Review: Cherry G84-4100 KeyboardThe choice of a good keyboard is something which consumes a lot of time for many Hackaday readers, judging by the number of custom input device projects which make it to these pages. I live by my keyboard as a writer, but I have to admit that I’ve never joined in on the special keyboard front; for me it’s been a peripheral rather than an obsession. But I’m hard on keyboards, I type enough that I wear them out. For the last five years my Hackaday articles have come via a USB Thinkpad keyboard complete with the little red stick pointing device, but its keys have started parting company with their switches so it’s time for a replacement.I Don’t Want The Blackpool IlluminationsIs it a gamer’s keyboard, or the Blackpool seafront at night? I can’t tell any more. Mark S Jobling, Public domain.For a non keyboard savant peering over the edge, this can be a confusing choice. There’s much obsessing about different types of mechanical switch, and for some reason I can’t quite fathom, an unreasonable number of LEDs.I don’t want my keyboard to look like the Blackpool Illuminations (translation for Americans: Las Vegas strip), I just want to type on the damn thing. More to the point, many of these “special” keyboards carry prices out of proportion to their utility, and it’s hard to escape the feeling that like the thousand quid stereo the spotty kid puts in his Opel Corsa, you’re being asked to pay just for bragging rights.Narrowing down my needs then, I don’t need any gimmicks, I just need a small footprint keyboard that’s mechanically robust enough to survive years of my bashing out Hackaday articles on it. I’m prepared to pay good money for that.The ‘board I settled upon is probably one of the most unglamorous decent quality keyboards on the market. The Cherry G84-4100 is sold to people in industry who need a keyboard that fits in a small space, and I’ve used one to the deafening roar of a cooling system in a data centre rack. It’s promising territory for a Hackaday scribe. I ordered mine from the Cherry website, and it cost me just under £70 (about $93), with the postage being extra. It’s available with a range of different keymaps, and I ordered the UK one. In due course the package arrived, a slim cardboard box devoid of consumer branding, inside of which was the keyboard, a USB-to-PS/2 adaptor, and a folded paper manual. I’m using it on a USB machine so the adaptor went in my hoard, but I’m pleased to be able to use this with older machines when necessary.Hello My Old Data Centre FriendIt’s not shift-3 for the £ sign that’s important, but shift-2 for the quote. You have no idea how annoying not having that is on an international layout.For my money, I got a keyboard described as “compact”, or 75%. It’s 282 by 132 by 26 mm in size, which means it takes up a little less space than the Thinkpad one it replaces, something of a win to my mind. It doesn’t have a numeric keypad, but I don’t need that. The switches are Cherry mechanical ones rather than the knock-offs you’ll find on so many competitors, and they have something of the mechanical sound but not the racket of an IBM buckled spring key switch. Cherry claim they’re good for 20 million activations, so even I shouldn’t wear them out.The keymap is of course the standard UK one I’m used to, but what makes or breaks a ‘board like this one is how they arrange the other keys. I really like that their control key is in the bottom left hand corner rather than as in so many others, the function key, but I am taking a little while to get used to the insert and delete keys being to the left of the arrow keys in the bottom right hand corner. Otherwise my muscle memory isn’t being taxed too much by it.There are a couple of little feet at the back underneath that can be flipped up to raise the ‘board at an angle. Since after years of typing the heel of my hand becomes inflamed if I rest it on the surface I elevate my wrist by about an inch with a rest, thus I use the keyboard tilt. I’ve been typing with the Cherry for a few weeks now, and it remains comfortable.The Cherry G84-4100 then. It’s not a “special” keyboard in any way, in fact its about as utilitarian as it gets in a peripheral. But for me a keyboard is a tool, and just like my Vernier caliper or my screwdrivers I demand that it does its job repeatably and flawlessly for many years to come. So its unglamorous nature is its strength, because I’ve paid for the engineering which underlies it rather than the bells and whistles that adorn some others. Without realising it you’ll be seeing a lot of this peripheral in my work over the coming years.hackaday.com/2025/12/12/review…
