Over the decades the keyboards we’ve used have gotten worse as the computers we use them with have gotten better, but the mechanical key switch’s sudden arrival in everything from gaming keyboards to laptops makes it clear this long-neglected tech is making a comeback. Our computer keyboards are finally nearly as good as the ones our parents used. Only there are a lot of choices available now. Finding the right key switch for you fingers is more complicated than you would think.There are two primary types of keyboard keys used today: mechanical keys, like the buckling spring found in the classic IBM Type M from 1985, and membrane keys, like the ones in your Apple keyboard. The former are buttons with a spring mechanism inside while the latter are composed of pressure sensitive pads on a plastic membrane. Membrane keys gained popularity in the early 90s because they are more spill proof, cheaper to make, and, ostensibly, more durable due to having fewer moving parts than a mechanical keyboard. Fewer moving parts should mean the keyboard is less likely to have a failure.

Membrane keyboards can also be much smaller, which is why its the preferred switch type in nearly every laptop currently available. Membrane keys are also found in the keyboard attached to your desktop computer, the controllers for your game console, and even the remote control for your TV.But a membrane key doesn’t "click” like a mechanical key does, which is why enthusiasts started to drift back to the mechanical keyboard. First it was just the obsessed. People who would track down old Model M keyboards or the later Unicomp clone, or spend too much money on something like the Matias Tactile Pro—a keyboard that looked like a late 90s Mac keyboard but had the ALPS key switches of an ancient Apple Extended Keyboard inside. Then the gamers got in on the act. Gamers like mechanical keyboards, because of their long-term durability and their ability to handle furious keypresses. And as the gamers glommed on, starting in the early 2010s, one company rose above the others to meet the new demand: Cherry, a key switch manufacturer originally founded in Illinois in 1953 .

You’ll notice at this point that I haven’t said much about the X360's convertible screen. The "360" part is actually the least interesting feature of the laptop. Sure, you can fold it over and use it with its included pen as a gigantic ass tablet, but in practice, this isn’t what makes it worth your money.The laptop isn’t all good, though. I’m annoyed that HP added row of function keys to right side of the keyboard. As a touch typist, I felt myself off by a letter, which was extremely frustrating. The good news is, you’ll get used to the extra keys. The bad news is it will take a few days. The keyboard, is a departure for HP and actually great to type on, except for those extra function keys on the right.
Fortunately, the rest of the laptop experience is very good. I like that the X360 has two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, a regular USB, and an SD card slot, because it means I didn’t have to grab an adapter when I needed to charge my phone. The screen, which works with either your finger or the included pen, is absolutely gorgeous and responsive. The display’s colors are bright, and image quality was crisp and clear while playing both Civ VI or watching videos on Netflix. The stylus isn’t as good as the experience you’ll get on a Surface Pro or Surface Book, because it feels just a little more basic and its internals aren’t as advanced, but it was able to keep up with my doodles and handwritten entries with ease.

In fact, the whole computer keeps up with most of my processing demands. I never felt like the laptop was dragging—whether I was running Gizmodo’s Photoshop test, or chatting on Skype or tempting fate and leaving two web browsers with dozens of tabs open. This isn’t going to be as beefy as a quad-core computer you could buy from Dell or Apple, but you’re also paying at least $300 less, so it might not matter.Traditionally, going cheaper means sacrificing build and quality, but HP is proving that you can still get a lot of really good computer for a really low prices. If you’re looking for a 15-inch laptop that won’t break the bank, has a great screen, decent port selection, and costs under $1500, the HP X360 should definitely be on your list.Nothing tests your resolve to identify a certain way like a big, bank-breaking purchase. In December, after five years of back-and-forth, I took the dive and bought a gaming PC. Until I was standing in the Micro Center checkout aisle with a big, stately "PowerSpec” box in my cart, I kicked and screamed the whole way there. "Buying in” is a scary thing, especially when your lifestyle is still possible, but significantly compromised, without doing so.

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Prior to pulling out of the Micro Center parking lot, I played Overwatch or Final Fantasy XIV every day on a powerful laptop that needed some deft jerry-rigging to run new games and, for most other things, loaded up my Xbox One. I didn’t want to drop a month’s rent on hardware. And I didn’t want one of those glowing, green gaming PCs equipped with fangs and pincers. For me, there was also the damningly impossible question of "How much PC gaming is enough to justify a gaming PC?” In the end, it was a simple calculation: an unequipped laptop vs. the royal treatment, minus $1,000.Getting here took five years, in part, because of a conversation I had every year with a Best Buy employee. It goes like this: I’m wandering around their PC section, checking out their wares or shopping for a new laptop, and I’d encounter some Alien vs. Predator-style gaming rig, with toothy grating, promising to "push optical limits” or "maximize gaming performance,” the copywriting equivalent of steroids. Always, at that moment, a salesperson would initiate this conversation:

