REVIEW: Unicomp’s “New Model M” mechanical buckling spring keyboard (2021)
Tags: IBM, Keyboard, Technology, Mechanical Keyboards, Review

As I tried to jot down the main things I like and dislike about this board, I realised that for almost every positive thing I had to say, I had at least one related negative point as well… so that’s precisely how I’m going to structure this. For the majority of this review, I’ll hit you with a positive, then follow it up with something correlated that I wasn’t so keen on.

Key feel

First thing’s first… is this actually any good to type on?

GOOD: The keys feel quite excellent. This is my primary concern so when it comes to getting me on-side, it’s a big win for the Unicomp. The New Model M is extremely satisfying to type on, particularly given that the mechanical board it replaced was a Corsair “gaming” keyboard with Cherry MX Blue slider switches of the sort of board that the mech keyboard community would quite justifiably turn its collective nose up at, and which I only bought in the first place because it was in a clearance sale to get rid of obsolete stock. Next to that board and more or less every other mechanical board I’d tried previously, this thing is a revelation. The amount of force required to actuate a switch is alarming compared to the MX Blues, which wasn’t particularly surprising given how the mechanisms differ. As I mentioned before, I don’t have a long history with buckling spring keyboards, so it’s entirely possible that the Unicomp one is crap compared to a mid-80s IBM, but from what research I did before buying one, I don’t get the impression that that’s the case. There are those who will tell you that they don’t hold a candle to the original boards from IBM or even Lexmark, but I get the feeling that part of the problem is that the older boards are unavoidably affected by their age and as such have a different key feel due to wear and tear. I also think that part of it is probably that the manufacturing tolerances and minor details in the method of manufacture had been gradually changing over a period of many years, long before the Model M manufacturing duties ended up in the hands of Unicomp; I suspect that you’d find a Unicomp Model M to be quite similar to a later Lexmark Model M, but that both would be more noticeably different from a 1985 IBM one. I can’t say from first-hand experience, though I have noticed that others who do have first-hand experience of a lot of Model Ms seem to be saying something to that effect (notably Thomas Ran, a.k.a. Chyros on Deskthority or Chyrosran22 on YouTube).

BAD: Sod all! I love typing on this keyboard. I know I just said that I had a negative for most positive points I had to discuss, but this one is the significant exception: I really have nothing bad to say about the key feel on this board. Again, I might have if I’d used Model M boards for the past 20 years, but I haven’t, so I can’t claim to know if they nailed it or not. If I were really reaching, I might point out that the force required to press a key properly might come as an unpleasant surprise to some, but I don’t think that’s a fair criticism because I suspect it’s about right for a Model M based on everything I know about the history of buckling spring boards. Just something to be aware of, but not really a criticism at all, in my view. Personally, I’m a big fan; it just took maybe a couple of days of adjustment. Now that I’m used to it, I just switched to testing out a different board (which I’ll probably write about separately another day) and found myself absolutely hammering the poor thing to death because it uses completely different mechanical slider switches that are much easier to press.

Quality control

One of the things that Unicomp has taken some heat for over the years is the quality of their keycaps, which (as I briefly mentioned before) was put down to the age of their manufacturing equipment, which is the exact same kit that was being used in the mid-to-late 90s by Lexmark (in Greenock, Scotland, I believe). The story goes that IBM sold the vast majority of their keyboard manufacturing business to Lexington-based company Lexmark in the early 90s, with only a very limited amount of first-party IBM manufacturing continuing beyond that point in Greenock of all places (which is only a few scant miles from me!) and Lexmark taking on the bulk of it moving forward. Lexmark was making boards for IBM in more than one location, one of which was Greenock as well, although I believe they were separate facilities (one IBM, one Lexmark, just both in the same Scottish town). When Lexmark eventually stopped making the Model M toward the mid-to-late 90s, some key Lexmark employees bought up a bunch of the manufacturing equipment and went on to form Unicomp, where they used the same old kit to continue making the Model M for years thereafter, although they moved all the manufacturing exclusively to Lexington in Kentucky, USA. (IBM actually continued making Model Ms in Greenock as late as 1998, I think, but when they shut that down they didn’t move it elsewhere, that was the end of it.)

