Everyone has been going on and on about Hall effect controllers and keyboards since they made a splash on the scene just a year or so ago. I have even tried out one of the better hall effect keyboards to great effect (Corsair K70 Pro TKL with Hall effect switches). Hall effect keys can be tuned to trigger at different points in the keypress descent.

Having been using heavier brown switches in my gaming keyboard, my touch-typing was a little heavy handed at first. When I learned I could back off and even just feather the touches, my typing speed definitely went up by about 5-10wpm – going from about 70wpm to 80-85wpm. The problem was that I wasn’t really into the $179 price tag – so I returned it and am waiting for prices to come down.

But there is a new game in town: TMR (Tunnel Magneto Resistance), or sometimes called inductive switches. A few folks have been releasing TMR keyboards (Ducky OneX), but adoption seems slow and reviews seem to be scarce.

Eve Butt, however, wrote a review of a TMR game controller – the PB Tails Metal Crush Defender. She seems to think it does better than its Hall effect kin (like the 8BitDo Ultimate). She claims it gives noticeably more instant precision than the Hall effect equivalent and never suffers from the dreaded, well documented stick drift common in normal Switch controllers. Primarily, she notes much less dead space before input is registered.

I, for one, am excited about the input arms race that is delivering us some really fascinating new technology. If Hall effect keyboards come down in price, I definitely thought I’d buy one. But perhaps I should try out a TMR keyboard as well.