NK Silk Mictlán Switch Review

Without any of the climactic ending, fireworks, or theme music while fading to credits that I was expecting, I’ve finished up my move back to the state of Ohio and am more or less ready to begin work. While the place, itself, is a bit unfurnished at the moment until those first checks clear, rest assured that the keyboard room is entirely setup and content is back on its normally scheduled pace. (At least I hope you could gather that given that you are currently reading this review.) Additionally, as promised in recent reviews I am also beginning to dig into that vintage switch collection I obtained and will be working on finding ways to incorporate that into content soon. I make no promises as to what form of content these will first make their appearance in, but I currently have some ideas that I am scoping out as we speak.

**Figure 1:** Czechoslovakian Hall Effect and unknown reed-type switch.

Another exciting detail worth mentioning at the start of this review, as well, is that the website officially turns 3 years old in just six days’ time after publishing this review! As is tradition that I’ve established over the past two years, there will be a Meta Update posted on this coming Saturday discussing numbers about the website from the previous year, plans for content moving forward, etc. While these are inarguably some of my least read articles, they are my small but not insignificant way of keeping transparency as well as laying out a clear path ahead so that everyone is aware of some changes to content that I may be making. Even though I am admittedly more sporadic than this annual update process at times, it still is something I think is necessary to be done. That, and the fact that it increases search engine optimization, or something like that. Really, it’s total word count that I’m wanting to increase…

Switch Background

It should be no surprise at this point that I have both purchased and reviewed quite a few switches from Novelkeys over the past few years of writing. Completely disregarding the fact that my firm dedication to collecting first started with their Novelias sale all the way back in 2018 and thus I am a bit biased, Novelkeys’ efforts with respect to switches since their very first day of operation is nothing short of commendable. Just from the snippets of stories Mike has shared via Discord and updates over the previous years, I have no doubt there are plenty of stories about Novelkeys which could and should be shared at some point in time. While I, myself, have been a bit meticulous about beating the story of the Novelkeys Cream family of switches to death in recent years, that is not to say that they are the only switch family that they have maintained over that length in time. In fact, I’m quite surprised I’ve made it this far into reviewing without ever having discussed the Novelkeys ‘Silk Family’ of switches.

First announced all the way back on July 12th of 2020 by way of Instagram, ‘Silk’ switches were Novelkeys’ first branded, Durock/JWK made switch to serve the role as an instock, ready to use option for the growing numbers of new consumers in the hobby. Paired alongside a set of ‘Dry’ switches in black housings and no factory lubing, the initial Silk switches made their appearance in Red, Black, and Yellow stemmed variants boasting different spring weights but identical factory lubing in their contrasting white housings. Priced at $0.55 per switch, these Krytox 205g0 lubed switches were initially received with mixed reactions from the community, with some misgivings levied about inconsistent factory lubing from Durock/JWK affecting their performance. While the explicit date of the addressing of this issue is unfortunately hard to pin down, it can be stated with certainty that these factory lubrication issues were addressed by October of 2020 at the latest. Known by Novelkeys simply as “Batch 2”, these Silk switches (as well as all subsequent recolored variants) featured improved lubricant application which has remained as the standard up to the time of writing this review. While these changes did assuage initial fears regarding stock consistency, I don’t recall this having substantially affected their usage in the community at the time.

**Figure 2:** NK Silk Mictlán sales page showing "Batch 2" designation note.

Whether intentionally designed for at the onset of the initial Silk switch designs, or chosen after the fact in order to help recoup costs associated with the molds that were bought by Novelkeys, the usage of the Silk switches would grow quite substantially in the following years as a result of ther inclusions in various NK65 releases. While these switches are currently available in more Novelkeys-made keyboards than just the NK65, the NK65 ‘Milkshake Edition’ designed around the DSA Milkshake keycap set from Biip first introduced thematically recolored Silk switches in late 2020. Coming in similar white housings to original Silk switches, a mix of different stem colors including purple, green, blue, red, and yellow were to be included prebuilt into the special NK65s in random arrangement with no announced availability of the switches otherwise. After the initial sales cycle of the NK65 Milkshakes, though, it should be noted that these switches did become available separately from the keyboard as have all subsequent special Silk releases.