The trouble with the equipment Unicomp inherited from Lexmark is that it was already starting to show its age by the time it changed hands, but they weren’t really making enough of a profit out of the manufacturing and sales of the boards to justify the pretty considerable expenditure of upgrading the old gear. Owing perhaps to the recent resurgence in the level of interest people seem to have in mechanical keyboards, Unicomp has finally decided that they can afford to spend the cash on some long overdue upgrades, which is how we’re getting better keycaps and two new keyboard models in the “New Model M” and the “Mini M” (which is more or less a reborn Space Saving Keyboard, or SSK) in the first place. There’s a caveat, I hesitate to add: not all of their keyboards fully benefit from the new/upgraded tooling, since they’re still using the old moulds for all other models, as far as I am aware. If you buy something like an “Ultra Classic” (the previous iteration of the main PC version of the Model M) or “PC-122” (their take on IBM’s giant 122-key scancode set 3 terminal keyboards), it is my understanding that you are still getting a chassis made from the old and somewhat worn out moulds. Their website actually goes so far as to heavily discourage ordering anything other than the New Model M or Mini M, which seems to support this. On most of the product pages, they now have this “product announcement” in gigantic red text to try to divert your attention to the New Model M / Mini M instead of their older boards (this one is how it appears on the Ultra Classic page at https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/category/UltraClassic):

Seems Unicomp *really* doesn’t want to sell you their older products…

So… were the upgrades worth the expense?

GOOD: The dye sublimation is impeccable and the moulding of the vast majority of keys is almost flawless.

The positive impact of the upgraded tooling really shows and I’m glad they’re finally addressing one of the main criticisms that has been directed at their output for years. There is no fuzzy lettering or weak, faded looking dye work going on here. The moulds for the keys aren’t absolutely perfect, but most of the few remaining rough patches are just at the pour-point of the mould, which is at the far edge of each keycap so you can’t see it when using the board (and this was always the case on IBM keyboards anyway).

But hang on, didn’t I just say that I wasn’t that experienced with Model Ms? Isn’t this my first Unicomp? How would I know if it’s any better or worse than their previous products, or any other Model M? Well… unfortunately, this is where things start going downhill.

BAD: The excellent dye sublimation is ruined by rather poor misalignment of the legends on several keys, and there are still some noticeable moulding issues present on both the keycaps and the case even with their manufacturing upgrades.

The whole F row is off, including the very first key on the top of the board (Esc), both legends on the 5/% key are much further to the right than the others in its row, and the nav cluster is all over the place. It’s so distracting to me that I’m going to have to switch them all for either classic keycaps off an old board or blanks that have no legends at all, lest it drive me insane.

The nav cluster alignment… isn’t great. The function row is similar.

There’s also one standout instance of a key having its legend drastically misaligned by design, as well, rather than by mistake: the Return arrow legend on the tall ISO Return/Enter key is in completely the wrong location on the keycap. I don’t think this one is just because of bad aim, though: I think it’s because there’s a version of it that would have text, and they’ve simply removed the text from the process of printing that version of the key and kept the arrow legend in the same position (because UK Model M boards generally don’t have text on special keys that have icon legends). The arrow legend should be near the top of the keycap as it is on pretty much all classic ISO Model Ms that aren’t terminal boards (terminal ones tend to make this key “Field Exit” instead) but on all the Unicomp ISO Enter keys I’ve seen, it’s more like 1/3 of the way down the keycap, which is way too low and looks wrong.

Due to the closeness of this shot, there’s a certain amount of lens distortion caused by the camera, but you can nonetheless see that many of the legends on the keys are noticeably misaligned. The whole Function row looks wrong (is it supposed to be vertically centred or not?), Esc is aligned differently from the rest of the row, the 5 key is further to the right than the other numbers, and you can see what I was saying about Return/Enter.

