News Cherry launches new MX Speed gaming switch

I read the article and thought to myself "dont go there and start going on about a lack of innovation in gaming keyboards".

Then I thought "instead, how could I add value to the conversation?" and then "how could Cherry serve me as a gamer?".

I came up with an answer.

I would honest-to-god happily pay £250-£300 for a Corsair/Razer/Logitech/Whoever keyboard, with Cherry keys, truly designed with a gamer in mind, and the gaming specific keys beautifully and perfectly spaced like my treasured Ideazon Z-Board. In fact, I would likely buy 5 of them in case they ever went out of production.

(I now own 3 Ideazon Z-Boards because the rubber keyboard membranes die and I knew none of these other keyboards would equal it, and when I run out of Z-Board keyboards my PC gaming days are over)

 

Then you'd be a numpty, paying > £250 for a keyboard. Or even > £200.

Myself, I have to think lot and hard to pay over a ton for one (which I've done).

 

Why is it that I suspect the competition of Razer's switches lead to Cherry releasing this switch to counter.

 

Don't get me wrong, I tried gaming on many other keyboards over the years and the bog standard qwerty keys pale in comparison to properly spaced keys aimed at gaming. The last one I tried was an £80-90 K80 or something similar. It was the usual qwerty rubbish (my personal view of all qwerty keboards sold as gamers keyboards).

It seems to me that shaving 1/3 of a mm of the key switches, then calculating a ridiculously small and insignificant fraction of difference between pressing a key and the clickity clack of the keypress registering - then selling that as the latest and greatest gaming (keyboard) innovation ... marketing nonsence.

I know someone will revisit repositioning the WASD/etc gaming keys at some point. Hopefully sooner rather than later! And I would pay a premium for that because it feels very intuitive to gaming.

 

Why do they need to be repositioned?

 

Qwerty keyboards are for typists.

Repositioning the keys creates comfort, easier to reach and less accidental key presses.

Its worth saying I'd happily go up against any of the reviewing team at CPC or BT in an FPS while I use an old PS2 keyboard versus one of them using whatever they like. 'Gaming' labelled keyboard are just keyboards that cost a small fortune for little innovation.

 

Hmm using WASD isnt uncomfortable for me in any way shape or form, no accidental key presses and I find no issue with reach, i think this is purely a personal thing to be honest.

Where should WASD be relocated to?

 

If they were that good why don't they still make them and why isn't every one using them?

 

The idea and innovation behind them was great. The execution was too costly and impractical ...

The lettering rubs off after much frequent gaming sessions. And when I say frequent that really is a lot of very late nights and long weekend sessions.

The USB function when disconnecting from one PC USB socket and reinserting in a new USB socket would sometimes pack up, requiring reinstalling of drivers. Amongst other USB related issues.

The rubber membrane after very heavy use would sometimes split and keys would stay depressed meaning that the counterstrike character being controlled would hysterically strafe in a direction mid-firefight and not stop until the Z-Board keyset was removed and reseated.

The keysets would bow and not seat correctly within the keyboard base.

The idea of separate keysets was nice, but very niche, and expensive.

... The Ideazon Fang was a great idea to combine keyboard control specifically for controlling games as opposed to qwerty keyboards designed for typists first and gamers second, sadly though the company was already doomed. Steelseries tried to take the idea on and rename it the Steelseries Shift, but it was still too niche and expensive. The Fang on the other hand or something very similar would be ideal.

(Added) I forgot the Merc which was almost perfect. The gaming keys were added to the side of the qwerty keys, so the best of both worlds, and one solid keyboard rather than keysets. My issue with that was that it felt like it was made for small hands unlike the gaming keyset made for the Z-Board which felt genuine keyboard size.

 

I disagree entirely. I once owned a Z Board and hated it, the 'gaming' layout was uncomfortable and swapping key sets back to a qwerty layout became tiresome. Also the membranes were rubbish and very unresponsive compared to a decent mechanical. I for one would like to try the silver MX, a 1.2mm actuation point is not to be sniffed at.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree about the key spacing and you're the first person I've heard from to not like the positioning. I think the over-crowding and lack of dedicated spacing is what I don't like about plain old qwerty keyboards. We do agree about changing over keysets being a pain in the butt, which is why I never swap out the bundled gaming set (and I never bought the dedicated gaming sets to games like Warcraft, MoH, Doom, etc - I thought it all pointless). I spend more time gaming than typing so the gaming set suits me perfectly, and when I do type out anything to team/global in games or PMs in Steam, its usually short'n'sweet. We agree the membranes are rubbish, but I've never had an unresponsive one, just membranes that tear around the WASD keys after a long time of heavy use.