Following the success of the NK65 Milkshake Edition keyboard and recolored switches, Novelkeys proceeded to release several more iterations of these customized NK65 designs themed around keycap sets and content creators in the coming years. Most recently, as you may be able to expect by this review, the NK65 ‘Mictlán Edition’ featured the latest custom-colored Silk switches themed around the text colors of the incredibly popular keycap set GMK Mictlán designed by Vheissu and ran in 2022. The following photos include all variants of Silk switches as of the time of writing this review:

**Figure 3:** NK Silk Mictlán switches themed after GMK Mictlán by Vheissu.

**Figure 4:** NK Silk Oblivion switch themed after GMK Oblivion by Oblotzky.

**Figure 5:** NK Silk Olivia switch themed after GMK Olivia by Olivia.

**Figure 6:** NK Silk Milkshake switches themed after DSA Milkshake by Biip.

**Figure 7:** NK Silk Emerald switch from the 'Randomfrankp' themed NK65 sale.

**Figure 8:** NK Silk TFUE switches from the 'TFUE' themed NK65 sale.

**Figure 9:** NK Silk 'Awaken' switches in pink and green variants.

**Figure 10:** Original NK Silk switches in Red, Black, and Yellow variants.

While initially only stocked in the $140 NK65 Mictlán Edition keyboard, the NK Silk Mictlán switches first became purchasable on their own in late 2022/early 2023 at a price of $0.55 per switch in packs of 36 switches. Much like with the Silk Milkshake switches before them, the sales page for the Mictlán switches caveats that these “will come in a random mixture of colors”, much like with their inclusion within the custom NK65. The shelf life for these switches has never been disclosed to the best of my knowledge, though I imagine that these will not be permanently stocked, given that the Silk Olivia and Oblivion switches are listed as ‘Out of Stock’ as of the time of writing this review with no further indication as to whether or not they will be returning. However, they should serve as direct performance analogs to other ‘Batch 2’ custom colored Silk switches in the future.

Silk Mictlán Switch Performance

Appearance

As you probably saw already assuming you didn’t just entirely skip through the Background section, the NK Silk Mictlán switches are all 63.5 g. linear switches in translucent black-ish colored housings with a mixture of different stem colors including pink, blue, purple, yellow, and orange. While it is a bit hard to actually perfectly describe, the housings are more of a translucent black with a blue-ish hint to them, which is much more noticeable when directly compared against something like a Gateron Ink switch. As was promised by the sales page for the Silk Mictláns, I received a random mixture of stem colors which included 6 pinks, 4 blues, 6 purples, 9 yellows, and 11 oranges. Beyond this, the unique color scheme, the only other outwardly identifying trait which can be seen is the ‘NK_’ nameplate which has been used for all runs of Silk switches.

**Figure 11:** Gateron Ink Black (left) and NK Silk Mictlán housing color comparison.

Moving first to the top housings of the Silk Mictlán switches, these come with a standard four pin attachment style and ‘NK_’ nameplate as was stated on the other side of Figure 11. Externally, there is little of note save for the wide, rectangular LED slot with centered circular indentation to support specific aftermarket LEDs. Internally, these are also fairly run of the mill top housings without many particularly noteworthy points to their design. Around the upper rim of the housing there are three slightly raised rectangular padded regions. The mold marking for the top housings are located in the upper right-hand corner underneath the nameplate region and feature a single- or double-digit number marking. The only thing worth noting about these top housings is that the molds for (at least) these are owned by Novelkeys and were purchased/paid for prior to the run of the initial Silk switches back in 2020.

**Figure 12:** Top housing external design of NK Silk Mictláns showing 'NK_' nameplate and wide, rectangular LED slot.

**Figure 13:** Top housing internal design of NK Silk Mictláns showing padded regions along upper rim and mold marking in upper right-hand corner.

Arriving next to the stems and springs of the NK Silk Mictlán switches, these too/two are both fairly ordinary for a modern linear switch from Durock/JWK. The spring is a simply wound, roughly 13.9 mm long gold spring with no frills while the stem clocks in at a very average 13.02 mm in total length. The stems feature a pair of tapered slider rails as well as a tiered center pole, both features which have been more or less expected of switches from major manufacturers over the course of the past year or so. Beyond these points, the only feature worth noting on the stems is the presence of very small, slightly high set mold ejector circles on the edges of the backplate – something which is normally present on the front plate and above the stem legs for most switches.

**Figure 14:** Stems and springs of NK Silk Mictlán switches.

Finally arriving to the bottom housings of the Silk Mictláns, these admittedly also don’t boast all that much interesting about them. Internally, these have a set of eight mold ejection circles around the upper rim as I’ve previously documented in several Durock/JWK switches prior. In the base of the housing is perhaps the most interesting design feature of the Silk Mictláns, which includes both a ‘b’ and ‘d’ shaped pair of bottoming out pads at the ends of the slider rails and a mold ejection circle directly adjacent. While neither of these features are novel in and of themselves, the proximity of these two design features is a bit strange and not something I recall having seen recently. Externally, the NK Silk Mictláns come only in PCB mount, 5 pin design and are fairly unadorned save for the two-digit number mold marking located in the bottom right-hand corner between the third and fourth LED/Diode pin holes.

