News Cherry MX Board 6.0 keyboard gets UK pricing, availability

Unless I am mistaken with regards to the actual switches, this offers nothing different from other mechanical boards that feature Cherry switches. That leave this as a very expensive keyboard when compared to it's competition that offers much more by way of features for around the same price.

 

On the other hand it is manufactured by Cherry themselves, so the thing will be robust on a par with the Model M. Pity it only comes with MX Red switches, which rules it out for almost anything useful.

 

Half height key caps - Other boards offer this while key caps can always be changed to suit the user.
Gold plated contacts - A gimmick that has no real benefit, maybe this is why it wasn't mentioned in the article?
Aluminium case - Most high end keyboards use aluminium.
Colour changing keys upon status - Colour changing? It mentions nothing about RGB LEDs... so maybe only on/off? I am also pretty certain this can be done with most keyboards with programmable backlighting (on/off), especially those with RGB LEDs (Corsair/Razer).

As you finished off, it is the price which lets it down... I really see no reason to buy it over others that offer more for less.

 

I'm still waiting for the corsair K65 RGB, I prefer the keys to be sort of above the base like the corsairs have and need more desktop space so want a board without the number pad. I have yet to see anyone other than corsair make a board with those features. Also the full colour lighting so I can match it to my mouse and mouse bungee

 

The price is due to the aluminium case, I suspect. I can't think of any other alu cased consumer boards. Corsair K-series are plastic, only the top is aluminium. Full alu is generally reserved for custom boards which are much more expensive than this is.

As for the gold plated contacts, these are present in all cherry mx switches.

I wouldn't buy this board, anyway, looks pretty ugly, especially with the half height keycaps.

Edit: forgot about the DAS 4, but wouldn't buy one of those either...

 

Personally I just dont get why anyone would spend over £50 on what is basically a qwerty keyboard with trinkets bolted on. Ideazon's Zboard had gamers in mind. These expensive qwerty keyboards have typists in mind, and their bank balances. Who needs to press every key at once? Compare the response times of this keyboard to any of the cheapest keyboards and you wont see or feel any difference. You feel a mouse response time and accuracy, but I reject the idea that this keyboard would feel any different to the oldest USB keyboard in my garage.

There is a reason I bought up as many Zboards as I could before Steelseries killed it. Im a gamer who really appreciates a keyboard really designed for gamers and their fingers. The only thing I miss is a backlight.

 

Betting it has one likelihood, that no gaming mechanical keyboard i've owned has done, it will last longer than 2 bloody years. I've got a model m that I use when i'm working, and that is older than I am. If one of these lasts that long, it instantly becomes worth it compared to replacing an £100 one every 2 years. (*Cough* Razer/SteelSeries).

 

You've obviously never *used* a mech kb, have you? Oh dear. (using a K70 RGB here (brown switches) - love love love it)

 

I really don't know what some of you 'gamers' do to your keyboards... I wouldn't expect a game controller to last long either if you are the type to throw them at the wall when frustrated so maybe you should look in to adjusting your gaming style?
I have never had a keyboard break on me. One died as the result of a power surge when a cheap and nasty PSU decided to fail but the others were replaced due to choice of features or that they were just old and tired looking. Apart from the odd little scrape here and there, my current Logitech Illuminated Keyboard still looks just fine once it's had a good clean and that is around 5 years old now.

 

My ducky died from a glass of water spill, replacing it with a K95 RGB courtesy of Bit's MotM comp. To be honest, I'm surprised that it did die at all really. I mean so little of the stuff actually got in, and I'd have thought that there aren't any really sensitive parts near where the spill occurred. Nope, dead as a door nail apparently.

I've definitely fallen into the "once you go clack, you never go back" crowd though. I loved the MX Browns in the Ducky, just felt great to type on. When it broke I had to swap back to an old rubber dome keyboard, damn it's horrid. I have to push so hard it's unreal, holding shift or control is a real nightmare for my pinkie. Unfortunate really as those keys are used a lot in both gaming and CAD, I've got no escape

 

Awesome. My gamer-life is really lacking the ability to turn my key backlights every colour of the rainbow. Go you.

 

I use a cherry strait, it's a scissor mechanism, only costs £30, and for gaming easily beats cherry's own mx in many areas. Nearly totally silent (people love it on voice comms, because they don't know it's there), faster actuation, better continual actuation (all cherry mx wobble under non typing workloads).

