Let's Introduce a Masterpiece Keyboard Buried in Consumer Society. ~NEC SG-26800-2VC~ Minebea Mitsumi Switch Keyboard

Hello, I'm Munou.

Do you have any particular preferences for your keyboard? Topre? HHKB?

I owned all of them during my student days.

Nevertheless, unfortunately, perhaps due to an otaku's rebellious spirit against generally famous things, I was not satisfied with them.

The world of keyboards is still famous for Cherry.
In the past, there must have been buckling spring switches developed by ALPS and IBM, and various other types of switches.

So, let me introduce this keyboard, which is where I ended up.

NEC SG-26800-2VC

Before the introduction,

Sorry for all the messy stuff around it...

With that said, this is the NEC SG-26800-2VC that I use for my server.
It was a product included as an accessory for PC98 servers at the time of its release.

Using a server-grade item properly for a home server, that's a man's romance. If you have balls, you'll understand...

A typical 105-key Japanese layout.
The keyboard I use at my desk is tenkeyless for gaming and other uses, but since I'm Japanese, I don't aspire to foreign specifications and using this layout without aiming too high gives me a sense of security.

The surface is a rough, matte finish.
The keycap legends are silk-screen printed and then coated with a topcoat, which is inferior to laser printing, but honestly, considering the typing feel, I don't really care. And the roughness of these keycaps feels really good to the touch, slightly coarse and excellent. I imagine that the keycaps feel resistant to wear because the topcoat is applied in several distinct layers, providing a decent thickness of protection?

Although it is a membrane type, since the switch itself is made by Mitsumi Minebea / NMB, the rubber dome does not directly hit the keycap.

The rubber dome is pressed by the switch slider shown in this photo. There is no friction or wear on the slider part, and it operates very smoothly.

Considering the number of parts, this would also be a solid reason to support this typing feel.

There are USB ports on the back, but... Would anyone actually use them there!? At first, I thought they were ports for connecting a mouse, but they are on both the left and right. No, perhaps it means they support both right-handed and left-handed users. That's a thoughtful design.

By the way, the printing on the casing other than the keycaps is laser printing.

Overall Review

Compared to currently available mechanical keyboards, this one is relatively quiet because it uses a membrane system. However, while it offers a light press and quiet operation like Cherry White switches, I still feel that the decisive difference in whether the rebound is a spring or rubber is significant.

The rubbery feel often disliked in membrane keyboards is a typing feel that, with this unit, feels pleasant. It's also different from the popular ThinkPad's typing feel, which also uses a membrane system. I won't go into detail because the switch construction and the prerequisite of being a laptop PC make a big difference.

And the reason I brought it up as a masterpiece keyboard is its cost performance.
Since it can be obtained used for around 5,000 yen or less, I feel it's difficult to get an equivalent keyboard in this price range in this day and age (including the cost of testing too many products). Furthermore, since there are, of course, many poor-quality switches, even though they are generally called mechanical keyboards, many of the company's self-developed Cherry-axis copy products have severe issues like slider friction.

After all, keyboards are consumables, so it's hard to commit to using an expensive one forever. It's probably better to be able to treat it roughly, like a "keyboard smasher," and occasionally hit it.

It is sad that this switch system, as a product still sold by Mitsumi Minebea, has almost no remaining presence.
However, although I am completely uneducated and my social status is already at a negative level, so I'm not in a position to say this, I hope that such a product, with its carefully crafted, Japanese-like quality in a good sense, will remain available even in the used market. I felt that these switches embody the "Yamato-damashii" (Japanese spirit) often spoken of in connection with ThinkPads.

Well then.

Until next time.