**Figure 15:** Bottom housing internal design of NK Silk Mictláns showing proximity of 'b' and 'd' shaped bottoming out pads and mold ejector circle marks.

**Figure 16:** Bottom housing external design of NK Silk Mictláns showing PCB mounting pins and double-digit mold marking in bottom right-hand corner.

Push Feel

While the stocking of ‘Batch 1’ versions of the NK Silk switches was almost too short lived and underrepresented for me to be able to get any substantial amounts for comparison here in this review, I can definitely say that I enjoy whatever changes were made for Batch 2 and beyond. Only touting changes to the application of Krytox 205g0 by Durock/JWK, these most recent Silk switches are pretty damn smooth without any real variation in consistency or feeling across the batch that I received. On the scale from ‘smooth with no lube’ to ‘way the hell overlubed’, the NK Silk Mictláns sit a bit more towards the heavy lubricated end, not quite having a noticeable character to their stroke but not feeling sluggish at any point in the downstroke. Furthermore, their relatively standard weighting around 63.5 g. of bottoming out force is not only a staple amongst modern switches but a good sweet spot that avoids issues that lighter and heavier weighted switches have with the push feeling. Without the presence of any character from scratchiness, spring weight, or housing material, though, the majority of the character present in the switches comes from the housing collisions – and it’s not disappointing.

Even though the housing collisions are a fair bit imbalanced in terms of feeling, both topping and bottoming out the Silk Mictláns carries a solid enough firmness that makes the switches feel substantial and escapes the cheap, plasticky pitfall of some materials. As is to be expected due to mechanical differences, the bottoming out is the more firm and muted of the housing collisions, with the topping out being noticeably thinner but still well within that solid collision feeling. It’s also worth noting here that on all of these points mentioned including smoothness and housing collisions that there is virtually zero variation in consistency across the batch. While there are one or two switches which have very small amounts of spring ping or an occasional few which feel a touch more sluggish than the others, by and large I would expect that the vast majority of users of these switches wouldn’t notice these faults in normal typing.

**Figure 17:** NK Silk Mictlán force curve diagram.

Sound

As much as the meme has been beaten to death in reviews on this website already, the sound of the NK Silk Mictlán switches follows rather closely to that of the Push Feel notes above. Given that there is no errant scratch anywhere in the switches and effectively no variability across the batch received, the sound of these switches is primarily driven by the housing collisions at either end of the stroke. The bottoming out, which is the slightly better of the two housing collisions, is towards the deeper end of switch sounds with a bit of low volume noise that doesn’t vary much with typing speeds. By comparison, the topping out of the NK Silk Mictlán switches is a bit thinner and higher pitched, carrying undertones that are slightly more plasticky without outright having issues that something like pure polycarbonate top housings have had in the past. While I am not explicitly certain of what the material is in the housings of these Silk Mictláns, on a scale from thick nylon housings to thin polycarbonate housings these occupy a medium thickness, mostly nylon-like sound that most people would be okay with out of the box.

Wobble

For all the fairly well-rounded performance metrics that the NK Silk Mictláns have at their price point of $0.55 per switch, the stem wobble on these switches is surprisingly ‘meh’ in execution. Coming with a noticeable but not overwhelming amount of N/S and E/W direction stem wobble, these switches could very well bother those more sensitive to wobble but likely won’t matter much to most users. Consistency, however, is the only shining point within this wobble as there is very little variability in this across the switches in the batch that I received.

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 19:** Force curve comparison for reach of the NK Silk Mictlán switch colors.

As can be seen by the force curve comparison made above, the only differences in feeling between each of the colors of the NK Silk Mictlán switches is purely a function of production variation. Any changes that can be seen here are absolutely unable to be detected by testing in hand, and if you claim that they can be felt blindly, my offer to fight from the MODE Tomorrow Switch Review still stands.

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

- All variables considered, the NK Silk Mictlán switches did not really change much at all out to 17,000 actuations during break in testing. The only real point of note to be made is a slight increase in the E/W direction stem wobble and even smaller increase in the N/S direction wobble after breaking these switches in.

- Another small note which could be made about the Silk Mictláns broken in to this point is that there were a few more which had a subtle pingy sound to them than a stock batch of switches which I use for comparison. I suspect this is largely a batch-specific variation and not something that is actually a result of the break in testing, though I felt the need to mention it just in case.

