Muirium wrote:Buckling spring is very clicky but only lightly tactile. It's almost linear, compared to Cherry MX blue. Which means it is a smooth tactile switch. But a loud one!
What.
Buckling spring has a relatively gentle ramp up in force until the tactile point, but it is highly tactile (getting over the tactile point causes a SIGNIFICANT drop in force), while still being smooth.
MX Blue has a hard ramp up to the tactile point, yes, along with a corresponding steep ramp down. It feels a lot less smooth because of that. It also doesn't feel smooth because Cherry switches suck, and are gritty.
Muirium wrote:Topre is very likely the answer to your question: a nice tactile curve instead of just a bump. But still not as smooth as linear switches, by definition.
It also depends on what your definition of smoothness is. If you want something with tactility that ramps smoothly up
and down, you want Topre. If you want something that slides smoothly (as in not gritty), that's another question, that Model F buckling spring and beam spring can both answer, and I've got some quite smooth (but lots of tactility right up front, that goes away quickly) taxi yellow Alps in an Apple //c keyboard.