[jazzychad]

That's slightly different. It will prompt for a buffer name, which you can type in and tab-complete, but it's not quite as fast as the one-key switching (also it doesn't show a list of buffers unless you try to tab-complete while the prompt is empty).

[sjm]

With ido-everywhere, flx-ido and ido-vertical-mode you can get nice, fast buffer-switching with fuzzy matching via C-x b. See these two screenshots for an example: http://imgur.com/a/sZk8m

[foobarqux]

helm is better

[sjm]

I've tried helm a few times but I can never stick with it. It definitely looks impressive, but I think it takes up too much room and I end up preferring the minimalism of ido in comparison.