Driver

Cherry used to have KeyMan, a universal driver to add key mapping features to their keyboards, as seen in the older Cherry keyboard reviews. With Cherry Americas becoming its own business unit, KeyMan has become deprecated and is no longer supported. There is no software driver thus for the MX Board 1.0 TKL, with all control being hardware-based instead. If you find a version of KeyMan, it may still work for the MX Board 1.0 TKL, but I will not be testing it because of these circumstances.

Performance

The Cherry MX Board 1.0 TKL supports N-key rollover (NKRO) USB out of the box, which tested successfully using Aqua's test. Switch Hitter confirmed no chatter with these keys either.


When first connected, the keyboard lights up in a static white for all keys at ~50% brightness. The Cherry logo on the USB connector is also backlit, which is a weird but neat touch, I suppose. There are pre-programmed onboard controls to aid in backlighting control, including Fn + F4, which toggles backlighting on or off completely. Fn + F5/F6 controls brightness in 25% increments of higher/lower respectively and thus, we have five brightness steps to choose from. Assuming you even have a backlit version, this means there are five versions of white available for backlighting on the MX Board 1.0, and you best be happy with it. Note also that activated modifier keys light up brighter than others provided you have not set all keys to 100% brightness to help visually distinguish their active status.

As seen above, there are also some pre-programmed dynamic lighting effects. Fn + F12 toggles between the standard static mode and five different effects (breath, reactive, drop, WASD, Wave), out of which WASD just lights up those keys in white and the others in a dynamic effect. Fn + F7/F8 provides control over the speed of these effects in 25% increments, and there are four steps (no speed just means backlighting is off) to choose from.

Aside from the lighting controls seen above, Cherry also has pre-programmed functions for volume control via Fn + F1-F3, as denoted by the respective secondary legends on the stock keycaps. There is also a Cherry key (F9) to switch between office and gaming modes. Office mode increases the repeat delay to prevent the accidental output of keystrokes. Gaming mode locks the Win key, which effectively also renders Alt + F4, Alt + Tab, and a few other keystrokes futile. This is weird in that gamers often Alt + Tab out of a game window temporarily, but I suppose if the intention is to prevent any game interruption at all, this works.


The Cherry MX Board 1.0 TKL only comes with Cherry MX switches, as we saw before, with this review unit using the Cherry MX Red switches. This is a linear switch rated at 2.0 mm actuation with 45 cN and 4.00 mm total travel that has quickly become the most popular mechanical switch in use today, which can at least partially be attributed to many keyboards marketed as "gaming keyboards" making use of linear mechanical switches instead of tactile or clicky switches. The actuation and peak forces were well within rated values based on my testing of twenty random switches using a tension gauge.


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 MX Board 1.0 TKL sample at ~105 WPM as it comes out of the box. For context, you can find sound clips from other keyboards here, including those with linear switches. I did bottom out, which is not hard to do given the relatively light spring offered with the Cherry MX Red linear switch.