34,000 Actuations

- Out to 34,000 actuations, the Silk Mictlán switches do not appear to have changed much from either their stock form or the batch that was broken in to 17,000 actuations. The same slight increase in stem wobble is present in both directions and does not appear to have increased noticeably at this second level of breaking in.

- One change in these switches which was slightly noticeable at 34,000 actuations is that of a slightly higher pitched topping out sound. Typically, changes in pitch upon breaking in switches comes about as a result of factory lubricant settling into place, though there doesn’t appear to be any changes in smoothness to suggest that this is happening to any significant degree.

51,000 Actuations

- Overall, out to 51,000 actuations the NK Silk Mictláns are fairly resilient to breaking in and don’t appear to have changed nearly as much from their stock form as other switches which I have reviewed here previously on the website. The only change that effectively did occur between 34,000 actuations and 51,000 actuations is a slight increase in both N/S and E/W direction stem wobble, though again it should be kept in mind that this is fairly par for course with switch break in testing.

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 NK Silk Mictlán switches side by side.

Cherry MX ‘New Nixie’

- As a result of the well applied Krytox 205g0 by Durock/JWK, the Silk Mictlán switches are noticeably more smooth than that of the Cherry MX ‘New Nixie’ switches across the entirety of the batch that I received.

- Surprisingly for the reputation that Cherry has gained with respect to their switches produced previously, the New Nixie switches have less stem wobble than the Silk Mictlán switches in both the N/S and E/W directions.

- While both of these switches have similar strength housing collisions to each other, the Cherry MX New Nixies feel just a tiny bit more solid and firm at the topping out than the Silk Mictláns. That is not to say, though, that the Silk Mictláns feel thin or plasticky by comparison at all.

Novelkeys Dream Cream

- In a completely unfair but useful point to note for anyone who has never tried Cream switches before, the stock nature of even the broken-in Dream Cream switches will be scratchier than the factory lubricated NK Silk Mictlán switches.

- Of all of the switches on this comparison list, the NK Silk Mictláns and the Novelkeys Dream Creams are the most comparable in terms of stem wobble in both N/S and E/W directions.

- The topping out of the Novelkeys Dream Cream switches is much more rattly and higher pitched than that of the NK Silk Mictláns.

Gateron Oil King

- In terms of out of the box smoothness, the Oil Kings and Silk Mictláns are fairly comparable, with the factory lubing on the Oil Kings feeling ever so slightly lighter and thinly distributed across the entirety of the stroke.

- The housing collisions of these two switches are remarkably similar both in terms of feeling as well as overall volume of sound. The bottoming out of the Silk Mictláns, though, is a bit more dampened and muted sounding by comparison.

- The Gateron Oil Kings have less stem wobble in both the N/S and E/W directions than that of the NK Silk Mictlán switches.

Invokeys Black Sesame

- While both of these switches are inarguably smooth, the Invokeys Black Sesame switches have just the slightest bit more hint of ‘character’ throughout their stroke than the comparatively ‘smooth and only smooth’ feeling of the stock NK Silk Mictlán switches.

- Again, much like most of the switches on the list before this one, the Invokeys Black Sesame switches edge out the NK Silk Mictlán switches in terms of both N/S and E/W direction stem wobble.

- Comparing the volume of the housing collisions of these two switches, the bottoming out of the Black Sesames is noticeably louder and more pointed than that of the NK Silk Mictlán switches. The topping out, though, is only slightly louder and higher pitched in the Silk Mictláns.

Huano Earth Yellow

- Not only do the Huano Earth Yellows feel more scratchy throughout their stroke than the NK Silk Mictlán switches, but they also sound a bit more scratchy as well.

- Furthering on the unsavory sound notes by comparison, the Earth Yellows also have a subtle spring ping sound to them that simply isn’t present anywhere across the batch of NK Silk Mictláns which I received.

- The stem wobble in the NK Silk Mictláns is a slight bit better than the Huano Earth Yellows in the N/S direction and much better in the E/W direction.

Owlabs Neon

- The Owlabs Neons are significantly louder and higher pitched in both their topping and bottoming out sounds than that of the NK Silk Mictlán switches.

- Likely due in some part to the odd top housing design supporting the stem, there is very little wobble in the Owlabs Neon switches which completely edges out the Silk Mictláns by comparison.

- Much like the Invokeys Black Sesame switch comparison above, the Owlabs Neons are smooth enough switches, though the lubrication (if any) is thin enough to leave character behind in the stroke that is simply missing from the stock NK Silk Mictlán 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.