Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin Switch Review

At effectively the tail end of October we have squarely landed in the middle of my favorite time of year for sports with college football and all its discourse in full swing. Past the first few weekends of big schools paying to blow out ‘Nowhere State University’ we are now in the part of the season where ranked teams begin duking it out to try and climb into the top dozen spots for the end of year playoff or desperately hold onto their coveted rankings for those already up there. Long time readers here will already know that I am a diehard college football and Ohio State Buckeyes fan on account of no less than three separate review introductions being dedicated to them over their incredible table-running series of wins to land the championship back in 2024, though I’m not bringing this all up just because of the exciting game against Indiana last weekend. (For those of you who did watch, know that I never at any point whatsoever lost any faith in the Buckeyes.) I’m bringing up college football once more as last weekend was truly unparalleled in its chaos and as much as a fan of the sport as I am, I’m an even bigger fan of any unpredictable, rarely if ever seen moments in sports as a whole. Last Saturday, five of the top eight teams in college football lost their games, with two of those winning teams (Ohio State #4 and BYU #8) beating other top 8 teams in the process, and the remainder of that trio being Miami – who were absolutely bailed out by the ACC referees against unranked Florida State. In addition to these games producing a truly unprecedented amount of heartbreak for top programs in such nail-biting fashion for just about every one of those games, they also resulted in some stats that literally have not occurred in my lifetime. For example, this was the first time since 1996 that Georgia, Texas, and Alabama – all blue blood historical powerhouses that have bounced around the upper echelons of the sport since then – all lost on the same day. And to make matters even worse for Georgia fans, their loss to unranked Auburn resulted in the first consecutive weeks of a number one ranked school losing to an unranked opponent since 1990. To say that this hasn’t been a topic of conversation literally every single day that I’ve been at work this past week would be an absolute lie – and the online discourse around such has only been even more crazy. Don’t worry though, this isn’t turning into ThereminGoat’s Barstool and I’ll get on with the switch review here in just a few short lines. I just simply couldn’t help but share just how truly unbelievable the games were to watch last weekend.

Figure 1: Just a truly insane weekend for the sport of football.

Switch Background

Don’t say anything about magnetic switches.

Don’t do it. Don’t say anything about them.

Given my recent tendency to try and segue my personal life moment from the pre-review background section into the actual background section of the review itself, I’m sure you’re all wondering how I could possibly pull off the connection between mid-season college football chaos and yet another Wingtree silent tactile. I will be doing so here shortly through their tenuously shared category of “things happening now that haven’t happened in a really long time”. Think of it as a Jeopardy category that was simply too wordy and exceedingly too niche for television. Mechanical keyboard switches, and by extension their designs and aesthetics that manufacturers tweak to meet the community intrigue, come and go in waves of popularity. These waves aren’t true to their ocean-inspired analogues, though, as they don’t come in and go back out rhythmically, but rather swell in presence, take over the market until damn near everyone is drowning in copycat offerings, and then slowly wash away from the community’s collective consciousness over time. It’s quite rare to see anything in switches that was once ‘a thing’ disappear and re-emerge sometime late – especially so when it was an initially failed idea or unpopular product. (Arguably one of the most famous switches of all time in the Invyr Pandas rebuke this claim, though, so take that with a grain of salt.) Take switch feeling as an example of how these trends in design shift over time. While tactile MX switches are quite relevant in today’s offerings, they do so in a different fashion than when they were as popular (if not more so) back in peak COVID times. Today, tactiles are focused largely on unique mechanisms or niche-filling combinations of materials and dimensions that push the limits of the platform – Sillyworks x Gateron Type Rs, Gateron Lanes, BSUN Golden Apples, etc. being perfect examples of such. Six years ago, though, tactiles were designed to be early punching, hard hitting with an aggressive bite of snappiness at the onset of their downstrokes and everything else left as a simple afterthought – a type we only rarely see today. Linears also have shifted as well, with the heavily lubed, sluggish designs of the COVID era community boom thinning out both in popularity and literally in favor of more delicately touched, precisely lubed switches which are smooth though with the feeling of their underlying materials intact. In fact, these waves of trends and community tastes are so generally segregated that occasional pop ups of switches in the modern day that were like those COVID-era designs – a la the HMX Cthulhus and their heavier, more noticeable factory lubing – are warranting of community attention and review. Though this isn’t just a trend in trends that is seen in switch types – it also happens in switch aesthetics as well.

