 On the surface, it's simple enough, right? Get a keyboard, make it dirty, wash and dry, video over. But this is Linus Tech Tips. You guys want the nitty-gritty, you want the details. So here's what we're gonna do. All of these keyboards were taken from around our office, some with many years of use on them, and for you guys, we are gonna sacrifice all of them for science. The reason for that is that if we were to put just one keyboard through this gauntlet, and it survived, that's the literal definition of a sample size of one. That doesn't give us the bigger picture. You can get studio quality stock video clips for a fraction of the cost with Storyblocks Video. Check it out today at the link below to learn more. Obviously, we're not gonna want any actual dishes in here. Okay, this looks like a problem for future Linus. So this G.Skill One uses Cherry MX switches. These happen to be Cherry MX Browns. The Logitech G710 Plus. The main difference here is that this is a plastic versus a metal chassis, whether that'll make a difference or not, I suspect it won't. I don't think we're gonna have room to do them all like that. It's gonna be like six keyboards. This is a brand new dishwasher, like it should hit all the angles, right? I think we can get away with it. You guys might remember this one, and that's already an improvement. Wow, that is crusty. Finally, we've got a Logitech G910 Orion Spark. That's using Logitech's Roamer G switches. Now, you guys might be looking at this going, what are you guys nuts? That's like $500 worth of keyboards in the dishwasher already. You guys, what, you wanna ruin them? We're putting high-end keyboards in because we wanna know if you put your good keyboard into the dishwasher, does it have a chance of surviving? You know, the one with all the electronics and macros and RGB and all that good stuff. Before we do that though, one important question. Oh, should we use soap? The pros are that soap loosens dirt, and also that dishwashers are designed to run with soap. The cons are that soap can leave some residue that could cause a short circuit. Also, this is not really a con, but just a consideration. The heating element in our dishwasher could probably handle the sanitation component of our keyboards without soap anyway. But then, depending on the plastic makeup of our keyboards, we could risk damaging them if we ran it at the hottest setting. ABS plastic, the more common type, should be fine at your typical hot dishwashing temperature. But many keyboards, higher-end ones in particular, contain PBT plastics that could warp at as low as just 66 degrees. So I think what we're gonna do is run it cold, no soap, and then see how we do. Now, while that's running, the eagle-eyed among you might have noticed this conspicuous garbage bag that was sitting on the counter. This is a completely separate batch of keyboards. Oh, that is disgusting. For a separate experiment that we're going to be running in parallel. But to explain that experiment, we first need to take a look at what we call our golden sample. We borrowed this from a colleague again on the condition of anonymity. All right, so here we go. This is disgusting. Like, I can clearly see the buildup of skin cells on the keys here. I see definite hair in there. Okay, that's definitely food remnants. Is that cheese? What a meal. That must have been more like a feeding frenzy. It brings to question, like, are you eating over the board? Like, these are high up in the row. Like, I don't know. I mean, chip happens. So back to these keyboards then. We have three each of the Amazon Basics membrane keyboard and the Corsair K70 RGB MK2 mechanical keyboard. Thank you, Corsair, by the way, for sending these to us. If you knew what we were using them for, I'm sure you wouldn't have it. So as you can see, each of these was put through an artificial filthification process based on what we found on our golden sample. And we're going to use these boards to describe what we found on our golden sample. And we're going to use these boards to discover two things. One, if taking the key caps off before dishwashing makes any appreciable difference. And two, how manually cleaning your keyboard compares to easy mode over here. So one of our pairs is going to go in with the keys on, one with the keys off, and then one will be painstakingly cleaned by hand. Now, to give us the definitive answer to which of our cleaning methods works the best, we're going to be taking microbial swabs of each of our keyboards, both pre and post wash. These swabs are going to be taken to a local lab and they will be transferred to a growth medium. After an incubation period, the number of bacterial growths will be counted. From this data, we'll be able to tell if our cleaning method actually worked when we compare it to our baseline samples. I guess with the machine running, all we have to do right now is pick a couple of these boards and start the manual cleaning process. Our first round of keyboards is done. Oh, it's steamy. I guess we can have a look at this, hey? Okay, you know what? We'll try it later. Let's have a look at our next board. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but this one's even more full of water than the last one. Wow. Let's have a look at the cleanliness though. That is a big improvement. So you know what though? There's still some grunge. So most of it is pretty good. Do you mind grabbing the key puller? So what this tells us... Oh, it's splashing me right on the grungy part. Is that even if our microbial swabs come back good, that doesn't necessarily mean that our dishwasher is going to do a perfect job of removing everything. It looks like wherever there's hair, you're going to have quite a bit of difficulty. So this is good. So this shows us that you should remove your key caps. Yeah, so regardless of what the microbial swabs tell us, if there's hair or anything that's really caked on, there's really only one way to go to be sure that it's actually deep cleaned. Now with that said, all the surface parts of this keyboard, the parts that you actually touch every day, well, those are definitely clean. All right, let's move on to our next one. Why does this thing have an ethernet port on it? So what's fascinating to me about this one is that even though all the shmoo between the keys has been removed, there's actually still dust on the board. See that? Crazy, right? Honestly though, I think what we learned just now more than anything else is that the dishes at the edge of my new dishwasher are really not getting hit as hard as the ones in the middle. This is a brand new dishwasher. Like it should hit all the angles, right? That's good to know. I mean, either way, the test here was whether it's going to survive being drenched. So it doesn't really matter, but we need to bear that in mind when we load up the next round of keyboards. Yep. Paul wants to put them all face down for the best chance of blasting out the gunk. And I think he's right about that. But the thing that I'm worried about is if we put them all face down, then some of them are going