REVIEW: Unicomp’s “New Model M” mechanical buckling spring keyboard (2021)
Although I haven’t yet done so at time of writing, I will probably put a truncated and slightly altered version of this review on YouTube in the relatively near future, so if you start reading this and fall asleep, you might want to check back for that later on. I’ll add a link to this page if I do upload a video. That said, I don’t expect it to be anywhere near as comprehensive as this written version, so if you care about detail at all, you’ll probably want to read on.
I became interested in mechanical keyboards surprisingly late, in spite of a lifelong love affair with tech that was born before I was. Before I could form coherent sentences, I was mucking about with things like Sega Master Systems and Mega Drives that my gadget-loving dad would buy then quickly lose interest in. When we got our first proper family PC one Christmas, 9-year-old me was immediately transfixed, and that curiosity around computing equipment has followed me throughout my life ever since. Generally speaking, I’ve always been utterly fascinated by how electronic systems work, and wanted to pull them apart so I can figure out how to put them back together, whether that was happening in the literal sense (hardware) or a slightly more ethereal one (seeing how much I could screw up the Windows registry and then fix it again before my dad got home, because I wasn’t fussed about theme parks and had to get my terror-fuelled adrenaline rushes some other way). The trouble, I think, is that I grew up in the 90s. By the time we got a computer, mechanical keyboards were already a dying breed, having been usurped almost everywhere by their ubiquitous mushy rubber dome counterparts. So I’m pretty sure that we got that first PC with a rubber dome keyboard, not a mechanical one, meaning that I had no idea what I was missing and have no nostalgia for the nice big clunky keyboards that the world was filled with a decade or so earlier. I mention this mostly as context and partly as a disclaimer: know that I haven’t been using IBM buckling spring boards for years, so my assessment of the Model M exists in something of a vacuum. I can only compare it to the other keyboards that I have used, which are mostly more modern mechanical ones and old 90s rubber dome membrane monstrosities. It might be that my generally positive impression could be less so were I coming off 20 years of using classic 80s IBM Model F/M keyboards; I have no way of knowing.
The only reason I ended up finally checking out what Unicomp was putting out is that the mechanical keyboard I was using suddenly developed a severe “chattering” problem, which manifests intermittently and is therefore rather difficult to diagnose with any sense of clarity or confidence. Every now and then, it’ll register a key press multiple times, sometimes getting stuck for an extended period, and it doesn’t seem to happen only with one or two switches, but with pretty much any key; I wonder if it might be a connection problem with the wiring/cable, and that’s actually something I intend to investigate (I’ll likely post about it here when I do). The current idea is to remove the cable entirely then wire the pinout for it internally to the external USB port on the back of the keyboard, which is normally used as a passthrough (I have absolutely no reason to use it as it’s USB 2.0 anyway and if I want to plug something in by USB I’ll plug it directly into my computer instead). Theoretically, I should then be able to use any full size USB cable to hook the port on the back up to a computer and use it as the communication channel for the keyboard itself, rather than as a passthrough. If it still chatters after that, I’ll know it’s nothing to do with the cable, and can have a fiddle with other things from there. Anyway, the point is that my keyboard broke, so I needed a new one, and it seemed a good excuse to finally buy a brand new buckling spring keyboard to see if they were as good as they were supposed to be.
What is a “buckling spring” keyboard, exactly?
