Introduction

In the world of mechanical keyboards and switches, the Cherry MX brand is still one of the most valuable. The business unit is now independently operating from Cherry GmbH, which focuses on providing retail HID solutions for various industries. Often, as a proof of concept, the two work in creating first-party offerings of Cherry MX switches, which are typically seen in the MX Board series. Here on TechPowerUp, we have already taken a detailed look at the MX Board 1.0, MX Board 3.0, MX Board 6.0, and even MX Board Silent. The company had invited us to CES earlier this year, where we saw new mechanical switches in another proof of concept, which may yet become another MX Board. To prepare for this possibility, I wanted to take a look at one of the missing entries in the form of the Cherry MX Board 5.0. Thanks again to Cherry for helping provide a review sample!


Each MX Board has had something to show off, whether it is the MX Silent switches with the aptly named MX Board Silent or RealKey technology with the gaming-oriented MX Board 6.0. With this MX Board 5.0, the company targets ergonomic typing, which is strange considering this is not what you typically imagine when thinking of an ergonomic keyboard. There is no split keyboard layout, for example, nor a columnar key layout or even an angled bank of keys meant to better fit the natural typing position of the average user. But even from the single image above, we see that something is still different compared to a typical keyboard in the form of a large and wide space bar that perhaps has more than meets the eye. We will go over this and more in the review beginning with a look at the specifications below.

Specifications