My new favorite keyboard

A mini keyboard that’s actually good?

TL;DR the Cherry G84-4100 is a nice keyboard.

In the past few years I’ve become a convert to mechanical keyboards. I guess I spend enough time typing in my day to day existence that a satisfying typing experience is a significant quality of life improvement. At work I’m currently using a Tesoro Gram MX ONE TS-G11UNL, a 104-key full size keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches. It’s a very nice keyboard, and has served me quite well for more than 2 years. In my home office, I’ve been using a cheap Sunsonny mechanical keyboard, which is pretty good, although the Outemu brown switches aren’t as durable as the authentic Cherry MX switches, and I’ve had to replace quite a few of them (which, to be fair, is easy to do.)

My home office is also my electronics lab, so the work surface gets used for a variety of tasks, and a full-size (104 key) keyboard takes up quite a bit of space. I’ve never used a mini keyboard as a daily driver, but I was beginning to think that it might be worth considering. I happened to watch the Tech Tangents video on the “Happy Hacking” keyboard (TL;DW the Happy Hacking keyboard sucks), and Shelby mentioned the Cherry G84-4100 as being a high-quality alternative. I found a good deal on EBay, scoring two used ones for about $30 shipped.

Here is one of them (banana for scale):

Here are my impressions.

It’s small. It’s only about 27.5 cm wide, and the keys aren’t quite full size, so it does take a little bit of time to adjust to. The spacebar is not full width, and the backtick/tilde key is in an odd location to the left of the spacebar. There is no right control key. However, the most important keys are in the expected places, and it has function keys (for me having Alt-F2 available to launch programs is a must.) I was typing comfortably within an hour or so. The first day I used it, I wrote about 1,000 lines of C++ code, and it was a pleasant experience.

The key feel is spectacular. In my opinion, this is a very satisfying keyboard to type on. The keys don’t require a ton of force to actuate, but there’s a satisfying “clunk” when you overcome the initial resistance and the key bottoms out.

It’s quiet. Despite having mechanical switches, it’s reasonably quiet. I don’t think it’s any louder than rubber-dome keyboards I’ve used, and it might actually be quieter.

It’s well built. My impression is that this keyboard is marketed for use in point of sale systems, so I assume it’s engineered to survive extended use. It’s fairly light, and the frame is plastic, but there’s no flex or rattle when typing, and it rests flat.

Anyway, if you are looking for a mini keyboard as a daily driver or just for occasional use, the G84-4100 is worth checking out. If you’re patient you should be able to find them on EBay for $20 or less.