched with patches of scratch in their tone, but only in parts of the batch. On the whole these are surprisingly well executed sounding linear switches that seem to have struck that balance well by simply not trying too hard to be good at any singular thing.

Wobble

While hardly disappointing in context of all of the switches which I’ve ever tried, the Feker Emerald Cabbages are a bit disappointing on their own in terms of their stem wobble. As most other parts of their performance appear to effortlessly toe the line between good and great, the wobble is only a touch better than the average with a noticeable, but likely not problematic amount of N/S and E/W direction stem wobble in the switches. As well, there is some play in this magnitude across the batch that I received, though it is less of a variation than the noted push feeling and sound variation above.

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 15:** Numerical details regarding the stock Feker Emerald Cabbage switch force curve diagram.

The latest in the content-adjacent work that I’ve picked up, the new ‘Force Curve Repository’ is now hosted on GitHub alongside the Scorecard Repository and contains all force curves that I make both within and outside of 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 each switch to use as you please. 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

- Surprisingly, at 17,000 actuations the Feker Emerald Cabbage switches developed a bit more scratch throughout their stroke than their stock counterparts. While this immediately would lead to most people guessing that lube migration had occurred during the break in process, its not as if there was all that much lube present in the stock switches to migrate, anyways. What exactly caused this sudden jump in smoothness after so little break in time is still a bit lost to me.

- Like most switches subjected to break in testing on this site, the Feker Emerald Cabbages at 17,000 actuations had a bit more N/S and E/W direction stem wobble than their stock counterparts. This result is not all that surprising.

34,000 Actuations

- At 34,000 actuations, the smoothness of the Feker Emerald Cabbages changed yet again, though in terms of both its push feeling and the sound. With respect to the sound of the Emerald Cabbages, the switches began to sound a bit more smooth than their 17,000 switch counterparts, however they were less consistent in terms of their housing collisions. As for the push feeling, all of the switches began to feel a bit more scratchy than both the 17,000 actuation lot and the stock lot of switches used in this comparison. Quite frankly I’m a bit baffled by these results and am honestly willing to chalk these strange occurrences up to batch to batch variation more than I am actual results that are indicating anything.

51,000 Actuations

- After the whirlwind of changes over the first two stages of break in testing, the Feker Emerald Cabbages appeared to have stopped changing their smoothness by 51,000 actuations. The only noted change at this point was a further increase in N/S and E/W direction stem wobble, though admittedly this is by a fairly slim margin.

**Figure 17:** Comparative force curve diagram showing no distinctive trend in change of Feker Emerald Cabbage force curve diagrams throughout the break in process.

Comparison Notes to Other Notable 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 Feker Emerald Cabbage switches side by side.

Sarokeys BCP

- In terms of their push feelings, these two switches are similar when it comes to their smoothness and topping out, though they depart in feeling at the bottom out. Whereas the Sarokeys BCPs have a more muted, softened bottoming out that turns a touch harder at higher actuation speeds, the Feker Emerald Cabbages have a consistently solid, slightly pointed bottoming out until they hit higher actuation speeds.

- The Emerald Cabbages are a bit more loud than that of the Sarokeys BCP switches and also have a bit more of a present higher pitched portion of their sound profile as a result of the more pronounced bottom out.

- The stem wobble between these two switches is fairly comparable, though perhaps the Feker Emerald Cabbages are just a touch less wobbly in the N/S direction than the Sarokeys BCPs.

Cherry MX2A RGB Black

- Even in spite of the MX2A platform boasting improved factory lubing, the Feker Emerald Cabbages are much smoother throughout their stroke than the Cherry MX2A RGB Black switches.

- Much like with the Sarokeys BCP switches above, the Feker Emerald Cabbages are a touch better than the MX2A RGB Blacks in terms of stem wobble. Unlike that comparison, though, the Emerald Cabbages have a bit less N/S and E/W direction stem wobble than these Cherry switches.

- In terms of their sound profiles, the Feker Emerald Cabbages are again much more loud and clear in their sound profile than the comparatively muted, scratchy, and mumbling sound profile of the Cherry MX2A RGB Blacks.

Wuque Studio Morandi

- The Wuque Studio Morandi switches not only feel smoother than the Feker Emerald Cabbage switches, but they also feel more heavily lubed. While this is definitely the reality of the situation when it comes to their lube applications, the difference in feeling in linear switches that come from the comparison of a thinner coating of lube to a more thick, even coating is more noticeable here than in any of the other comparisons on this list.

- Like with most other comparisons made to the Feker Emerald Cabbages here, the Emerald Cabbages are the louder and more even toned of the comparisons and feature more higher pitched tones than the Morandi.

- The Wuque Studio Morandi switches have quite a bit less stem wobble than the Emerald Cabbages in both the N/S and E/W directions.

Novelkeys Dream Cream

- Surprisingly, of all of the switches on this list, the Dream Creams and the Feker Emerald Cabbages have the most similar push feeling as each other in terms of their smoothness.

- While the Feker Emerald Cabbages are a bit more loud and have slightly heavier sounding housing collisions than that of the Novelkeys Dream Cream switches, it is interesting to note that the topping out tone of the Dream Creams is very similar to that of the bottoming out of the Feker Emerald Cabbages when the ‘thud’ from the pointed stem part is discounted.

- The Novelkeys Dream Creams and Feker Emerald Cabbages are similar to each other in terms of their N/S and E/W direction stem wobble.

Invokeys Black Sesame

- While it is slightly sharper and more firm in the Feker Emerald Cabbages, these two switches have the most similar bottoming outs of each other out of any of the comparisons made on this list.

- Given the high quality of the design of the Invokeys Black Sesame switches, they have far less stem wobble than the Feker Emerald Cabbages and its honestly hardly a close comparison.

- Even though both of these switches are fairly smooth on their own, the Black Sesames have a lot more sluggish of a feel to them and a subtle, leathery scratch undertone that is simply not present in the more free, airy feeling stroke of the Emerald Cabbage switches.

Husky

- While the Husky switches have the most similar overall sound profile to that of the Feker Emerald Cabbages, there is a subtle bit more ‘brightness’ in the Emerald Cabbages from its higher pitched topping out tones that don’t show up as much in the sound of the Huskies.

- In terms of their smoothness out of the box, these switches are again fairly comparable to each other with the Emerald Cabbages being perhaps a touch more smooth throughout the batch that I received than the Huskies.

- The Feker Emerald Cabbages and Husky switches have pretty similar stem wobble to each other, with perhaps the Cabbages being slightly better than the Huskies in the N/S direction, though not by much.

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.