Many of the additional keycaps I ordered to customise the board with were quite shockingly bad compared to the stock ones installed on the board, so I ended up using almost none of them: I ordered a staggering number of custom keys so I’d have plenty of options, but as of right now, the only ones I actually have on the board are a novelty one with the Linux mascot “Tux” on it, and legacy Windows ones for the left Windows key and Menu key. There are major moulding defects on most of them, the legends are REALLY badly misaligned, and the sublimation is less impressive than the preinstalled keys as well. This — partially — is why I feel I can say with some confidence that the upgrades to Unicomp’s manufacturing equipment has made a noticeable positive difference on their current keycaps. It looks like many of the custom keycap sets that I ordered are older, manufactured before they upgraded the tooling. The difference is night and day.

Side view of the Caps Lock key from one of the two Linux keysets I ordered. Very rough indeed.

There are also some keys on the board itself with moulding issues, most notably the left Ctrl key, which essentially has a dent in it, except that it seems like it’s just moulded that way rather than being damaged after the fact. The board was extremely well packaged, so it clearly didn’t happen in transit.

Moulding issue on left Ctrl key (stock key, not a swapped-in alternate)

Finally, the case itself is not without flaws: mine has a very distracting dark vertical line running down the black case right in front of the space bar:

Moulding defect in my New Model M chassis

When I sent the first pic to Unicomp they claimed they couldn’t see the problem, so I took this horrible one with flash on to make it more obvious

Had this been on the underside or otherwise a little less obtrusive, I wouldn’t care as much… but it’s right there, man. Every time I look at the board, it’s the first thing I see. (Yes, I touch type, but I still want the thing to look good at this kind of price point.)

Function

The New Model M isn’t quite as revolutionary as the Mini M, but there are still some alterations to the full size design compared to its previous iteration in the form of the Ultra Classic.

GOOD: The New Model M arranges the keys on the bottom row more like the original IBM versions.

It still has the extra keys, but they’re located in places that mean any muscle memory you might have built up using a classic Model M (or one of the dozens upon dozens of keyboards that stole its layout) won’t be broken when you switch over to this keyboard. I’ve actually already talked about this a bit over on Reddit, where I shared this extremely professional MS Paint diagram to show what I was on about:

Diagrammatic representation of the bottom two rows on the New Model M compared to the original IBM design. If you remove the Windows keys and the Menu key, then extend the space bar to fill the space freed up by the right Windows key, you get the original Model M key arrangement.

This “new” layout may seem daft and counterintuitive at first glance, but it in fact more accurately reflects the key placement on a classic Model M. The extra keys have been added into space that was either completely unused on the old Model M or taken up by the right-hand end of the space bar, which they’ve shortened to make room. This has the downside of meaning that the key added to the right of the space bar is a weirdly shaped Windows key that’s 25% wider than the Windows key on the left side, but because everything else is in the right place, you can at least remove that extra key and swap the shorter space bar for a longer one instead, which very nearly (neeeeearly) turns the “New Model M” bottom row into a classic Model M bottom row except with the two gaps at the sides filled in (between both sets of Ctrl and Alt keys). As it happens, this is one of the first things that I did: I ordered a spare short space bar and one full-length space bar with my New Model M, and I installed the long one over the top of the right Windows key spot very quickly. The asymmetrical bottom row doesn’t sit right with me and I want to be able to switch between this and other Model M-style boards without my right thumb ever hitting the right Windows key by accident when I want a space instead. (I don’t think I’ve ever used the right Windows key in my entire life, although the left one gets some heavy abuse from my left pinky.)

My New Model M with some of the many additional keycaps I ordered so I’d have lots of customisation options. For the pic here, I’ve stuck blank black keycaps on the left Windows key and Menu key to show where there would have been gaps in the classic Model M layout, and installed the long space bar, which runs over the top of the space that had a right Windows key in it by default

BAD: You can’t opt for the most true-to-the-original bottom row layout unless you pick US ANSI configuration, you’re stuck with Windows & Menu keys regardless, and the space bar on the New Model M appears to be slightly misaligned on the chassis itself (so I can’t fix it without replacing the entire case).

That last one is the real killer, but I’ll explain the other elements first because they contextualise it a bit.