Figure 2: See, doesn't really work so well does it?

Much like the types of switches and their sub-type design features which truly define their character, switch aesthetics have undoubtedly had both micro- and macro-scale runs of trends. In some respects we can look to the demarcation point of the modern switch market as such an example, with the explosion in custom colored switch offerings following the Stealios Controversy of 2019 and the subsequent rise of Durock/JWK as the forefront of the rainbow-set array of designs we have today. That moment marked the end of days for the general OEM style switch design, which limited your switch to being a handful of differently colored stems in either black over black, clear over black, or clear over milky white color housing combinations. Another overbearingly large yet more subtle shift in aesthetic designs of switches also came about in 2021 with Gateron introducing their new premium switch molds by way of the original Oil Kings, inverting the logo on their nameplates to help differentiate the new stock from the old. While I can imagine that there were likely some random switches here and there that tried this before with their nameplates, this was a definite mark in the sand where nearly all switch manufacturers began adopting this trend in successive releases, making their switches have inverted nameplates as such. There have also been plenty of micro-scale trends as well. I would certainly argue that per-switch serialization for special offerings first shown off in the TTC OG family of switches for Lunar New Year constituted a trend after spreading briefly out to both Haimu and Tecsee. Glitter is also a larger but still relevant example of such, starting out with switches like the Keyfirst Blings and being elevated to a truly unparalleled level with Invokeys’ Reserve family of switches. Or let’s even recall the 2025 peak of the ‘diamond’ shaped and rollerball-based switches, with octagonal housings and stems embedded with ball bearings for smoothness being design features that simply couldn’t be ignored. While I could take this and pivot it towards the ever-diversifying field of switch mechanisms and in turn the changing design trends that they are able to leverage on account of missing certain key parts that would be considered critical to core functionality of the MX platform, there has actually been a trend that has narrowly arrived within just the MX platform throughout 2026. You’ve likely seen them, too – they’re print-decorated LED diffusers. Though like the college football craziness I kicked this all off with only a few paragraphs above, you would also be surprised to find that this actually has happened once upon a time.

Figure 3: Some examples of aesthetically notable switches from the paragraph above including Gateron Oil Kings, Diamond Avalons, Rollerball Blacks, Keyfirst Bling Blue, Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin, and TTC OG Rabbit switches.

(Relatively) long before the new wave era of Wingtree-decorated LED diffusers like the Pumpkin switches that have brought us together today, it was actually Tecsee that first introduced the concept of the print-decorated LED diffuser. With Tecsee having since faded from relevancy a couple of years ago, and thus a potential that some of you reading this may not actually have a recollection of them in their prime duking it out with Durock/JWK for market share, know that Tecsee was not historically known for marketing their truly out there, innovative switch ideas all that well. (This is not all that dissimilar to Kailh and their more crazy R&D experiments of switches, in a way.) And so by way of an October 11th, 2023, grainy video posted to their Instagram account, Tecsee introduced the “Tecsee Christmas Switches” – a pair of white and red-colored switches on top of a pulsating RGB colored board that strobed light up from underneath the switches and out through LED diffusers that were blacked out save for a cutout of Santa in his sleigh with a reindeer on one pair, and the figure of a rabbit on the other. This was the entire extent of the debut of this new concept for MX switches. Nothing else was effectively ever shared by Tecsee again about these switches, a fact made even more acutely obvious by this being the last post on their Instagram as well. The Tecsee Christmas switches just kind of eventually became available to those of us with close ties to Tecsee sales representatives at the time around January of 2024, or at least this is the earliest time frame that I knew someone who got ahold of them. (Yes, this did kind of defeat the Christmas-themed seasonality of their design.) However, the Tecsee Christmas switches that we ended up with weren’t the Rabbit and Santa-based designs that were debuted in the only marketing of these switches, it was instead a Rabbit… and a Dolphin. Yes, a Tecsee Christmas Dolphin. While the rationale for this was never actually shared with anyone to the best of my knowledge, the presumed reason for the Santa switches and their more intricate LED diffuser design cutouts never making it wide scale production was incredibly evident upon receiving the switches as the black coatings used to opaque the rest of the diffusers was extremely fragile and prone to chipping. If you look closely, this is even somewhat evident in the original strobing LED video with small pinholes of light around Santa and presumably Rudolph being able to be seen already, almost certainly due to being scratched open by PCB pins when tossed around in a bag of switches. While Tecsee very, very briefly tried to reprise this design again later in 2024 with the Candling Dragon V1 switches, they effectively fared no better with respect to the durability of this design. And with this brief and by all metrics unsuccessful attempt at doing something unique, this never before tried design twist on switches silently faded out of the community’s memory. It also slipped out of my mind too, to be honest.

