Cherry MX Board 1.0 red switch wired mechanical keyboard
$50

Many of you play games, and many others are simply nerds, so you probably have interest in mechanical keyboards. The problem you face arises from most of the buying audience being hipsters who gravitate toward $300 feature-laden keyboards that offer no additional function.

Mechanical keyboards use actual switches that make contact between metal plates instead of the membrane keyboards that most use which form contacts between traces on thin layers of flexible plastic. The mechanical keyboard has more “response” or tactile feedback as well as being more reliable over time.

A client tasked me with finding keyboards for a staff that do a fair amount of typing, probably on the heavy side of moderate. Since that means a mechanical keyboard, wading through a few thousand manufacturers became necessary. Most of them offer tiny little boards based mostly on aesthetics which cost a lot of money and offer very little actual function.

Cherry, one of the oldest and most storied makers of mechanical switches, designed the MX Board 1.0 with the “red” switches that are quieter than the “blue” switches which provide the classic IBM M keyboard clickity-clack sound that is only useful really if you are in an office that is so loud you need to make your own noise to be heard at all over the background static.

It is priced at entry-level for mechanical keyboards, about $50 at Amazon, Walmart, and New Egg, for users who want a mechanical keyboard without the flashing rainbow lights, chips that poll keys a thousand times a second for elite gamer precision, or retro-themed aesthetics. It looks like a regular keyboard and acts just like one too except that it works better.

The optional wrist rest seems to work okay but is probably unnecessary because most of you either have your own already or have decided they are a waste of time; you should probably worry more about desk height than wrist rests. The lights on the num lock and related keys are a bit too bright by default.

Although its aesthetics are more early Star Trek more than smooth contemporary, the board does not hurt the eyes. The laser-etched key caps feature a futuristic font that is pretty cool, but I might make the numbers bigger and bolder and go for a slimline look to the keyboard. These are minor complaints and probably irrelevant since Cherry needs to give you some reason to buy their $100-200 boards.

If an economist looked at the keyboard market, he/she/it might conclude that for the price differential, anyone but entry-level users would be ridiculous to spend $20 on a membrane keyboard when they can have this. For game nerds and people doing actual work, the Cherry Board MX 1.0 provides all the necessary features at a good price and should probably be standard equipment on most new builds.

Tags: gaming, mechanical keyboard, nerd shit