One of the things that the Model M was infamous for was stubbornly refusing to include Windows and Menu keys, ever (which were introduced with the frankly hideous Microsoft Natural Keyboard in 1994 for use specifically with Windows 95). This changed at some point when Unicomp took the reigns, although I’m not certain if they added these keys right away or if that only happened fairly recently. Either way, I would have much preferred to have the option to exclude them. This might seem like a nitpick, but it goes back to the same reasoning I gave for not wanting the short space bar: muscle memory. I want to be able to pick up a classic Model M or some other board that uses an equivalent layout, and lacks Windows or Menu keys. If I keep reaching for the left Windows key — which I know many people never use, but I probably use approximately seven thousand times in a typical day — and then I switch to a board that doesn’t have one, it’s going to be frustrating for quite a while until I adjust. What I do to combat this is map the Caps Lock key as Windows key, then map Shift+Win to toggle Caps Lock. Frankly, I almost never use Caps Lock anyway; more likely, I’ll just hold Shift, EVEN IF I WANT TO TYPE IN ALL CAPS. It’s not that hard. I don’t really see the point in a Caps Lock key, but I can keep the functionality there without needing a key entirely dedicated to that sole purpose. But in any case, I don’t have this option: Unicomp doesn’t offer it, and I can’t simply remove the keys because that would just leave the underlying keyswitch barrel exposed, which would not only be unsightly but would be somewhat detrimental to the health of the board because it would leave the barrels (and the springs inside them, unless I pulled those out) open to dust and dirt. Furthermore, to diverge briefly into aesthetics for a sec (which I’ll get into more thoroughly in the next section), the legends that Unicomp has chosen for the stock Windows and Menu keys are ostentatious and repulsive to my eyes, although I’m sure that their appearance is partly due to limitations imposed by Microsoft on how they licence these keys. Still, seeing Windows 8 logos on a keyboard that was fundamentally designed in the mid-80s nonetheless drags the overall look of the board down; I couldn’t keep those on any board I buy from Unicomp, personally.

These do not belong on any Model M, if you ask me (you didn’t, but I’ll tell you anyway)

As I mentioned previously though, I was at least able to swap out the shortened space bar for a longer one, which is obviously a good thing. What’s less good about it is that Unicomp offer this out of the box, but only if you order a US ANSI layout board. If you want any other layout whatsoever, they force you to pay a $15 uplift and you need to take the layout with the shorter space bar. Why this is, I don’t know, because there should be zero difference between the bottom row of the ANSI and ISO layouts. So instead of just choosing the “long space bar” option as I could have if I’d wanted a US layout keyboard, I had to pay an extra $15 to get a UK ISO layout with a short space bar, then another $4 for a separate long space bar, then pull off the stock space bar and right Windows key and install the long space bar over the top of the unused barrel and switch. There’s a redundant switch flipper and spring still sitting underneath the right end of my space bar now, which doesn’t appear to make any discernable difference whatsoever to the function of the board, but it feels a bit pointless and I would’ve rather paid slightly less to have it arrive like that out of the box. The stabiliser on the stock space bar was (barely and unevenly) factory lubricated, but I had to add a bit of lithium grease to the alternate longer one to avoid it rattling. (I tried damping the loose spring floating in the unused barrel under the space bar just in case it made any difference to the sound, but it didn’t, so I’ve just left the spring dangling in there so I don’t lose it or whatever if I take it out.)

My big problem here, though, is that the space bar is misaligned. No, this is not because I swapped it out for the longer one: it was off before I switched them, and it remains identical after switching them. It appears that the chassis itself must have the barrel for the space bar moulded just ever so slightly too far to the left, by about 1 mm or so, which results in the space bar riding so close to the left Alt key that it almost rubs against it when you press either of the keys. Conversely, on the opposite side, there is a very noticeable gap between space bar and right Alt. Considering what I was just saying about me switching out the shorter space bar and removing a perfectly functional key just to achieve symmetry, you’ll hopefully understand why I find this infuriating. It’s very difficult to photograph, but I gave it a try: