Performance

There is native 6-key rollover USB here out of the box, as Aqua's test confirms. For the intended applications the KC 1068 was designed for, 6KRO is quite fine in my books, and I have no complaints there. More importantly, no key chatter was detected on all the keys using Switch Hitter, and this should make for a decent keyboard for most office and health environments where an IP68 rating will be handy.

That IP68 rating is really the crux of it all, and if that wrap were not present, the KC 1068 would have been yet another bog standard membrane keyboard with a Cherry logo on it. The KC 1068 is, in Cherry's own words, "protected against the ingress of dust, dirt, and liquids (up to 1 m depth)". It is arguably a lazy implementation of a keyboard with an IP68 rating, however, and similar to what CORSAIR did with the their K68 keyboard wherein a rubber mold was added over the switches to provide an IP32 rating. There are more elegant solutions to achieve IP68 dust and spill resistance for keyboards, and some of those we saw before in membrane switch keyboards also do not impact how well the keyboard can be utilized. As it stands now, the wrap makes it harder to access the keyboard feet on the back. More importantly, typing on the keyboard is really not the best experience, and I say this after having used a laptop keyboard for the majority of the month during which this keyboard was tested. There is very little feedback available here, with a mushy typing ordeal that leaves a lot to be desired. The flat keycaps do not mitigate this, and I really wish Cherry had done more here. I do understand why this was their implementation given the rest of the keyboard is a mass-market budget keyboard with some added functionality via the software driver. If the price is right, as we shall see on the next page, then these complaints will not be the deal breakers they may seem to be.


As always, the sound of a keyboard is based on more than just the switch type. So when comparing sound clips, consider the keyboard as a whole. In this case, I have provided above an example sound clip of me typing on the Cherry KC 1068 review sample at ~80 WPM. For context, you can find sound clips from other keyboards here, including those with membrane switches. I did bottom out here as you would with a typical membrane switch keyboard, and one thing of note is how quiet the keyboard is. Indeed, the rubber wrap dampens what would otherwise still be a quiet membrane switch keyboard, so this will do the trick in terms of using it in a busy environment without annoying even those in an adjacent cubicle, for example.