Overall and Final Verdict

Well, I haven’t had a Cherry branded keyboard in the office for a while and I was happy to have another coming in. I always love their quality and Cherry always seems to do something completely unique to the market. The MX Board 5.0 in a lot of ways seems like a reaction to the MX Board 6.0, it was a very expensive board because of its all-aluminum bezel construction, steel backplate, and their introduction to RealKey. What it was missing though were nice quality PBT keycaps and stuff like the 1000 tiny MX logos across the wrist rest took away from the look. Cherry cut that back to one large logo on the wrist rest this time around and they added nice double shot PBT keycaps. That alone is worth a lot of praise, at best in the market we see cheap doubleshot keycaps with most companies using the thin painted keycaps. The few boards with PBT keycaps that will hold up don’t have backlighting at all. But was that enough?

Well the MX Board 5.0 does have a clean look with a thin bezel. I miss the aluminum bezel from the 6.0 but I do like the smaller size that the small bezel offers, especially with them keeping the F keys and everything a little closer together. Then, of course, there is Cherry’s quality, I prefer their switches over most of what you will find on the market (at least the traditional market) and their boards always feel a step above some of the cheaply imported boards. That said I did have a switch issue on my number row 5 key. Beyond that, I ended up really liking being able to reach the flip out feet without looking and the weird but very functional flip-out feet on the front and rear of the wrist rest.

Now I’m a little torn on the white backlighting. Personally, I love it and don’t NEED to have RGB, even if most of my hardware has it. The bright white looks better than an RGB made white and I think a lot of people are going to like it. But with RGB being the standard, there will be people who are upset they can’t set the lighting to the color they prefer. It is better than the red that the 6.0 went with though. Having just the Cherry MX Silent Red as the only switch available may be an issue as well, especially for people who want a tactile or clicky feel. You can’t ask for a better switch if you want to use the MX Board 5.0 around other people, like in an office. The board is quiet with the regular Red switches of our sample, adding the silent variation should really help things along there.

But the two biggest issues with the MX Board 5.0 come down to what happens when you try to by one. For starters, right now it isn’t available in the states. The other half of that is when they do become available the price should be around $189 going off Cherry’s initial announcement and the current EU pricing. Now that price for a quality board isn’t really out of the question and it is a lot less than the MX Board 6.0 was, but when you start to look at the general public and not just the enthusiasts there will be a lot of people wondering why it costs so much. The nice PBT doubleshot keycaps play a big part and that is justified. You also get real Cherry switches and backlighting. But not having RGB at this price point isn’t helping things.  Is the Cherry MX Board 5.0 a good keyboard? Hell yes, it is, but I think this one is going to be locked in with the enthusiast crowd once again. The simple styling is perfect for a more subtle setup or someone taking it into work, but the price is going to scare off all but us crazy keyboard enthusiasts.  

fv5

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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