Cherry MX type switches of all colours are and always have been a poor choice for a gaming switch, they gained traction chiefly because of marketing and that alot of membrane keyboards are actually vile to use as they are produced down to the lowest possible cost.

One thing I noticed from Apple recently were the butterfly switches found on the single port Mac Book, said to be like scissor switches only even more stable and barely any travel....would love a keyboard made from those.

A huge part of a keyboards feeling draws from the physicality of it and not the keyswitch, so plate mount scissor switches on a high mass base....sadly the 'gaming' (overpriced) market has been mired using the same keyswitch for the past decade, only recently diverging with their own brands/rebrands, which beat the cherry mx again in many ways (better light distribution for the LED models, higher stability) but are still not what a gaming switch should be.

 

Don't give a pair of foetid dingo's kidneys about 'gaming' variants, but a keyboard (along with a mouse and monitor) are the three bits of hardware I spend over 100 hours a week interacting with. With such a large portion of my life spent using them, I can't think of any good reason not to spend as much as necessary to get the exact qualities I want out of them. For me, that's pleasant feeling mechanical switches (MX brown with dampers) backlighting (neutral white), and dedicated media keys and volume control. I'm not a twitch gamer, so key rollover and response time aren't important qualities.
If your desired characteristics are "MX Reds, no ghosting, and built like a brick shithouse", then I can see how this would appear to have descended from heaven on a pillar of light.

 

Looks like Cherry are gearing up to try and break into the gaming market finally. Expensive though.

 

Why only "cherry" red back lighting? Blue or white would be more stylish.

 

You don't seem to know what you're talking about - mechanical keyboards that use the red MX switch are not in any way aimed at typists: there is no tactile feedback, no audible click, and the actuation force is light when compared to "typing" oriented switches/keyboards.

You are right (IMO) that there will probably be no difference between this and any other keyboard in terms of latency, but in terms of feel, mechanical keyboards are in a different league. You should try one if you haven't already.

The 6.0 doesn't have an aluminium case; it's the same alu "upper body" approach as Corsair's K series boards, so underneath it's all plastic (you see this in the videos).

I'd say that the price is so high simply because it's a Cherry board; they're always expensive.

 

No, no, I do know what I mean when I say a qwerty keyboard is based at typists. All standard layout qwerty keyboards are aimed at typists. Now, if you then throw in media keys like play, stop, fast forward, etc, then you've got a media type of keyboard. If you throw in backlights then you've got night time typists covered. And possibly fans of Typing Of The Dead in the dark.

If you are typing emails, docs, coding or messaging friends in games the sure you need a qwerty keyboard. If you are doing all that at night then of course a backlight is a great help. If you want it to have media/apps shortcuts then thats great. If you want it to look like good with aluminium casing thats ok. If you really must press 104 keys at the same time ....... ok. But personally, none of these make it a gamer keyboard to me.

The layout of the keys is always the same. QWERTY keyboards always are, and always have been the same layout. They started life as typists keyboards for words, sentences and paragraphs - and look at these 'gaming' keyboards now ..... A gamer needs WASD or whatever his choice of key presses are (mine were the arrow keys for at least my first 5 years of online gaming), to be better designed and spaced for a gamers hands to do their gaming on. Not many companies have tried to take on that challenge and I understand the challenges with doing it. The Zboard, Merc and Fang were the only 'keyboard' type controllers off the top of my head that really tried to give a gamer what his/her hands need.

Granted, my Zboard is a membrane keyboard, and last night I was confused when my CT in CSS started hugging the wall in a corridor, until I realised the D key was stuck down. it has a few other niggles. But the keys are better spread for controlling the character/vehicle in 99% of PC games.

In an ideal world I would have these cherry keys everyone is raving about in a Fang-like game keypad, with a separate keyboard for typing. This is my personal view obviously and I do get why people like these cherry keyboards, but I dont see them as anything more than hard wearing qwerty keyboards for typing on.

 

I see where you're coming from, but I can't say I agree - QWERTY has been the standard for so long it's not really fair to say that it is aimed particularly at typists... it's aimed at all computer users indiscriminately. The finer points of keyboard design and manufacture are what determines whether the keyboard has particular users in mind, and that may include layout but it will more commonly include the type of actuation that the keyboard employs.

The gaming keyboards that you describe are such a niche product that they aren't really viable from a business standpoint - all mainstream games are playable on QWERTY keyboards, which is why that's where the focus is for most manufacturers. Yes, there are some gaming "keyboards" out there, but most of them are relics/novelties.