The amount of mechanical switches has increased dramatically over the last few years. New switch variants hit the market almost daily, making it much more difficult for customers to choose the correct switch. The reason for this is an expired patent from 1984, which protected the design of the original CHERRY MX switch. Since then, the market has been flooded with switches that resemble the established MX switches in both appearance and design. These competitors aim to use the brand awareness of CHERRY MX, which was built with great effort over decades, for their own products. This doesn’t just include the colour coding of the stems and their respective characteristics, but also the layout of the housing and the type of mount. But even if the switches seem to hardly differ at first glance, they do differ in the details.