Cherry holds a unique position in the mechanical keyboard market. Technically, it's among the most influential and powerful companies in it; it designs and produces the mindshare-leading Cherry MX mechanical key switches—the hardware under each key—that end up inside of other keyboards. Keyboard makers such as Cooler Master, Corsair, and G.Skill use them, imitate them, or use others' Cherry-"style" switches in their wares. At the same time, Cherry also sells fully finished keyboards in modest volumes. The $99.99 MX Board 1.0 TKL is its latest, a shot at the tenkeyless ("TKL") space that boomed a few years back among the higher-profile keyboard makers. It's a niche model that delivers comfy-enough typing, but it's otherwise unremarkable. Seek it out after a $20 or $30 haircut off its list price.

Give Me Ten...or Rather, Don't

First, the TKL: Simply put, a "tenkeyless" keyboard lops off the number-key portion of the board to save space. The compact MX Board 1.0 TKL does this, reducing the overall width to 14.6 inches, and is made almost entirely out of plastic. The only metal to be found here is in the undercarriage. The lack of a metal top plate and the need for fewer pricey mechanical key switches than a full-size board, in theory, should push down the cost of manufacture and thus the price. (More on that later.)

The plastic is quite sturdy, and it doesn't give way at all when pressed. Holding the keyboard from opposing ends, I attempted to twist it to see how well it would hold up. It was rigid and inflexible, suggesting a hardy undercarriage.

I can't say for sure that the MX Board 1.0 TKL is the absolute lightest tenkeyless mechanical keyboard out there, but in vetting competing products, it was the lightest I spotted, at 1.7 pounds. Most competing models come in closer to (or above) 2 pounds. The compact design and reasonable weight could even make this keyboard decent for travel or LAN-party lugging.

Cherry offers this keyboard with gamer-minded MX Red switches. These are hair-trigger switches geared toward gamers looking for speed and a light touch. (See our mechanical keyboard guide for a deeper dive into different switch types, which are usually designated by color.) These keys are rated to work for a minimum of 50 million keypresses and here are equipped with white LEDs.

The LEDs aren't particularly bright, and even cranked up, they come off as a little dull in a well-lit room. They are bright enough to help you see while typing in the dark, to be sure, but they are among the dimmest LEDs I've seen on a mechanical keyboard to date. The light level is adjustable, but the level differences are slight.

Cherry doesn't supply any supplemental software for this keyboard. This model is strictly plug-and-play and works with Windows' keyboard settings, as well as any that are in-program or in-game. You don't get any shortcut keys for media-playback control, in the form of either dedicated keys or key combos. The few shortcut commands (strictly in hardware and executed as key combinations) control the audio volume and the brightness of the keyboard's LEDs.

Speaking of the key-lighting behavior, it's also worth noting that some of the LEDs on the keyboard are brighter than others. Four keys in particular stand out: the Windows key, the Menu key, the Scroll Lock key, and the Caps Lock key. These keys don't adhere to the adjustable brightness settings and remain illuminated even when all other LEDs on the board have been turned off. The LEDs on the Scroll Lock and Caps Lock keys toggle on and off to indicate if these features are active or not, which is sensible, but I can't grok any major reason for the Windows and Menu keys to remain illuminated at all times.

You'll also notice a white LED on the actual USB connector that goes into the attached computer. (It illuminates a Cherry logo.) This LED, similarly, is not under your control, but it's not exceedingly bright or bothersome. In most cases, it will be hidden in the cable clutter behind a PC tower; at least this will help you identify the keyboard cable on sight.

The MX Board 1.0 TKL has full support for N-key rollover, letting you mash as many keys as you like at once. Other than these features, typical of most gaming mechanical keyboards, the MX Board 1.0 TKL lacks other features of note.

TKL: Hands-On and Face-Off

The typing experience on Cherry's MX Board 1.0 TKL is pleasant but unremarkable among Cherry MX Red boards I've used. The keys have adequate travel distance—the same I've felt on other MX Red boards—and it's fairly easy to type lightly without bottoming out. This is great for swift typists looking to reduce finger fatigue, again in line with what I've come to expect from other keyboards with these switches. PC gamers too tend to favor MX Red switches for their speed advantage, but the lack of supporting software, dedicated macro keys, and gamer gewgaws make the TKL a better fit for the speed-typing set.

For some reason, possibly because of the all-plastic chassis or the composition of the keycaps, the keys on the MX Board 1.0 TKL produce more noise than some other Cherry MX Red-equipped keyboards I've used. My daily driver is G.Skill's Ripjaws KM780 MX in Cherry MX Red, but it is in general less noisy than this keyboard. (See our review of the similar G.Skill Ripjaws KM780 RGB.)

As we alluded to in the introduction, Cherry will face stiff competition in the current market from feature-loaded, price-agressive models. These are from the likes of Corsair, Kingston (in its HyperX brand), Logitech, and Razer, among many others. For example, Kingston's tenkeyless HyperX Alloy FPS Pro is available with either Cherry MX Blue or Cherry MX Red switches at a substantially lower list price of $80 and, at this writing, a street price $10 less than that.

Corsair's Vengeance K65 RGB tenkeyless is older and considerably heavier, but it has fallen in street price enough to bring it within striking distance of the Cherry's MSRP. It's backed by better (and RGB) lighting and sophisticated programming software in the form of Corsair's Corsair Utility Engine (CUE). The newer K65 Lux RGB is also within price parity, or close to it, occasionally dropping below $100. Both of these CUE-backed keyboards can be had with Cherry MX Red switches and sport a number of fixed-function multimedia buttons.

Another key competitor is Logitech's G Pro. It is selling at this writing for a bit over $100, which is slightly above the MX Board 1.0 TKL's MSRP, but the G Pro has a lot more to offer. It doesn't use Cherry switches, but Logitech homebrews called "Romer-G." These are rated for more keypresses (70 million) and have RGB LEDs. Plus, you get some dedicated media buttons and mature tweaking/utility software.

This Cherry? Not Quite a Peach

In short, those few tenkeyless examples should make it clear: At neither its MSRP ($99.99) nor its current street price (about $90) is the MX Board 1.0 TKL particularly competitive. In one corner is this mostly plastic keyboard with plain-white LEDs, no software, and no special features. It's poised to duke it out with mechanical keyboards clad, in some cases, in part metal, with much beefier feature sets and not-far-off prices.

Unless you need the lightest keyboard possible or just want to keep it simple, Cherry's board just doesn't carry enough clout for the money. Wait for a price drop, or set your sights higher.

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