Performance

For performance testing, I have been using the MX Board 5.0 off and on over the past month. In that time I’ve done a lot of writing (obviously) and some gaming just about nightly. I was able to test the board in a variety of situations so let's run through how it performs. First let me say that while I like the 5.0, it is way different than the MX Board 6.0. The 6.0 had an aluminum housing and a steel backplate where the 5.0 has a plastic housing and an aluminum backplate. Both make a big difference in the quality and how it feels/sounds when typing. There isn’t anything overly wrong with the plastic case and aluminum backplate, it is just more in line with what most companies sell, not a crazy high-end board like the MX Board 6.0 was.

But even with the 6.0 sitting higher than the 5.0 in the food chain, I did love typing on the MX Board 5.0. Being a traditional layout, I was about to pick up the 5.0 and come and go from it as needed. The only thing I needed to figure out was the function layer stuff like the lighting controls. So the MC Board 5.0 has all white backlighting, while this stands out with everyone running RGB I do like the white backlighting. It is easier to see and a better white than when you do RGB in white. The lighting controls were easy to reach. You have a button to turn the lighting on and off and then next to it two controls. What I was surprised with though was the F12 key over away from the others. This lets you flip between a few different lighting modes like reactive, a breathing effect, and always on. From there the F6 and F7 keys let you change how that mode reacts. So with always on you can change the brightness between 10 levels. Then with the breathing effect, they change how fast it breaths. Whenever you press a function layer key the LED right above the Cherry branded key also flashes red to show that it was pressed. This is nice because it stops lighting up when you hit full brightness for example. The lighting overall looks good, the function legends and stuff like $#@ on the number row aren’t lit up very well because they are on the bottom of the key so they will be hard to see in the dark.

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Overall performance was good, sadly without the MX Silent Red switches on our sample I didn’t get the full experience. But I have used them in the past, they would make a big difference as this is already a quiet board. A few things I did notice in testing, the bezel while not thick does sit up a little higher around the keys. So it did take a little adjusting when hitting the number pad enter key. I also had an issue with the 5 key in the number row, not in the number pad, where it liked to double and triple report sometimes. That is a rare switch issue, not specific to the MX Board 5.0, but it was especially noticeable when typing this review considering it has 5 in the product name lol.

As I expected, having the keys above the number pad was nice. I hate using a function layer, so having a few keys that don’t require holding the function button to use was nice. Especially without taking up any extra space. I personally would still have preferred the volume controls be over there not the media keys. But that is because I never use media keys. The Cherry branded key, when pressed lights up the LED above it red to signify that it is in its gaming mode. This just turns off the windows key so you don’t get kicked out of game. I know a lot of people love that feature and I’m glad they have it on the 5.0 but I’ve still yet to ever accidentally click the windows key in game. The Cherry stabilizers worked out well and didn’t have any rattling issues, in fact, they were quiet.

Now I played around with the flip out feet and I love the feature for the keyboard. I normally type flat, but it was nice to be able to change it up without flipping the board over or blindly looking for the feet. The same functionality on the wrist rest wasn’t as useful to me personally, but I think people looking for a more ergonomic layout will really like being able to prop the wrist rest up and angle the keyboard down. The wrist rest itself was okay, the rubber finish quickly collected a lot of dead skin nasties but I think the rubber will hold up in the long term better than some of my softer pads.

 

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