CM Storm MECH Testing

While most of what makes a keyboard good or bad is purely preferential, there are a few things that we can test for to make sure that the CM Storm MECH Mechanical Keyboard lives up to it’s claims and feature set. I can tell you all day long that I like the tactile feedback of the Cherry MX Brown switches and the keyboard is functional and full-featured, but that all boils down to my preference. It could be that you don’t like the tactile feedback, or that the Cherry MX Brown switches actuation force is too little for you. You might not like the hard wrist-rest or the pure size of the keyboard. To tell you the truth, I’m not really a fan of the carry handle, since I won’t likely be transporting the CM Storm MECH very often. It makes the keyboard so big that it takes up most of the room on my desk.

In any event, the CM Storm MECH Mechanical Keyboard claims to have 64 key rollover capabilities, which would alleviate ghosting effects. Ghosting happens when your keyboard can’t recognize certain combinations of keystrokes. This is usually more of a problem with membrane keyboards, since each key does not have it’s own individual switch. You can imagine the trouble that ghosting might cause if you think of playing a game where you are trying to sprint (SHIFT), run diagonally (A+W), and reload (R), all at the same time. If your keyboard won’t recognize some three key combinations, you could end up running in the wrong direction and with out of ammo when you need it.

To test out the n-key rollover capabilities and the anti-ghosting of the CM Storm MECH Keyboard, there are a few places you can go. A site that I like that incorporates many of the these tests is located at controlspace.org. The site has an input field to test your keyboard’s rollover behavior. To test it, you press down both shift keys at the same time and type the phrase, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” That will check every letter on your keyboard. I tested out four of my keyboards on the site. Check out the results below:

CM Storm MECH

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG

Ideazon MERC

HE QUIK BROWN FO JUPS OER HE LA DOG

HP KUS0133

HE QUIK BROWN FO JUPS OER HE LA DOG

Rosewill  RK-7431

HE QUIC BROWN OX UMP OVER HE Z OG

To check ghosting, I used Microsoft’s Ghosting Demo. Here you can test out which key combinations work together. Ghosting generally occurs with three-key combinations.There a thousands of combinations that you can test. I just pressed down as many keys as I could at the same time with one hand to see how many would be recognized by the ghosting demo.

As you can see from both of the tests, the CM Storm MECH Mechanical Keyboard doesn’t suffer from the ghosting affects that the membrane keyboards have. The ghosting demo shows that as many keys as I could press down at the same time all registered. Try as I might, I couldn’t press 64 keys at the same time, but as many as I could press was enough to show that the CM Storm MECH is superior in this regard to membrane keyboards.