I had a Cherry eVolution Stream XT silent keyboard which was pretty nice but it didn’t last very long. Some of the keys began to feel a bit “squishy”, would make weird click noises and one key managed to displace the rubber contact dome. Oh dear. So a few months ago I decided that I had to continue on my quest to find the perfect keyboard. This time, I decided that reliability had to be the number one priority, that the keyboard be wired and come with a PS/2 port connection.
After much research my choices where whittled down to the following which all use the highly robust and highly reliable Cherry MX key switches:
- steelseries 7G or 6Gv2
- Das Keyboard Professional
- Cherry G80-3000 series
All off the above keyboards are high quality; not cheap but certainly high quality and robust. It was tough trying to choose between them.
1. steelseries 7G or 6Gv2
The 7G keyboard looked great and seems to be able to do a bunch of things. But I wasn’t too happy with the “SteelSeries Key” replacing the Windows key (although a lot of people might like it) and I didn’t want the audio ports and USB ports. The 6Gv2 does not have these these audio and USB ports so perhaps that might suite my needs better. However, my biggest concern was that both the 7G and 6Gv2 have an oversized Enter key displacing the # key. They therefore does not fully comply with a UK layout and I didn’t want to go though re-learning especially for such high-priced products.
2. Das Keyboard Profession
Another keyboard that looks awesome and has no gimmicks but which is not available with a standard UK layout.
3. Cherry G80-3000LSCGB-2
This model has the mechanical click-sound (which reminds me of the old IBM AT keyboards) and comes in a fully standard UK layout (see below for the standard UK Windows keyboard layout).
I took the risk and bought it. Happily, the keyboard is not as large or as heavy as some people had led me to believe. It has a weight of 1.132 kg and with the following dimensions:
- Width 47.0 cm
- Depth 19.5 cm
- Height 4.4 cm
Here is a photograph of my keyboard after a few months of use:
It’s been a joy to type on. I no longer have to worry about fighting the keyboard; it just does the job and lets me get on with mine. I love the sound of the mechanical keys too, but I can see that this might annoy people in an open-plan office (the G80-3000 series also come with silent mechanical MX switches if needed). The only odd thing about this keyboard is that there are no “bumps” or “raised dots” on the F and J keys; these bumps are used to give tactile feedback to a touch-typists to help ensure that the fingers are still aligned without looking. Instead, the F and J keys are more sculpted than the other keys and so have a different curved profile; too subtle for me!
Here’s a (very) short video showing the keyboard in action (I’m typing slowly so the thing is not a visual and audio blur):
And here’s another one with a bit more typing:
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2011