"Oh, so do you want a gaming PC?” they reply. "It sounds like you need a gaming PC. What kind of graphics are you looking for? How much memory? Solid state or-.”Here, I always shortcircuited. It seems like a simple enough computation—play video games, purchase gaming PC. It’s the last thing I mention, and yet, it’s the most important factor determining which tool I will choose to go about my increasingly online life. It’s not just a matter of "next-gen tech” and "powerful gameplay.” It feels, in a way, like this bored, run-of-the-mill Best Buy employee stands before the gate that leads to some gilded tower of PC gamers. It felt like I wasn’t serious unless I was serious about framerate. I wasn’t a player until my walls reflected the soft glow of a blue LED fan. Buying a gaming PC is just as much an investment in who you are as it is in how you’re gaming. But after being hired by Kotaku, how I related to a gaming PC started to change. What seemed like an identity calculation that only transpired in the aisles of Best Buy became part of how I do my job. It’s a sort of insurance for running future games with less difficulty, for being able to get more out of games I already play by having beefier hardware.

That’s only half the truth, though. I bought a gaming PC, in part, because I like winning in Overwatch. Since it’s team-based, your teammates know if you’re lagging on your rush out of the spawn point. Also, Overwatch isn’t one of those games where it’s fine for your computer to overheat in the middle of a competitive match. That’s the beast I was wrestling.To play Overwatch on my HP Envy laptop, with its Nvidia GeForce 930M graphics card and its i7-6500U microprocessor, I had to construct a somewhat elaborate superstructure that involved two to three fans and, occasionally, a dictionary. My Envy is not a bad laptop by any means, but four or five matches in, it would get hot and angry and hiss. Most of the time, it would shut down without warning—just a small sigh. Its Overwatch aversion was a little confusing, since it ran all my other PC games just fine—Final Fantasy XIV, most importantly.To appease it, I purchased a cooling pad with a fan inside and a mini fan that sat on my desk and blew into its fan. Sometimes, I put a dictionary under it to get just the right angle or leaned it against some books just so. When none of that worked, I dragged my 4-foot floor fan next to my desk and directed its wind into the desk fan which, in turn, blew into the laptop fan.After a while, my laptop just stopped having it. My bosses eyed me as I made my bi-weekly pilgrimage to Staples, insisting it was time. Staples’ technicians warned me that it was only going to get worse unless I got a rig more suitable for gaming.

My first impulse was to build one. I would go on PCpartpicker.com, and, with requisite research, piece together a custom build. It wasn’t particularly intimidating—as Kotaku managing editor Riley MacLeod said, "Building a gaming PC is just like grown-up Legos.” I reasoned that by building my own PC, I would familiarize myself with its internal organs and, if something broke, I could identify the problem myself. It would be an exciting challenge and teach me a new, useful knowledge set. That was my plan, and if you ask my friends, I wouldn’t shut up about it.But on December 26th, while I was home over the holidays, I took my parents’ car to a Virginia Micro Center to purchase a more powerful cooling fan for my laptop, hoping it would hold me over until I mustered the courage to order parts. Micro Center is a vestige of early computing, one of the few brick and mortar computer stores where, in my experience, salespeople always seem knowledgeable, but so are the customers. When I entered, I saw the sign hanging over their desktop section and made a beeline there, forgetting my original task. All of the employees seemed busy, so I could wander around without anybody quizzing me on my gaming habits or dream specs.

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As I looked over the glowing green towers and jagged, monster-ish rigs, a few larger but more innocuous desktops caught my eye. There was a table with about five two-foot-tall towers, each with at least two ventilation grates and top-notch graphics cards, all under about $1,100—not an insignificant sum, by any means. One in particular, a PowerSpec G313 custom build, had many of the features I wanted out of my own build. I wanted a 1070 graphics card, since a 1080 was definitely out of my price range. It had 16GB of RAM and an i5-6600K unlocked processor. It could handle VR. It had a 480GB solid state boot drive. It was $999.A customer, not a salesperson, approached me. "Hey, I don’t mean to bother you,” he began, "but I have that PC. It’s amazing.” I immediately shot him a dozen questions and, enthusiastically, he explained that, yes, it handles Blizzard games with maxed-out settings and, absolutely, he does not regret buying a pre-built gaming PC. A salesperson joined the conversation, noting that the graphics card alone would cost $500, only $300 less than my DIY price limit. Purchasing each of its parts separately, the PC would have cost about $1,300. Considering the specs, it was a steal. Also, it has space for another graphics card, so if in five years my 1070 wasn’t doing the trick, I could just add another.

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