Figure 4: Instagram screen cap of the original Tecsee Christmas switches showing unreleased Santa designs (Back) and as-released Rabbit designs (Front).

Figure 5: "Do you truly, in your heart of hearts, truly believe that this is a Christmas switch?"

It’s now 2026 (or more technically the very final waning days of 2025) and you’re HMX, desperately trying to acquire new territory in a market that you’ve occupied since KTT was popular with dozens upon dozens of switches made over the years. The 80Retros’ collaborations and film canister designs were huge hits a year ago, but something else needs to be aesthetically pulled from the ether to truly stand out among the MX and other switch type mechanisms growing in popularity. The answer is the HMX Toast switches – buttery yellowed colored switches with an opaqued LED diffuser that has a thin line animated bread with a smiley face carved out of the center of it. While it is entirely unknown if HMX arrived at this shine-through character design independently of Tecsee and their festive animals as part of efforts to try and maximize the design of each and every component, or they just flat out stole this old idea, the release of the HMX Toast switches struck a chord with the community that the Christmas Dolphins and Rabbits simply could have never imagined. The community demanded more. Leveraging a mashup with 80Retros in order to double down on the popular decorated LED design of the Toast switches as well as the film cannister packaging for switches, they followed up with a similarly styled pink HMX Blush Charm switch, featuring a negative shine-through image etched into a flat pink backdrop on the diffusers. This was soon thereafter followed up by a twist on this design, instead going for opaquely printed designs on clear, see-through LED diffusers in the HMX Rosa Centifolia and Snowflake switches – introducing a both ‘positively printed’ opaque design and ‘negatively printed’ shine through designs to their decorated LED diffuser switch offerings. However, their capture of this newly forming niche was relatively short lived. In today’s ultra-competitive and slowly shrinking market for MX-style switches, when one manufacturer does something, inevitably all of them end up finding a way to do it as well – and in this case, Wingtree wasn’t going to let HMX do this all on their own. (It’s not like Wingtree is ashamed to ride coattails either given how much they flaunt their ability to make switches using LICHICX’s old molds, either.) Starting out with similarly negative printed designs via the Wingtree Uchi V2 and Anon switches around the time in which the Rosa Centifolia and Snowflake switches hit the market around Q2 of 2026, Wingtree then too mashed this up with their bread-and-butter market success and combined this printing technique with LICHICX-molded LED diffusers to result in a negatively printed dessert for the Wingtree Berry Cheescake switches.

Figure 6: HMX Blush swtiches with their 80Retros' style film cannister packaging as rendered in the debut ZFrontier post.

Figure 7: Aforementioned print-decorated LED diffuser switches of mid-2026 including HMX Blush Charm, HMX Rosa Centifolia, HMX Snowflake, and Wingtree Berry Cheesecake.

