Kailh BOX Mute Jade

"Looking at the exterior of the bottom housings, the five pin, white-opaque housings have a few slight deviations from normally expected switch designs. The first, and much more subtle point which I want to note is that the stem central pole region appears to be not only significantly thicker in diameter than other MX style switches, but much more flat and shorter as well. Relative to other iterations of Box switches both new and old alike, it’s also worth noting that this region is strangely completely covered whereas some older generations had intentional holes in bottom of the central pole region. Next to this is what appears to be a thickened bottoming out pad which sits directly underneath that of the activating lever in the Box mechanism of the bottom housing. This padded region does also appear to shorten the extra stage of material around the left most PCB pin, which is traditionally similar in size to that of the right most one. The final detail worth noting here is the pair of mold markings on the bottom housings. On the left-hand side there is a single number mold marking facing inwards and on the right-hand side there is a number and letter code facing externally, assumedly used in marking molds or machines used to make the bottom housings.

As for the sound of these switches, they are definitely one of the more unique sounds to have came from a switch that is marketed as ‘clicky’ by name and design. To a surprising degree, the muting bar mechanism actually does significantly alter the sound of these switches from a traditionally sharp, high pitched, and singular piercing noise notable of Box Jade switches to that of a much more subdued, scratchy, and flatter sound matching that of the push feel description above. Broadly speaking, these don’t sound all that much different from an average performing tactile switch with slightly underperforming factory lube, though the sound is much more ‘distilled’ and clear here given that the mechanism making the sound is open to the outside of the switch rather than being fully internally located like in a tactile bump of a traditional, MX style switch. While I have previously described aggressively long-pole switches like Moyu Blacks as “tactiles for clicky fans”, the Box Mute Jades sound like clicky switches for tactile fans.

One rather subtle point that I do want to note, though, is that there is a pretty noticeable spread in sound of these switches across the batch that I received from Novelkeys. While the vast majority have a sound in the significantly dulled range that I described above in the previous paragraph, approximately 20-30% of the switches in my batch actually had a bit sharper of a sound to them even through the dampening. These switches with issues, though, interestingly sounded much more reminiscent of that of actual Box Jade switches, carrying slightly sharper and higher pitched tones. With even these slightly sharper variants having their own range in sharpness as well, it does point to perhaps some systemic manufacturing issues leading to a pretty wide degree of variability in the Mute Box Jade switches. As funny as it may be, though, to some degree I actually personally prefer these minority ‘variant’ switches a bit more as they sound much more like what I would think of as a “muted Jade” switch than what appears to be the actual intended product." - Theremingoat