Before I go into this particular keyboard, it’s probably a good idea to explain how different the mechanism of a buckling spring keyboard (like the IBM/Lexmark/Unicomp Model M) is from the mechanism of something like a modern Cherry MX Blue keyboard (like the “cheap” Corsair one that my Model M was bought to replace). IBM’s unique buckling spring switch system requires you to exert enough downward pressure on a slightly off-axis vertical spring to make it kink (or, rather, “catastrophically buckle”, as the patent puts it) in the middle, slamming into the side of the plastic barrel the spring sits in with a signature clack. In the same instant that this happens, the bottom of the buckled spring suddenly shifts in an attempt to unload some of the pressure, which presses a plastic flipper into an electronic membrane underneath, actuating the switch and sending a signal along the traces on the membrane to the controller PCB, which in turn sends a signal out over the outgoing cable to the connected computer. This is probably hard to visualise clearly unless I show you, so this is what it looks like in action:
To put it in modern Keyboard Enthusiast terms, this design is both inherently tactile and inherently clicky: the spring pushes back on your finger in the beginning of the key press until you exert enough force to buckle it, at which point you feel the mechanism abruptly leap downward with a violent tactile snap as the spring collapses into the side of the barrel and the flipper hits the membrane sitting on the metallic backplate. It’s about as dramatic and unrefined as it sounds: if you’re reading this as a modern mechanical keyboard enthusiast who hates “spring ping”, be warned! These things ring quite a bit when you release a key and the spring suddenly straightens back out again. By contrast, the Cherry MX mechanical switches are more or less inherently linear, and any tactility and clickiness that they might have in some of their permutations seem like an afterthought. The MX Blues in my Corsair, for instance, have a “click jacket” design that basically just involves them having a small additional plastic ring with a sticky-outy bit added to the plastic slider that moves when you press the switch, which in turn has to push past a thin metal “leaf” to actuate the switch. There is little resistance at any point in the key travel apart from the small amount when the click jacket bumps into the metal leaf, which is only momentary and takes an infinitesimal amount of effort to overcome. The result is a fairly loud and high-pitched click, but very little tactile feedback: your fingers might barely noticed that you pressed the key, but your ears will know all about it, and not necessarily in a good way. Here, there will likely also be some “spring ping”, unless you’ve specifically taken steps to avoid it, such as lubricating the springs in all the switches to damp the noise.
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):
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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.)
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.
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:
Since the issue is present regardless of which of the three space bars (!) I install, it seems I’m not going to be able to fix this. If it’s endemic to the mould that Unicomp is using to form the barrel plates, then presumably they won’t fix it either, even if I did return the board all the way across the Atlantic.
I have one last thing to discuss before I move on to focus on the board’s aesthetics, and it ain’t good. I wish I had a positive spin for this one, but I don’t…
UGLY: Despite this being a Model M keyboard with a PS/2 cable, and the Model M having been the keyboard to have introduced the combined Pause/Break key, the Pause/Break key doesn’t work properly: it is in fact a Pause key which seems not to be able to perform a Break function at all.
I can’t speak for their USB controller, but the PS/2 one doesn’t implement the Break key properly, which annoyed me so much that it single-handedly tipped me over the edge into writing this review (or “rant”, if you prefer). Is this a relatively minor issue? Yes, absolutely, but it’s a bloody stupid one that tells me that attention to detail is not where it could be on these boards. There are ways around the problem, but they’re all compromises that I shouldn’t have to make, and I couldn’t quite believe that it was happening when I started testing it and realised what it was doing.
To explain what’s wrong here, this is what’s meant to happen with the Pause/Break key. It has two primary functions. One of them is temporarily halting (or, y’know, pausing) a running command/code, perhaps to let you use the CPU cycles for something else more important, or to avoid over-stressing a hard drive if you suddenly need to do something else with the same storage device that a longwinded process is in the middle of using. The other is stopping (or “breaking”) a running process altogether and permanently (with some caveats, but that’s out of scope for this particular text). Here is what that looks like to the computer on the receiving end of the scancodes sent by a compliant PS/2 keyboard:
PAUSE:
press and release Pause/Break
(sends scancode 045 on downstroke followed by an immediate upstroke scancode, even if you hold down the key)
BREAK:
1. press and hold left or right Ctrl (scancode 01D or 11D for left or right Ctrl)
2. press and release Pause/Break (scancode 146 x2 for Ctrl+Break)
3. release Ctrl (scancode 01D or 11D for left or right Ctrl)
In other words, pressing Pause/Break should give you an instant “Pause” command (doesn’t matter if you hold it down or press and immediately release), but holding down a Ctrl key transforms the Pause/Break key into Break, and pressing it with Ctrl held down performs a “Ctrl+Break” function, interrupting any running commands/code. If you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about, you’re probably not a software developer or somebody who tinkers much with their computers, and that’s just fine. But some of us do actually use this functionality, and having it not work on this board got right up my nose.