Literally only a handful of months prior to this review being written, the arms race for decorated LED diffusers was well and truly on by this point. HMX decided to yet again step up the ante with not just single color positive and negative printing on LED diffusers on their switches, but full on multi-color opaque designs that rendered the diffusers more of a swappable billboard than a functional light emitting part of the switch. Leveraging popular animated characters in media such as Hello Kitty, HMX quickly followed up with the HMX Meme and Cinnamon switches with multi-colored printed designs, something which Wingtree arrived at within a week or two before or after HMX in the form of their LICHICX-based Pumpkin silent tactiles. From about the last sentence onwards, what was already a bit of a clustered jumble of offerings and release dates that I can’t quite sort out, the order of releases only gets more convoluted and so I’ll just break it out by manufacturer. Continuing to evolve, HMX now isn’t just doing one style of LED diffuser design per switch release but rather an entire set of mixed designs to be integrated into packages of the HMX Blush Charm SP switches, leveraging the mixed aesthetics for a single switch type that were popular in Novelkeys’ Milkshake Silk and Huano’s Mahjong switch releases. Wingtree is also continuing to push the boundaries as well with their newly teased Tiny Apple switches catching up and surpassing the HMX and Cinnamon designs with a full cartoon graphic that has at least a half dozen more colors than any printed LED diffuser design before them. And as if all of this wasn’t confusing enough already, even Keygeek has decided to toss themselves into the fray, skipping right to releasing multi-color printed LED diffuser designs by way of their Butter Bear switches and a yet to be released blue switch inspired by Hachiware of Chiikawa. With these designs being teased on ZFrontier less than a month prior to writing this review, it’s also entirely likely that there’s another handful of switches as such that either haven’t made their way to my attention yet or simply won’t ever make it out of China to western collectors. So while the story is still being written on just how far the aesthetics of print-decorated LED diffusers we’ll be taken – and if they’ll continue to be mashed up with other historical aesthetic trends like glitter, serialization, etc. – it’s beyond evident that these constitute a clear design trend in MX switches as of 2026.

Figure 8: HMX Blush Charm SP "Halo Edition" switches featuring 7 different print-decorated LED diffuser wedges presumably randomly assorted in packs of switches. You almost thought you caught me slipping with the letters ‘HE’ in that photo, but I know better!

Figure 9: Wingtree Tiny Apple switches with a truly adorable print-decorated LED diffuser design.

Taking us back to one of the more advanced but not quite top-of-the-line LED diffuser designs of Wingtree’s repertoire thus far, it feels at least seasonably appropriate to go into the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches. Serving as the closest Wingtree-made parallel with the original HMX blush switches, which were a mashup of 80Retros’ packaging and designs with HMX’s print-decorated LED diffuser designs, the Pumpkins utilize multi-color blocking to make a negatively printed jack-o’-lantern that combines with the full-height LED diffuser and winglatch molds of the classic LICHICX switch designs. First popping up for sale on Unikeys on August 12th, 2026, these 3.6 mm stroke length, ~50 gram peak force silent tactiles have since made it to several other vendors such as Divinikeys, Soupkeys, and MecahanicalKeyboards, generally at price points around $0.40 per switch depending on where they are purchased from. Despite being only a couple of months old as of the time of writing, the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches have also sustained an unusual amount of community attention, though not exactly for what you may have imagined. Even with exceptionally eye catching seasonal aesthetics, the largest draw to these switches appears to be their “Holy Panda-Like” (whatever that means, anymore) strong tactility combined with their LICHICX-style dampening mechanisms, something that is mentioned in nearly all discourse about them online. While I would imagine that this would suggest these switches will continue to be made for some time, Wingtree thus far hasn’t been around quite long enough for us to really know what their long-term goals are with switches that they produce. On one hand it would be easy to assume that Wingtree will sustain these on account of their popularity, though the other hand suggests they may be supplanted by a similarly tactile switch of other designs given just how many LICHICX-molded switches they’ve produced throughout 2026.

Pumpkin Performance

Note: On account of these switches technically being made by Wingtree using old LICHICX molds, these switches have quite a few names associated with them. While they are definitely ‘Pumpkin’ switches, various sources will list them as Wingtree Pumpkins, LICHICX Pumpkins, or Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkins. Please be aware that these are all the same switches both out there on the market as well as in here if I refer to them in mixed fashion.

Appearance

At the highest level, the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches come in a three-part colorway that is definitely unique, though admittedly not nearly as reminiscent of the pumpkin / jack-o’-lantern printed on the front of them as I’d like to pretend. While the orange stems are definitely close to pumpkin in color, the marigold yellow top housings and flat green bottom housings of these switches more so strike me as being of the general color pallet of gourds as a whole more than narrowly just pumpkins. Despite the obvious iconographic match to their name on the front, the fact that these switches have an English name and yet were designed and produced in China makes me wonder if there is some abstract translation issue acting here. (In a way this reminds me of how Americans will refer to pickled cucumbers, specifically, as ‘pickles’ whereas my understanding of Asian countries is that ‘pickles’ can refer to a wide range of pickled vegetables and not just cucumbers.) Potential cultural nuances lost in translation aside, there’s absolutely no mistaking what these switches are nor their origins on account of how they look, how they feel, and how they are externally designed. Even amidst the rapidly expanding list of switches which feature print-decorated LED diffusers that I shared above, these are by far among the most visually vibrant and stand out. Like all good switches, though, there are details at the part and sub-part levels that are of note and should be discussed. These details and features can be found discussed in the paragraphs and photos below.