to be at the edges and others of them aren't. What if we took our two keys on samples and had those ones facing each other in the middle-ish, and then we took our two keys off samples and we had those ones facing each other on the outside-ish. That way we've got at least equal opportunities for cleaning. Did we have heat dry on last time? No, we had it off. Yeah, okay, cool. So now we're good. Okay, and I'm going to go and finish cleaning these by hand, which is a job unto itself. Cool. I'm going to transform into filming another video, Linus, and head back to the garage where we're shooting that LG video. So for those wondering at home, yes, this definitely voids your warranty, by the way. Ooh, it's still pretty foodie. The noodles are cooked. I mean, they're loose. Well, maybe we were being a little bit unfair. I don't know what we're saying. But hey, now you know. You removed your keycaps. Well, I don't know. Is this one any... Oh, yes, it is. That is quite a lot better. So this one, because it's so much easier for the water jets to get at, is basically clean and clear. Look at that. It also actually doesn't hold nearly as much water because obviously the keycaps are little water reservoirs, basically. That's the last of them? That is the last of them. Okay, so we'll submit those to the lab. So that's one part of the experiment today. And then the other part is, do all these keyboards still work? Unfortunately, the only way to find that out, because guys, electronics and water do not mix, is to let them dry out. That's gonna take about a week. Fortunately, thanks to Movie Magic, it's been a week. We've had these drying. So in theory, they should be completely free of water. Have we actually verified that? What we wanna do now is see just how clean they got and more importantly, if they survived the dishwasher. So we're gonna start then with the variety pack of keyboards that we took from around the office. Yeah. Oh yeah. Poor Tyler's keyboard. Tyler's keyboard. Yeah, so we'll start with this. We got lights, so that's a start. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Hey, this one totally works. So now all we gotta do is check if the backlight works. And it sure is working. Yeah, well, I'll take it. It's not very bright. Oh yeah, no, it definitely works. Huh, one for one, baby. Didn't come particularly clean. Yeah, in the keys. Yeah, this one might've needed like a couple runs through and also to remove the keys before we put it in. I thought it was nice cable wraps. I know, right? And this prototype hoodie I'm wearing, lttstore.com. Every key is lit. Ooh, try the volume rocker. That is a very good sign. Nice. Mute working. Okay, so here we go. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Am I allowed to sing this song on video? Probably not. Okay. Dang. We good. Two for five. Oh, wait, we need to check and make sure that the pass through USB port works on this one. Am I mousin', ladies and gentlemen? I'm mousin'. Two for two and this one actually looks really good. So if you're not too crusty, looks like this method can actually be a quick, fast and not dirty way to clean your keyboard. More of this crust might've come out if we had actually had soap. Yeah. Three for three. Dang. Yeah, this one I had pretty high hopes for in the first place just because it's got such an open sort of design. It does look like really dusty still. That's, that's another thing that makes me think maybe a soap run then a water run might be in order. All right, let's check our RGB lighting. All looks fine. Oh yeah, that looks good. New, yep, we all good up here. Pass through looks good. And the final port. Volume wheel's good. New buttons working. Brightness control, backlight is working. What are we missing there? Left OS. Five for five. Absolutely freaking fantastic. I mean, to be clear, this is still sample size of five, but there's so much variety in the keyboards that we used that I'm at the point where I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence, yeah, as long as you let it dry for long enough, it is safe to dishwasher your keyboard. However, what we still need to answer is whether you should. So in front of me now are the six keyboards that we artificially filthified from their like new condition. But there's a few questions we still need to answer about these ones. One is how clean did they come? The keys in the mesh bags definitely still have some gunk. I don't know if there's a perfect method, maybe run it through the dishwasher and then kind of hand pick it a little bit before putting it back together. One thing that's nice though, is you can see even in the hot wash, we still have a fair bit of lubricant left on our stabilization bar on this space bar. I wouldn't necessarily have expected that, but that's good to know. If it all comes off though guys, you may wanna add a little bit of like lithium grease or similar lubricant. So what we wanna do now is determine just how clean these got. So our cultures are back from the lab and the results are really interesting or so says my script. Colin hasn't actually shared them with me yet. I have them on my laptop here. Oh right, of course you didn't actually bring them back to the office because that would be dangerous. No, they actually got flown out to Calgary. So this guy right here, our gold standard, ended up with a bacterial count of 160 growths after incubation. Each of our artificially dirtified boards ended up with over 2000 growths, making them a bit of a worst case scenario, but that's good because that's what we want. So the dishwasher works. Yay, but there's a caveat. You should definitely remove your key caps. It does add a little bit of time, but it ensures that any of the larger gunk that's stuck underneath the keys will be effectively washed out. So of the six boards in this test, every one of them had a post-wash bacteria count of less than 10, except the Amazon basics board where the keys were left on. So as far as the results go, cleaning by hand and using the dishwasher, as long as you remove the keys, are both safe and effective. Though as Corsair asked us very nicely to point out, only one of them allows you to keep your warranty. Thanks to our sponsor for this video, Storyblocks. You can get studio quality stock video clips for a fraction of the cost with Storyblocks video. You can download all the stock video your heart desires from their member library, including HD and 4K footage, After Effects templates, motion backgrounds, and more. We use it here quite a bit on our Tech Quickie channel, and all the content is royalty free, so you can use it for commercial and personal projects such as YouTube videos. New clips get added regularly, so there's always something fresh to download, and you can check it out today at the link below to learn more. So massive thank you to you guys for watching. Hope you enjoyed the video. If you're looking for something else to watch, maybe check out our, ooh, budget keyboard roundup. You know, maybe it's a lost cause, right? And you just want something fresh. You're gonna have that link below.