Mechanical keyboards are technically superior to the average membrane boards on store shelves or the integrated keyboard in most ofour favorite Chromebooks. Mechanical options are built to serve you a lot longer than rubber dome and scissor switches in notebooks, and the longevity of the former isn’t tied to other components, which makes laptops feel dated after a couple of years.
Most ofour favorite mechanical keyboardsare outfitted with switches that can last many, many years of intensive everyday use. Still, one of the household names in the industry, German brand Cherry (with roots in the US), has turned longevity up to eleven with the new KC 200 MX keyboard and its MX2A switches, which are rated for up to 100 million actuations. That’s twice as much as most switches are rated for and also a compelling enough reason for us to check out the board firsthand.
Cherry KC 200 MX mechanical keyboard
The Cherry KC 200 MX is a rudimentary mechanical keyboard that gets the job done and promises you years of service, but that doesn’t mean it’s the keyboard you should settle for, especially with its sticker price.
Pricing and availability
Big bucks for what’s on offer
Right off the bat, the Cherry KC 200 MX mechanical keyboard is shooting for one of the biggest chunks of mechanical keyboard buyers outside the enthusiast community – the enterprise customer. This is evident from several peculiarities we noticed in the keyboard’s build, but more on that later.
This new keyboard carries a $90 sticker price and is readily available on Amazon. This particular model gets a dedicated product page on the Cherry Americas website, but you cannot buy the keyboard from there directly. However, the board is readily available on Amazon.
Cherry offers this mechanical keyboard in a bunch of variations for different languages, like French and German, and also a UK layout with the massive enter key. However, at $90, the market for enthusiasts is teeming with attractive options for aluminum-bodied compact keyboardsfrom the likes of Keychron. The KC 200MX commands its sticker price for the advertised reliability alone, and there’s little competition from the average custom mechanical keyboard maker in that department.
Specifications
What’s good about the Cherry KC 200 MX mechanical keyboard?
Connect it and forget it
You may recognize Cherry as the brand that developed the Cherry MXmechanical keyboard switch design, which has since spawned a whole industry of similar switches from brands like Gateron, Outemu, and Kailh, often called clones, despite their immense popularity. Well, Cherry also makes a bunch of mechanical keyboards under its own brand, and the KC 200 MX is one of the latest additions to its catalog.
The board comes with a copper color plate and black keycaps or white caps with a silver color plate. you’re able to buy the keyboard with the new MX2A Brown switches or MX2A Silent Red, with the former offering a tactile typing experience and the latter delivering quieter keystrokes. I tested out the black version with brown switches guaranteed to survive at least 100 million actuations like the original MX Brown, but you should know that Cherry rates the silent red switches only for 50 million keystrokes. Meanwhile, the company is aggressively promoting the durability of the switches on its packaging, although its rated life matches the usual MX Browns, so there isn’t much to boast about.
The new Cherry KC 200 MX keyboard with MX2A switches
Of the original Cherry switches, the mechanical keyboard enthusiast community widely regards the MX Brown as the standard for tactility, so much so that the color is now synonymous with tactile switches within keyboard circles. Like the original, I was delighted to discover that Cherry’s new MX2A switches preserve the delightfully light tactile experience midway through the keystroke despite featuring a redesigned stem, spring, and housing.
I would call it a “ticklish” tactile switch, but the new design feels a lot smoother out of the box than the average MX Brown, perhaps because it’s factory-lubed with the community’s trusty Krytox 205 grade 0 lubricant. The MX2A Browns still sound scratchy and aren’t comparable to broken-in switches, but the performance is uniform across the board and not as batch-dependent as the original Browns.
Indicator lights shine crisp and clear
The typing experience is bog-standard — the new stem design keeps the keycap wobble to a minimum, key legends are crisp and easy to read, unlike similarly priced gamer-y boards, and the Scroll Lock, Num Lock, and Caps Lock keys get their individual indicator lights which shine through said keycaps. Even the spacebar comes with a unique design on the longer edge facing you, featuring a rounded edge in the middle and sharper corners on the sides. The stabilizers on the larger keys perform well and don’t rattle or wobble noticeably. You get handy shortcut keys for the calculator and volume controls just above the numpad. N-key rollover allows multiple simultaneous key presses to register without an issue, and the board’s anti-ghosting feature ensures error-free typing with no missed inputs.
The spacebar has a uniquely rounded edge
However, the durable switches are the KC 200 MX’s USP. To put it into perspective, a typist consistently typing five-letter words at 100 words per minute for eight hours every day on five days every week would get a whopping 16 years of use from the new KC 200 MX before the switches start to give out. This parameter alone helps Cherry’s KC 200 MX appeal to a very specific buyer — businesses looking for affordable, no-nonsense workhorse peripherals to reduce associated replacement and maintenance costs.
Keycaps so thin they compete with the paper the keyboard comes wrapped in
You see, the KC 200 MX is by no means an enthusiast-tier mechanical keyboard. Its typing experience and reliability are the only aspects to shout about, and the user experience has been pitifully neglected in every other way, perhaps in hopes of Cherry’s brand sufficing as an excuse. It starts with the unboxing experience, where the keyboard comes wrapped in thin black paper accompanied by a manual and nothing else. The cable is non-detachable; you miss out on wireless connectivity options, customization via software, support for macOS, and per-key backlighting, and it’s the first time we’ve seen a retro yellow PCB in a long time.
A closer look at the keycaps
Most of these missing features can be ignored, considering the KC 200 MX is an office keyboard, but its cheap keycaps sent me over the edge. The ABS keycaps offer laser-etched legends that are worryingly thin, and it does the sound profile no favors. More importantly, ABS plastic is prone to abrasion, and the keycap legends will be polished to a shiny smudge before the switches start to fail. Although this keyboard is compatible with most aftermarket keycap sets, we doubt businesses will go that route. At the very least, it would’ve been nice to see double-shot injection molded ABS or dye-sublimated PBT keycaps at this price point.
Should you buy the Cherry KC 200 MX mechanical keyboard?
Redesigned switches don’t warrant the switch
There’s no denying the Cherry KC 200 MX belongs in an office, chattering away for years, but I wouldn’t point a mechanical keyboard aficionado its way. If you’re in the market for a keyboard promising years of worry-free usage, sure, this keyboard ticks all the right boxes. It’s also a great keyboard if you just want to get a feel for Cherry’s new MX2A switches without introducing a slew of other variables from the custom keyboard scene.
However, if the new MX2A Brown switches are all you seek, they are sold in packs of 110 units or 35, with the former promising better value at just $45 — half as much as a KC 200 MX costs. As much as we love it for its simplicity and understated design, the $90 sticker price left a bad taste in my mouth. The costs of crafting a new mechanical key switch certainly add up, but there are several sub-$100 mechanical keyboards with much longer feature lists, and the KC 200 MX simply isn’t in the same league.
If you’re looking for a more compact keyboard with more features but are held back by durability concerns, I suggest picking up any keyboard with hot-swappable switches so you may replace the switches if they start dying on you. This option doesn’t make much sense in a workplace either, but the Cherry KC 200 MX isn’t worth the money in my book unless you’re the specific kind of Office Manager this board targets.
The KC 200 MX has a lot of potential, but it isn’t aimed at the average spoiled-for-choice enthusiast. However, if you have $90 for a keyboard that you don’t want to replace every few months, this is the one that will last.
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