Figure 10: Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches and their components.

Figure 11: Backlit view of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches showing how they would effectively look when used in an RGB or LED supporting keyboard.

Looking first to the marigold yellow polycarbonate top housings of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches, these may not initially strike users as being made by Wingtree or of LICHICX-molding at first glance. This is largely because of the fact that they featured thin font, raised text nameplates that read ‘Clik-Clak’ rather than Wingtree or LICHICX. Given, though, that there are exceedingly few manufacturers over the years that have made winglatch style housings and some other Wingtree-made switches feature Clik-Clak nameplates, like the Wingtree Orange, it’s possible with enough searching that they could put this together. Past this initial first surprise, though, the housings are relatively unremarkable, featuring only a single capital letter mold marking on the interior upper left-hand corner of the housing as well as truly open front slot where the LED diffusers are pressure fit. As for the diffusers, themselves, they are wedge shaped in a relatively normal fashion and feature a high, sloped surface that touches the upper edge of the front housing and creates a uniform, flush face with the rest of the housing as opposed to half height or bubbled LED diffusers of other manufacturers. In order to create the see-through jack-o’-lantern design on the front, it appears that they printed four passes of color onto the diffuser using some plastic-based ink – a flat white layer underlying all subsequent prints to provide opacity, a combined yellow pass of the background and teeth/eyes, an orange pass that constitutes the pumpkin and the stem, and a small red marking that seems to suggest the jack-o’-lantern is ether alert or mad. All of the what would otherwise be outlines of the features of the design are entirely clear, allowing light to diffuse from them like a jack-o’-lantern. This is much more evident when viewing the diffusers from the back side of them as the side that touches the housing only shows the white base layer of printing used for opacity and the otherwise unprinted outline.

Figure 12: Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin top housing exterior showing fine line 'Clik-Clak' nameplate as well as wide open front slot for pressure fitting the print-decorated LED diffusers.

Figure 13: Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin top housing interior showing upper left-hand corner mold marking, trace amounts of factory lubing, and features which are otherwise identical to other switches produced via LICHICX molds.

Figure 14: Top and bottom end of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin diffusers showing the jack-o'-lantern print on the top side and otherwise normal shape on the bottom.

Figure 15: Horrendously aligned Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin diffusers as seen through the back side (Left) and front side (Right) showing different print layers used in the creation of the effect.

Moving next to the largely pumpkin orange POM stems of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin silent tactiles, we’re greeted with the three-part stem design that has been documented here on this site numerous times over as being of LICHICX creation. The orange layer – which constitutes the keycap mount and the center pole – acts to connect the keycap to the switch and form the structure upon which the next two layers are attached. The translucent white lower portion constitutes the slider rails and leaf-interacting legs, giving the stem the ability to not only move up and down but also actuate the switch like it is intended. And finally, the inner gray layer is made out of a semi-squishy material that acts to both dampen the topping out of the switch through the top edges of the slider rails as well as the bottom out where it is the internal portion of this layer surrounding the center pole that contacts the bottom housing at bottom out. With such high contrast between the dampening gray and structural orange layers, the internal construction of these layers at the connecting point of the center pole is much more evident in the photos below than in other LICHICX-molded switches documented here. Beyond this construction, the design is about as expected as can be – they feature non-tapered slider rails with fine line raised edges that are presumably there to reduce surface area of contact with bottom housing guider rails, a translucent white part mold letter located on the front plate, and a sideways numerical mold marking on the orange part on the backplate. The center poles of the Pumpkin stems are non-tapered and of normal length as to not bottom out on themselves and instead the dampening mechanism of the stems.

Figure 16: Top and bottom sides of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin silent tactile stems showing their three-part construction, non-tapered slider rails, and trace amounts of factory lubing.

Figure 17: Deep internal view of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin stems highlighting the connection points between the various parts of the LICHICX stem dampening system.

