Cherry K5V2 keyboard review: Great switches at a high price

Price When Reviewed

$139

Handiest Prices Today: Cherry K5V2 keyboard

Cherry is a name that’s inseparable from mechanical keyboards. The German company’s MX swap accomplish is basically the foundation of the stylish keyboard trade. But whereas Cherry’s keyboards from the ’80s and ’90s have a certain cachet, today the company is mainly known as a parts seller to diversified keyboard manufacturers. 

But Cherry is calm making keyboards, at least as much to blow their very acquire horns its latest swap designs as to promote merchandise in their very acquire factual. Enter the K5V2 RGB Compact, a refreshed 65% accomplish boasting Cherry’s latest MX2A Red switches. These switches and some diversified parts are indeed pleasing, but the keyboard’s high price and lack of software customization maintain it from getting an easy recommendation. 

Additional reading: Contemplate our roundup of the handiest gaming keyboards to learn about competing merchandise.

Cherry K5V2 hardware and style

The K5V2 will watch startlingly familiar to anyone who’s shopped for a gaming keyboard as of late. Its 65% layout adds a minute extra width to a compact accomplish in repeat to match a Delete key and standard arrow cluster, whereas sacrificing supreme a shortened factual Shift key in deviation from the ISO standard. It’s also displaying off RGB lighting and a detachable braided USB-C cable.

Underneath that exterior are a couple of surprises. In addition to those brand-spankin’-original MX2A switches, the stabilizers are noticeably smoother and quieter than usual. The swap sockets are also sizzling-swappable, something that’s snappily becoming a must-have feature…but now not one I anticipated to examine on a keyboard that’s so explicit about the benefits of its original switches. 

The keyboard has a few diversified features borrowed from both the “custom-made” keyboard world and gaming designs, care for internal layers of sound dampening, N-key rollover, and “vast-scan technology for instant response,” which I’m going to wager is a high (but unspecified) polling rate. Diversified than that, it’s a fairly usual accomplish. 

The keyboard’s plastic physique and ABS keycaps aren’t all that spectacular, especially for the price. Whereas it’s stable ample, I came upon the single-stage feet on the underside somewhat shallow. The last distinctive feature of the accomplish is a plastic badge that sits legal above the factual arrow key. It’s unpainted with a “CHERRY XTRAFY” logo (the same an on the Home windows key) raised in black, and it’s held in place with nothing but a magnet. There doesn’t seem to be any demonstrate it moreover decoration. Okie dokie then. 

Software…or lack thereof

The first factor you watch when the keyboard lights up its fairly gleaming LEDs is that nearly each single key — save for the key above Enter — has a designated exhaust on the characteristic layer. There are keys that replicate mouse movement. There’s a key that enables you to swap between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 mode, although I don’t know why you’d want to. There’s a characteristic key for launching the default Home windows calculator, something I haven’t viewed in a very lengthy time. 

Why Cherry felt the have to encompass such an exhaustive list of features on a keyboard that appears to be aimed at gamers, I couldn’t wager. Except I searched for the programming software…and didn’t earn any. You’d higher be satisfied with hardware customization, because that’s the particular form on offer with the K5V2. 

How is the typing and gaming on the Cherry K5V2?

Perhaps feeling a bit left leisurely by competition that’s been copying and making improvements to its out-of-patent MX accomplish for years, Cherry made a mountainous press push for the MX2A switches. But to present credit ranking the place it’s due, they’re darn supreme. The pre-lubricated linear accomplish with 45 newtons of operating makes each key press comfortable from the highest of the actuation to the underside. And with an outer casing identical to the original accomplish, it’s compatible with sizzling-swap swap sockets in thousands and thousands of keyboards. Nice. 

But it undoubtedly’s the stabilizers that really steal the demonstrate here. Diversified keyboard manufacturers are likely to fail to be aware the items that give extra stability to lengthy keys care for Space, Shift, and Enter. No longer so for the K5V2. These keys accept an extra “thocky” sound without any of the wobbliness or rattling that’s viewed within the competition, even probably the most handiest out there care for Keychron’s Q sequence. 

All of those parts combine to make typing fast, gentle, and comfortable. Ditto for gaming, although I more or less want something with a stiffer spring was equipped…which I can certainly achieve: Fair appropriate track down the MX2A Black switches with a similar linear accomplish and 60 Newtons of actuation power. Sizzling-swap to the rescue. Sadly, it looks care for the K5V2 is supreme being equipped with Red switches upon the initial launch, the most popular alternative for gaming keyboards. 

Is the Cherry K5V2 keyboard price it?

All this adds up to a keyboard that’s pleasing darn supreme, especially at the same time as you happen to care about a stable typing and gaming expertise. Unfortunately, it also adds up to a $139 USD decal price. Whereas the German company can certainly claim its heritage in asking for a top rate, the cold, hard fact of the matter is that this keyboard is made in China, legal care for a lot of the competition. And the competition offers an awful lot more for the cash. 

For example, pleasing much any gaming keyboard over $100 (and many below) will offer software customization of some form. Whereas this is less necessary for a keyboard than a mouse, it’s calm greatly anticipated, and a shame that the extraordinary LEDs on this keyboard are restricted to constructed-in lighting patterns. The exhaustive and nicely-communicated sub-layer isn’t a supreme ample change. 

It doesn’t abet that a couple of corners have been reduce for the K5V2. Whereas the swap plate is metal and offers a little bit of extra stiffness, it’s the particular factor that is — the remainder of the physique is plastic. And the keycaps are ABS plastic, a slippery step down from the PBT plastic viewed on most keyboards on this price range (with the notable exception of Razer). 

In fact aside from those great switches and stabilizers, there isn’t a total lot more on this keyboard than there may be on the G.Ability KM250, one of our perennial budget favorites. And with the latter’s sizzling-swap capability, you may accept a tubby replacement place of those MX2A switches (or any diversified top rate swap you want) for less than the nearly $100 price dissimilarity. Ouch.

Whereas the K5V2 is a perfectly serviceable keyboard with great typing and magnificent stabilizers, “perfectly serviceable” legal isn’t ample within the extraordinarily competitive mechanical keyboard market. Cherry is leaning heavily on its pedigree, but its lack of software customization, sub-standard keycaps, and high price mean that it’s nowhere near the handiest in demonstrate. 

Handiest Prices Today: Cherry K5V2 keyboard

Author: Michael Crider, Staff Author