What my PS/2 Unicomp New Model M does instead is this:
PAUSE keystroke:
Press and release Pause/Break key
(generates key-down scancode 045 when pressed, then key-up scancode when released)
BREAK chord:
1. Press and hold right Control key (generates key-down code 11D)
2. Press and release Pause/Break key (generates key-down then key-up scancode 145 pertaining to virtual keycode FF… which is “not found” in AutoHotkey)
3. Release right Control key (generates key-up 11D)
That scancode, 145, is for the Num Lock key. Remember that usually, holding Ctrl should temporarily turn Pause/Break into Break when next pressed, which would be scancode 146 instead. In other words, I think they’ve basically just mapped Pause as a normal key, so holding Ctrl just counts as an invalid modifier combination (hence the invalid FF virtual key code) and doesn’t work. The only thing it does is that if there is is an active Pause in place, it unpauses, which is just what happens if you hit basically any key except Pause/Break (Enter, Space… whatever).
Before IBM first launched the Model M back in 1985, Pause generally didn’t have a dedicated key on IBM keyboards and was instead mapped to [Ctrl]+[Num Lock]. Similarly, Break was [Ctrl]+[Scroll Lock]. Pressing Pause/Break on a Model M doesn’t actually produce a unique scancode, but rather the sequence of scancodes pertaining to holding Ctrl and pressing Num Lock; similarly, holding Ctrl on a Model M (or later board based on its layout) should flip the Pause/Break key over to “Scroll Lock” mode, which generates the appropriate scancodes for holding Ctrl and pressing Scroll Lock instead, creating a Break command. In other words, a single keypress of Pause/Break on a Model M normally emulates pressing and holding left Ctrl, pressing Num Lock, then releasing both, whereas holding Ctrl before pressing Pause/Break changes the sequence of scancodes to instead emulate holding Ctrl and pressing Scroll Lock. The Unicomp board producing the Num Lock scancode from [Ctrl]+[Pause/Break] is likely an artefact of this: it’s not turning it into Break when Ctrl is held, which keeps it in NumLock/Pause territory instead. Using the old pre-PS/2, pre-Model M 2-key sequence of [Ctrl]+[ScrollLock] does generate Break correctly, at least, as [Ctrl]+[NumLock] appears to generate Pause. But it’s irritating — especially on this “Model M” board, of all boards — simply because it’s wrong.
I have no idea if the Pause/Break key works correctly on Unicomp’s USB controller or not, because I only have the PS/2 one to hand, but the PS/2 one is evidently borked for Break specifically. On the same computer, I can hit [Ctrl]+[Pause/Break] on other keyboards (e.g. an old 90s Acer with Alps-esque mechanical switches) and it works exactly as it should. It’s rather silly that this doesn’t work on the Unicomp and I expect they either just overlooked it or assumed nobody would use that key/function so it wasn’t worth fixing. I’m guessing that the vast majority of Unicomp’s customers (or at least the non-commercial ones) probably want USB rather than PS/2, so it presumably isn’t much of a priority for them to check things like this. Unless I attempt to reverse-engineer Unicomp’s controller and fix it myself, I doubt it’ll ever work correctly on this board, so I’m probably stuck with using Ctrl+Scroll Lock as a workaround instead. Not a huge deal in the scheme of things, but a very daft thing to get wrong.
Form
Another key aspect of the two new models Unicomp are doing is their visual flair, which represents a bit of a departure compared to everything they’ve been doing previously. It isn’t a drastic change, but it’s a meaningful one.
GOOD: The “brilliant white” & “medium grey” mixed keycap colour scheme that I went for looks great, and Unicomp offers a decent range of customisation options so you can make your board a bit more “you”.