Finally arriving at the flat green nylon bottom housings of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches, we find the least amount of unique or noteworthy detail that could differentiate these from other LICHICX switches. They simply are clearly of those old molds through and through. Internally these housings feature ribbed guider rails, non-squared dampening pads at the base of those rails, a small south side spring collar, trace amounts of factory lubing, and a flat, thin, evenly walled center pole hole mast to accommodate bottom outs of the stems. Externally the Pumpkin switches come in only PCB mount / 5-Pin variety and feature two distinctly LICHICX design details on them. The first is that of a very small rectangular notch in the upper center portion of the housing underneath where the leaves reside. The second is that of an inverted, multi-part mold marking starting with ‘C’ and followed by a number that can be faintly seen beneath that notch. Both of these features have been documented here as having been on other switches produced with LICHICX molds.

Figure 18: Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin bottom housing interior showing dampening pads at the base of the slide rails, a short south side spring collar, and trace amounts of factory lubing both in the base of the housing as well as on the leaves where the stem legs make contact.

Figure 19: Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin bottom housing exterior with PCB mounting legs and mold markings identical to other switches produced via LICHICX molds as have been documented here.

Push Feel

Given the discussion in the background section of how tactiles have shifted away from strong, out of the gate tactility during the peak COVID era (a la original Holy Pandas) to softer, more nuanced designs in the present day, I feel it somewhat prudent to say that most people don’t actually know what a “Holy Panda-like” switch is anymore. In modern parlance, “Holy Panda-like” is just used flippantly to describe a tactile that has any degree of heft to a tactile bump located somewhere in the first half of it’s downstroke. And while it is somewhat true that the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches could be marketed as being ‘Holy Panda-like’ based on this common definition, these are not anything at al llike true Holy Panda tactiles in reality. The Pumpkin silent tactiles are switches that have a slight bit heavier than medium strength tactile bump that is wide, slowly unfurling, and under finger feels as if it develops from the onset of the downstroke until well past the half way point towards bottom out. It’s so wide, in fact, that you only really notice it when typing on them at a moderate to fast pace as slow pushing of the stems causes the change in force to be much more gradual and not as obvious in feeling. The long tactile bumps of these switches ground out after what feels like a very short hangtime onto the firm LICHICX style stem dampening mechanism, giving them an overall feeling that is tight, compact, and as if they were designed without any loose or uncared for aspects. This overall vibe is only further strengthened by the equally as firm and muted feeling topping outs. While only briefly mentioned in the physical inspection of the bottom housings above, there is a minor degree of factory lubing in the Pumpkins that is present enough to render the switches smooth, though not overly sluggish, heavy, or remotely bogged down. Given the fact that the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin silent tactiles are slightly stronger feeling than most other successfully silent tactiles have been historically – something which is generally done to minimize sound that is otherwise caused by aggressive interactions between leaves and strongly tactile stems – these definitely come across as designed for tactile fans in their feeling more so than silent tactile fans. As well, like most other Wingtree and LICHICX switches I’ve tried over the years, cross batch consistency is a complete non-issue here with all of the switches I tried being effectively uniform across all of these features.

Figure 20: Force curve diagram for the stock Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switch.

Figure 21: Holy Panda-like, my ass.

Sound

What is there to be said at this point in time about LICHICX’s stem dampening mechanism that hasn’t already been said here by me a couple of times or by the community at large countless numbers of times since they first struck it large with the Lucy switches? The Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin silent tactiles, on the whole, are just so damn silent that they are about as good as you can get in silent tactiles, and especially so at the intersection of their price point and strength of tactile bump. Overall, the sound profile of the switches is virtually entirely bass driven with the topping out, bottom out, and tactile bump all being more or less the same volume, vibe, and relative strength compared to one another. Perhaps the only sound that I can pick up on, something which is decently hard to do from a distance or presumably in boards that are designed and/or modified to reduce the sound of switches greatly, is that of a slight squishy snap that is very clearly the stem legs crossing the leaves of the switch. This is not unexpected! As I had alluded to in the push feeling notes above, silent tactiles have historically been kept relatively light on their tactility for this very reason as that cross point between metal and plastic violently shoving back and forth before breaking free does tend to induce pinging sounds. (And those examples of silent tactiles which come to mind as surprisingly loud despite their type like Zilents and HMX’s Volume 0-T switches are also strong-er tactiles that fall victim to this issue.) While the sound is more so driven here by the factory lube that can be seen to exist at the touch point of these two parts, producing that squishy lubed note rather than a dry metallic ringing, it is still ultimately subtle. Pointing this out here is a choice I made more so highlighting how they make sound relative to other LICIHCX silent switches than they do to other silent tactiles of any other manufacturer as this dampening mechanism exists on an island apart from all other ones. Even posthumously, LICHICX-style switches remain more silent than effectively all other manufacturers across all types of switches by a mile and much like with their push feeling, they do so consistently both across individual batches of switches as well as consecutive releases thereof.

