I’ve been playing with the latest Cherry MX 6.0 mechanical keyboard for the last few days, and it’s a nice, well-built keyboard. I’ll have a review up later this week, but there is one big point people might want to know about.
Image courtesy of Cherry MX
You’ll notice in the picture above that there’s a very sizeable arm rest. It’s nice to rest your hands on. It’s also quite large and has plenty of room to maybe rest your keys or something small in between your wrists.
But let me stop you there. Because if you thought that space might be nice for putting objects, you might want to think again. The operating manual for the Cherry MX Board 6.0 warns that there’s a magnet in the front of the keyboard where the palm rest attaches.
“There is a magnet of strength N48H on the front of the keyboard for attaching the palm rest,” the user manual says. “Do not put any storage media such as SD cards or external hard drives, or mechanical watches near the front of the keyboard.”
It doesn’t say smart watches, only mechanical ones — so don’t leave your old-school wrist watches lying on the keyboard or anything. And just to remind you, the manual has this in bold:
The magnet in the keyboard can wipe storage media and damage mechanical watches
Well then. That’s good to know.
It’s worth noting that the Cherry MX 6.0 is targeted at people with supremely quick typing speeds, programmers and those who are heavy, heavy keyboard users. It’s not specifically targeted at gamers and it doesn’t come with any gaming-specific software, although I can imagine the lack of software might actually be supremely appealing for a lot of gamers who take their keyboard around to various events (the Zowie line of mice are hugely attractive for precisely this reason).
But it does have a magnet that could wipe your USB sticks. So, uh, be careful.
Comments
20 responses to “The Front Of Cherry’s Latest Keyboard Can Wipe Your USB Sticks And Watches”
Oh, it’s ok… why would you have a watch near a keyboard anyway?
I don’t know if you’re being serious but whatever. When you’re wearing a watch on either wrist and you’re resting your palms on the palm rest your wrist are very close to the magnet. Maybe close enough to get ruined.
You mean, the sort of watch attached to your wrist, right where the magnetic wrist-rest sits?
Might be a silly question but WHY? I mean why put the magnet there in the first place not about how things get wiped.
I would guess that the palm rest is held on with the magnet rather than actually clipping on.
Cheers, still seems a bit silly although stronger magnets would work better than a flimsy plastic clip i guess.
Why on earth would they use magnets to attach the armrest when a simple plastic latch could’ve done the same without wiping USB drives that are casually strewn about the desk?
I thought that flash memory was immune to magnetic interference? I’ve certainly not noticed a problem with my phone and magnets?
Yeah flash memory is not affected by magnetic fields.
I was about to say “I didn’t even know USB drives were susceptible to magnetism” and then I remembered how I used to call them flash drives and nobody seems to call them that any more, and USB hard drives are a thing now.
Kids these days.
In fact, a magnet generally won’t affect a hard drive. The whole magnets erasing data thing is from the Floppy Disk era. Hard Drives are susceptible to magnets but only if the magnet is really strong – purpose-built stuff for wiping drives, laboratory degaussing equipment etc.
A flash drive can be influenced by a magnet, but only when it’s ridiculously strong. And by ridiculously strong I mean ‘attracts the iron in your blood so strongly it’ll rip it out’ strong.
Mechanical watches seem the most likely to be affected honestly. Also I suspect this is Cherry just covering their asses.
A magnet of arbitrary strength is going to kill your (magnetic) hard drive well before it affects flash memory. Sure the metal case will shield the hard drive’s platters somewhat, but I’d still keep anything magnetic the hell away from my drives.
Hahaha I hear you.
Like when someone asks “Can I borrow a USB?”……
And then you chuck ’em a USB extension cable? 😛
I had a customer come up and ask me once if we sold USB, I asked him what type of USB device was he after, as USB was a connection not just a thing. He got shitty and kept saying I just want a plain USB, just a USB, whats so hard about getting a USB…. We didnt actually sell USB sticks or any storage media, but yea he was annoying.
I understood that title in a completely different way for some reason, I thought it meant the keyboard rest was able to wipe clean the glass of a watch, and clean the USB connect. Don’t ask me how, but that’s what I thought this article was going to be about 😛
That would be so handy.
I thought the exact same thing!
The scourge of the short left shift key continues. Animals.
Not to mention ‘z’ is in the wrong place. Going by the umlauted letters I am going to assume that this isn’t a US layout keyboard though :p