Only buy a magnetic keyboard for gaming

We'll see. As of the latest testing, mechanicals still show the best single-key latency performance.

I got an ROG Azoth awhile back for that reason.

Would be nice to see how far they can push the technology though!

Given that the time to physically press the key down is a part of the latency, Hall Effect could easily beat out Mechanical in the long run. After all, you can make it almost arbitrarily sensitive.

EDIT: Looks like wired mechanicals at the top end are tied (0.8ms) with the best Halls (0.8ms) and a bit better than the best wireless 2.4Ghz (1.7ms). Mea culpa. We still need more test data on Halls in general though. Removed my comment about Wireless being better - though generally wireless 2.4 GHz beats out all but the top-end wired keyboards.

Could you expand on the complicated reasons? Or have a resource handy? Is it Bluetooth wireless or 2.4GHz radio adapter wireless that’s faster?

Among other things, the USB host polls the keyboard at a fixed rate. Fantastic breakdown if you have 30 minutes: https://youtu.be/wdgULBpRoXk

2.4GHz radio is faster than most wired connections - though the top-end ones with custom high-hertz implementations are slightly better than wireless.

Radio is also generally significantly more consistent - even when the polling rates are identical. You can see this if you look at the testing done by RTings for mice and keyboards. The latency when using 2.4GHz wireless is extremely consistent, while for standard wired connections, the latency varies drastically from input to input.

Bluetooth is crap and should never be used for gaming inputs. It's both high latency and inconsistent.

Lower latency than PS/2?

That's harder to say, there aren't exactly a glut of PS/2 keyboards and mice these days or thorough testing data. And for good reason.

But the best keyboards these days approach around 0.8 ms: https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/reviews/corsair/k100-air

the article you linked measures the receiver latency at 2.8ms though. does the k100 use some higher power version of wireless when plugged in? I imagine it's just usb when plugged in.

Also the field75 he mentioned in the OP does tie that keyboard's wired latency:

https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/tools/table/152444

You're right! Looks like I picked a misread the latency and picked a bad example.

Best wireless mechanical is: https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/reviews/asus/rog-falchion-rx... (1.7ms @ 1kHz)

Best wired mechanical would be the Corsair Air 100 I linked at 0.8ms, tied with a Field75 which is also wired.

This is a very surprising result.

Isn't USB+2.4GHz modem by nature going to introduce more latency than just USB?

Is it directly connected to wireless somehow? Pcie card or something?