Wobble

Present slightly more so in the N/S than E/W directions, the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches have a medium-light amount of stem wobble that isn’t likely to bother too many users unless they’re particularly picky about stem wobble. Generally, this has been my experience with LICHICX’s molds historically so it’s not all that surprising to see here, though it also indicates to me that Wingtree likely doesn’t have much of an appetite for modifying the molds in any capacity to try and improve or alter them.

Measurements

If you’re into this level of detail about your switches, you should know that I have a switch measurement sheet that logs all of this data, as well as many other cool features which can be found under the ‘Archive’ tab at the top of this page or by clicking on the card above. Known as the ‘Measurement Sheet’, this sheet typically gets updated weekly and aims to take physical measurements of various switch components to compare mold designs on a brand-by-brand basis as well as provide a rough frankenswitching estimation sheet for combining various stems and top housings.

Figure 23: Numerical details regarding the force curve for the stock Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches.

Have you ever wanted to be bombarded with more switch data than you’ve ever seen at any point in your life before? Consider checking out the ‘Force Curve Repository’ hosted on my GitHub that contains all force curves that I take both within and outside of these full-length reviews. In addition to having these graphs above, I have various other versions of the graphs, raw data, and my processed data all available for over 2000 different switches for you to use however you see fit. Check it out via the ‘Archive’ tab at the top of this page or by clicking any of the force curve cards above.

Break In

Break In Notes

17,000 Actuations

- After 17,000 actuations, the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin silent tactiles’ most notable change in performance came by way of a slight increase in both N/S and E/w direction stem wobble as compared to their stock counterparts. Much to my initial surprise, though, this would be the only increase in stem wobble across the entire break in process with successive stages below showing no further changes beyond this point. (This perhaps might not have bene as shocking had I recalled that other LICHICX switches that I’ve reviewed to date tend to behave similarly in this capacity as well.

- While this perhaps might not be worthy of a ‘-‘, I did notice that the Pumpkin switches broken in to 17,000 actuations were more prone to creating the squishy popping sound of the stem legs interacting with the leaves at more aggressive typing speeds than their stock counterparts. This difference is not all that noticeable at slower typing speeds or softer typing force.

34,000 Actuations

- In addition to the increased squishy tones through their tactile bumps as noted in the previous stage of break in, the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin silent tactiles broken in to 34,000 actuations also had leaf ping noises that were present at more aggressive typing speeds. It is worth something, I suppose, that this was fairly uniform in appearance across those switches broken in to this degree as well, something which isn’t always the case for switches that begin to change so noticeably.

51,000 Actuations

- There were no changes in the performance of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches broken in to 51,000 actuations as compared to their stock counterparts.

Figure 25: Comparative force curve diagram showing no substantial, consistent change in the force curves of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches throughout the break in process.

Comparison Notes to Other Notable Silent Tactile Switches

Note – These are not aimed at being comprehensive comparisons between all factors of these switches as this would simply be too long for this writeup. These are little notes of interest I generated when comparing these switches to the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches side by side.

Figure 26: Switches for comparison. (L-R, Top-Bot: HMX Volume 0-T, Invokeys x Alas Daydreamer, Cherry MX Honey, Gateron Oil King Silent Tactile, KTT ZenCha, and Haimu Orchid Mantis)

HMX Volume 0-T

- As was very explicitly mentioned in the full length review above, the HMX Volume 0-T are the louder and less silent of these two silent tactiles, carrying a loud, deeply snapping tactile bump that more so sounds like just a quiet tactile than a true silent tactile like the Pumpkin switches.

- The HMX Volume 0-T switches have exceedingly little stem wobble and are noticeably better than the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches with respect to this metric in both N/S and E/W directions.

