The Gateron KS-22 fires on light for 100 million presses
The Gateron KS-22 optical switch fires when a plastic flag on its stem breaks an infrared light beam, with no metal contact leaf involved. That one design change earns its 100 million keystroke rating and skips the debounce delay. Yet a plain optical switch feels about as fast as its mechanical twin.
Key Takeaways
- The KS-22 senses each press with a light beam in place of a metal contact.
- With no metal to wear out, it lasts about 100 million presses.
- Skipping debounce gives optical a tiny 5ms edge on paper.
- A plain optical switch feels about as fast as a mechanical one.
- Optical switches only fit optical-wired boards, so a normal hot-swap board cannot take them.
How does the Gateron KS-22 optical switch work?
An optical switch and a mechanical switch share a stem, a spring, and a plastic housing. As switch teardowns at Voltcave show, the two types differ only in how the press gets detected.
A normal mechanical switch closes a circuit with a curved metal contact leaf that touches a plate. The KS-22 has no such leaf. Instead, the circuit board carries tiny infrared transmitters and receivers. A small piece of plastic on the stem blocks the light beam when the key goes down, and the board reads that break as a press.
Keychron’s guide says the optical switch uses light to trigger the key, so no physical contact is needed to send the signal.
Razer lays the same contactless idea out differently. Its optical switches put the sensor inside the switch and fire when the beam completes, rather than when it breaks.
Why the Gateron KS-22 reaches a 100 million keystroke rating
The contact point has no exposed metal leaf to bend, pit, or corrode over millions of presses, and that rubbing metal is the main thing that ages a mechanical switch.
Gateron’s own mechanical switches are rated around 50 million clicks, and the KS-22 optical doubles that to 100 million. Keychron gives the same split: about 50 million presses for a traditional switch, about 100 million for an optical one.
Only a handful of mechanical switches reach 100 million.
| Switch | Type | Rated lifespan |
|---|---|---|
| Gateron KS-22 optical | Optical | ~100 million |
| Cherry MX Red, Speed Silver, Black, Brown | Mechanical | ~100 million |
| Kailh Box | Mechanical | ~80 million |
| Gateron mechanical (typical) | Mechanical | ~50 million |
| Most other mechanicals | Mechanical | ~50 million |
Without the leaf, dust and moisture have no metal contact to gum up. Fifty million presses is already a decade or more of daily typing, though, so the longer rating rarely decides a purchase on its own.
Does an optical switch always feel faster? The debounce myth
An optical switch has no contact bounce to filter out, so it skips the debounce delay a mechanical switch needs, which on paper is worth roughly a 5 millisecond head start.
In a hands-on reaction test, though, a plain optical switch came out only about 0.0078 milliseconds quicker than a Gateron mechanical, far too small a gap for anyone to feel.
Standard optical switches won’t really give you much of an upper hand in-game.
Razer’s in-switch, beam-completes design changes the result. Independent tests put its optical switches 10 to 40 milliseconds ahead of a standard mechanical, depending on the game, a gap you can feel in a fast shooter. Magnetic boards chase speed a different way, through tuned key reset points.
Buy the KS-22 for its lifespan and smooth linear feel, then, and ignore the reaction-time claims. Whether the 5 millisecond figure shrinks at modern 8000Hz polling rates has not been tested here.
Where the Gateron KS-22 fits, and where it can’t go
Optical switches only work in optical-wired keyboards, a limit most spec sheets skip. The infrared parts live on the PCB, so you cannot drop a KS-22 into a normal mechanical hot-swap board. Keychron says a hot-swap mechanical board cannot be converted to optical either, because the trigger method and the PCB are too different. Mixed boards do exist: Logitech’s G512 X runs analog and mechanical switches side by side in the same kind of socket.
Gateron makes a single tactile optical, the KS-22 Brown, alongside its linear versions, while the mechanical world offers dozens of tactiles from many brands. Gateron is also nearly the only company selling loose optical switches, so you have far fewer parts to mod with than in the huge mechanical market.
Optical boards need no soldering, so swapping parts is quick. Modern linear opticals also type smoothly enough to rival budget mechanical linears, without the scratch you get from stock Cherry MX Reds. For a first keyboard where you want long life and a clean feel with no mods, the KS-22 makes sense. For a tinkerer who wants to tune and swap, a mechanical hot-swap board is still the wider road.