The white and grey looks really striking and high-contrast up against the black chassis. The majority of classic Model Ms were more of a muted, not-quite-beige, not-quite-white, like a lot of tech used to be in the early days of computing making its way into the home. There are a few things you can customise when you order, with the most obvious ones being the keycap colour scheme (white and grey or all grey), layout, and the ability to order all sorts of extra keycaps to swap into the stock configuration that comes installed on the board, but there are other significant options as well. Notably, and crucially for me, I’m relieved to be able to say that they still offer the New Model M with a PS/2 cable if you want that (although they charge extra for it). I can always fling a PS/2 board through an adapter if I really need USB but more often than not, native PS/2 boards work better in BIOS on every single computer I’ve ever owned, built, or run diagnostics on, going back multiple decades. When I recently had to switch some key components around in my main PC after something catastrophically failed, the first thing that happened as soon as I got it booted back up was that the BIOS failed to recognise my Corsair USB keyboard, so I pulled one of my old backup PS/2 ones out of a drawer to fix it. I wouldn’t have had that issue with my PS/2 Unicomp.
BAD: Customisation of Unicomp keyboards via their website is limited somewhat by your choice of base board… and the website is notoriously archaic and poorly updated.
Firstly, you can’t order a New Model M or Mini M in the classic off-white, not-quite-beige colour scheme that the Model M is famous for, nor can you get it in the sleek “industrial grey” seen on a number of specific models in the past. You can have a New Model M in any colour you like, so long as it’s black. I’d be a lot more critical of this if it wasn’t for the fact that I really like the high contrast white-on-black look. Still, I think I would have preferred the classic colours, myself. After all, this is a Model M, right? I want it to look the part. Supposedly this is because there was little interest in the beige stylings of their previous models, so they’ve just dropped the option altogether and now you’re stuck with black whether you like it or not.
The fairly terrible website, apart from looking (perhaps appropriately) like a relic of a bygone age when websites were built out of nothing but basic HTML, obfuscates options that they almost certainly can do in practice, but you’d think they can’t because you can’t actually order them via the interface that the website gives you. I had to email them to request something that the website didn’t allow me to order and — to their credit — they immediately added it to the order I’d already placed by that point and didn’t even charge me the difference (as it happens, it was a set of grey “Win 95” keys to replace the horrid modern stock ones, and I’m very glad they sent them because the classic 1992 Windows logo legend looks a million times better to me).
To be completely fair to Unicomp here, I’m pretty convinced that some of my other niggles would probably have been solved if I’d emailed them before I placed the order and asked them to customise things to my specifications, which I suspect they would have been happy to do… but it shouldn’t be necessary to do that, and I was in something of a hurry to ensure I got an order secured ASAP because my existing “daily driver” keyboard was no longer useable and all I had on hand until the Unicomp arrived was a godawful Logitech rubber dome nightmare. Besides, that isn’t true of all of my concerns; I had no way of knowing in advance that half the keycaps I was paying for would look bloody awful, or that there would be so many manufacturing imperfections on the core board itself.