- In spite of what the comparative force curve between these two switches below would suggest, the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches actually feel as if they are softer and more rounded through their tactile bumps than the HMX Volume 0-T switches. Or put the other way, the Volume 0-T switches come across as snappier, more brief, and quite a bit stronger through their bump than the Pumpkins.

Invokeys x Alas Daydreamer

- Of all of the switches on this comparison list, these are the ones that have the most similar stem wobble to that of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches, and that shouldn’t be all that surprising given that they too were made using LICHICX molds. It should be noted though that the minor stem wobble in the Daydreamers is a bit more symmetrical than that of the Pumpkins.

- In completely the opposite fashion as the comparison with the HMX Volume 0-T switches above, the comparative force curve between these two switches below does not also belay reality, but in so far that the Daydreamers do not feel nearly as strong or more forceful through their tactile bump as compared to the Pumpkins. In hand, the notable difference feels like, at best, half as much as what you see below.

- With respect to their sound profiles, the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches are a tiny bit better than the Invokeys x Alas Daydreamers on account of the fact that they are more consistent across the batch with respect to their sound profile. It should be noted, though, that the Daydreamers did not suffer from the above noted tactile bump sounds that the Pumpkins have.

Cherry MX Honey

- Even when compared to the relative train wreck that the Gateron Oil King Silent Tactiles are below, the Cherry MX Honey switches are the loudest of the silent tactiles present in this batch with them being infinitely louder, scratchier, and more noticeable on the ears than the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkins.

- The Cherry MX Honey switches have a similar overall stem wobble to that of the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches, though with their asymmetry reversed and being slightly greater in the E/W direction than the N/S direction.

- With respect to both tactile bump size and strength, these switches are quite similar to one another, with the MX Honeys being a bit more abrupt and a tiny bit more snappy than the Pumpkin switches.

Gateron Oil King Silent Tactile

- Despite absolutely hating the Oil King Silent Tactiles and everything they stood for as a concept, as well as despising everyone who keeps using the phrase “Holy Panda like tactile” to describe anything with a slight increase in force across a downstroke, I’m here to say that they are much closer to a Holy Panda-like tactile than the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches will ever get.

- The Gateron Oil King Silent Tactile switches use conventional dampening pads which leave them with a noticeable gumminess and squishiness at bottom out that just simply isn’t present in the LICHICX-style dampened bottom outs of the Pumpkins. (The Oil Kings also sound scratchy as well.)

- The one thing that the Gateron Oil King Silent Tactiles do better than the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkins is their stem wobble, having ever so slightly less N/S and E/W direction give as compared to the Pumpkins.

KTT ZenCha

- The KTT ZenCha switches have significantly less N/S and E/W direction stem wobble than both the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches as well as most other switches on this comparison list.

- With an overall scratchy stroke as well as simultaneously gummy and squishy sounding housing collisions, the KTT ZenCha switches are noticeably worse at being silent tactile switches than the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin switches and their LICHICX stem-based dampening mechanism.

- The comparative force curve between these two switches below does a good job at accurately reflecting how these switches feel when tried against one another insofar that they both feel like they peak at about the same tactile force, though the ZenCha bumps are more centered and brief feeling than the wider, more slowly unwinding tactile bumps of the Pumpkins.

Haimu Orchid Mantis

- While the Haimu Orchid Mantis switches have a symmetrical stem wobble as compared to the Wingtree x LICHICX Pumpkin’s slightly N/S heavy stem wobble, overall the Pumpkins are just a bit better on the average of this metric than the Orchid Mantis switches.

- Both the Orchid Mantis and Pumpkin switches do suffer a bit tonally from stem leg / leaf interactions through their tactile bumps, though the Orchid Mantis switches have this in spades, sounding out across virtually all typing speeds and strengths as compared to the more aggressive, faster typing that is needed for it to become as noticeable in the Pumpkin switches.

- As per the comparative force curve below, these switches do feel shockingly similar to one another despite being from Haimu and from Wingtree dba LICHICX, though the Pumpkin switches in hand do feel ever so slightly more forceful through their tactile bump than the Orchid Mantis switches.

Scores and Statistics

Note – These scores are not necessarily completely indicative of the nuanced review above. If you’ve skipped straight to this section, I can only recommend that you at least glance at the other sections above in order to get a stronger idea of my opinion about these switches.