I'm so glad you posted this, as the original thread seems to have disappeared, and this is really useful information. I don't know why Cherry don't explain this properly.
I have a pair of these and they're badass. With Keyboard Maestro (OS X), you can assign all sorts of useful automations to arbitrary shortcuts and then program these keypads to input the shortcut. Because you don't need to manually input the actual shortcuts, you can use complex ones that you would never normally be able to even remember. It lets you inject JavaScript into pages, realign windows, jump between applications... just tons of stuff.
You can also set the keyboard shortcuts to use modifiers, but not program the modifier into the keypad, so you can hold different modifiers on the main keyboard, and hit one button on the keypad. Then, each keypad can do different things when CMD is held or CMD+ALT etc, etc.
They use ML switches, so you can't really customise the keycaps, but MLs work well for what I'm using these for, and you can use relegendable caps (they come with four per pad as standard).