Verdict
Given how many negative things I found myself having to say about this product, I want to be clear: despite all of these issues, my overall impression of this keyboard remains largely positive. Considering the crazy money that some companies charge for significantly inferior boards nowadays, I am really happy that Unicomp is making these for comparatively reasonable prices even though they’re manufacturing them out of Kentucky in the USA and most of the competition is keeping their margins as high as possible by manufacturing in China instead. Indeed, I suspect that many (most? all?) of my misgivings can be attributed at least partly to that fact. Unicomp is also the only company still routinely manufacturing keyboards with IBM’s 80s buckling spring switches in 2021, which merits a lot of praise in and of itself, in my opinion. Nonetheless, I still paid what to me is a rather large sum of money for this thing, even if quite a big chunk of it was just to get it shipped from Kentucky to Scotland, and I was rather disappointed by the number of issues that I ended up having with it, even with my expectations having been adjusted to account for what I’d read about Unicomp having some manufacturing issues over the years (which it seemed was mostly down to using ageing tooling to manufacture their boards). This being the case, I have reached out to Unicomp to detail some of my concerns, but they have not yet responded; in fairness, their turnaround is 48 working hours and it was obviously a pretty long email (I sent it 3 days ago but I feel like they deserve at least an extra day or two given how much there is to address). The only thing I haven’t yet brought up with them is the faulty Break key, because I discovered that problem after I’d already sent the email discussing the other issues and putting the ball in their court. If they do come back to me with any information that seems relevant, I’ll update this page accordingly. It won’t change my impression of the board, but it might nonetheless improve my impression of the company (though it isn’t exactly poor to begin with, given that they were great when I asked about adding an item to the order and didn’t even charge me for it despite me making no indication that I expected a freebie of any kind). I’m hoping they at least throw me some sort of bone here, but they may very well tell me “tough luck” or simply ignore the email altogether. I would be very surprised if they did, though.
In terms of the pricing thing, by the way, I think that a large part of my frustration stems from the fact that I spent quite a lot of money to get this board to me all the way from the other side of the world, which isn’t exactly Unicomp’s fault (well, it sort of is, insofar that they used to make these a few miles away from me and now they only make them in the US, but I can’t really blame them for that). The shipping cost almost as much as the contents of the order itself, and I would probably be a lot less bitter about how much money I’d spent if I’d been closer to the factory and thus been able to pay much less for shipping. They actually do have a UK reseller — The Keyboard Company — and had time not been a factor, I might have ordered from them instead, but the clock was ticking due to me not having a half decent backup board to use in the interim. I also didn’t want to email The Keyboard Company with a big list of all the customisations I wanted to add to the order, which felt like it would just be a pain in the butt for them and for Unicomp. On the other hand, going direct to Unicomp as I ended up doing presumably maximises their margins, which perhaps gives them more of an incentive to make sure the transaction all goes as smoothly as possible. Ordering from Unicomp directly also meant that I could do most of the customisation via the website, clunky as it was, and I wouldn’t have to potentially wait longer for it to be shipped to Keyboard Co. first with whatever their next bulk order was, and then shipped on to me from there. I did actually order a set of brilliant white Win 95 keycaps from them because none of the Win 95 keysets were on the Unicomp website (as I mentioned previously), which resulted in the most disproportionate shipping cost I’ve seen in a while because Keyboard Co appear to use tracked shipping for everything and did so for that teensy wee feather-light bag of keycaps (which, ultimately, I’m not even using on the board because the grey ones Unicomp sent me seem like they suit it better). I feel like it would’ve been better to chuck it in an envelope with a 2nd Class stamp and hope Royal Mail don’t lose it, but I wasn’t going to make a gigantic nuisance of myself by trying to argue that point.
I’m probably going to use this New Model M as my main keyboard for the time being because it’s most likely the best one I have right now (although I am currently evaluating a different board and really liking that one too). Regretfully, though, I am undeniably disappointed that there are so many things about the Unicomp board that frustrate me, considering how much it cost to buy and import. I could have bought an original IBM Model M for less then restored it myself (I’m more than capable of doing so, having a fair bit of experience both restoring and customising similar stuff), but I wanted to give Unicomp a fair shot at winning me over. I don’t think they quite managed it this time around, although I’ll give them a fair chance to change that (we’ll see how they respond). I’m pretty sure the reason they are able to continue to exist is that they make the bulk of their money out of commercial customers, but I also want them to succeed more than they currently are in the consumer space, and this hasn’t put me off entirely; I’ll just be more cautious before buying any other boards from them in future. If they were to address some of the manufacturing issues and put some work into their controller logic so that you could natively remap keys on their boards, I’m absolutely convinced that they’d be raking it in right now. As it stands… there are probably better alternatives for most keyboard enthusiasts, either on the second hand market or from other brands.
