Corsair Strafe (Reds, red backlight)

[flibberdipper]

Nekkid by Travis McClelland, on Flickr

 

INTRO
I’ve been a lifelong membrane user, and I was using a SteelSeries Apex [RAW] as a daily driver up until I saw this keyboard on sale for $109 US. And that price made me want to get one to see what all the hype was with mechanical keyboards, and with luck, see if it would reduce or eliminate the sore joints in my hands after having to type for much longer than a few minutes at a time.

 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
When I first got this bad boy out of the box, I didn’t even look at the keyboard. I looked at the extra keycaps, and spent seemingly forever deciding if I wanted to change out the WASD keys with the grey, textured ones (I did eventually since I tend to use WASD to find where I am on the keyboard). Then I picked up the keyboard and noticed the PHAT AS PHUCK USB cable. Like god damn that thing is unwieldy and is literally the size of a low-gauge power cable. But it makes sense because of the passthrough, and once you get it straightened out and trained it’s perfectly fine. Back to keycaps…

 

I love the feel of these ones. My fingers glide across them in a good way, and I loved the textured spacebar the first time I touched it.
 
LOOKS
This is one smexy keyboard. In the config I settled for, I put on the grey WASD caps and then set the backlight to 33%. The side lights are cool, the red plate is an amazing idea, and this thing just generally wins in the looks department. The num/caps/scroll lock indicators work out nicely, and the chrome look on the Corsair logo is great (and the logo nearly matches that of my old M40, which is a plus). My only complaint about the looks come in the next two sections...

 

BACKLIGHT
The backlighting on this keyboard is so nice. It’s pretty consistent (other than on my WASD caps because they’re not the standard black ones). BUT, two complaints (the first one of which can’t be helped by Corsair). I hate the fact that the main function of the key is well lit (such as the 9 on the number line), but then the sub-function (such as the ( on the 9) is a lot dimmer and under brighter lighting conditions looks pink. But, I won’t dock points on Corsair’s part because this is just due to the way that the switch is made. And although not the backlight, necessarily, the status indicator lights bleed like a motherfucker. Like my numlock light is always on, and my caps lock section always looks freaking light red. Corsair could have very well put some foam between the damn things like on my old netbook so that the bleed is greatly reduced or completely eliminated.

 

BACKLIGHT MODES
The stock ones are pretty nice. You get the standard “always on”, a visor one (like KITT’s light), rain (which is like rain or the matrix), pulse (which literally just pulses on and off), wave (which has a “wave” of light going across the keyboard), type lighting per key (which lights up a key as you press it, and then has it fade back out), and finally type lighting as a wave (which has a wave effect after you press a key). I personally have a problem with some of these modes because you can’t seem to set a background lighting of 33%, so if you have the type lighting turned on, all the keys are dark unless you press them.

 

Now, for the brutal part. Actually finding more modes online. The RGB version has a LOT of modes, and a lot of them are pretty damned cool. But the non-RGB version doesn’t seem to have dick for custom made modes. And even then, it’s a pain in the ass to make your own modes, because the software is a pain in the ass to actually use and make custom ones (more on that later).

 

ERGONOMICS
Coming from several different keyboards (a Logitech K270, an older Dell QuietKey, and a Steelseries Apex [RAW]), I can tell you that this is the most comfortable one to use, without a doubt. The only one that was better in any way was the Steelseries keyboard which had a long spacebar and a nice little wrist rest. They keys on my keyboard all seem to be fairly even in terms of how much it takes to press them, which I love, and the keys in general are nice and smooth. Typing this entire review my hands still feel fine, whereas my Steelseries keyboard would have made my hands hurt by this point. Not to mention that I’ve not had to look at the keyboard once to figure out what the hell I’m pressing (which I did quite often on the Steeleries keyboard), and I honestly think this has everything to do with the textured keycaps on the WASD keys, since I use them to find out where I am. Oh, and the textured spacebar might help a little bit as well since I always hit the alt key on every keyboard other than the Dell one.

 

Moving on, the feet give a nice amount of elevation for the keyboard that feels WONDERFUL. And while it does move around a tad bit, when you’re typing it doesn’t, and the flex is very minimal and while you type it doesn’t flex at ALL, which is a HUUUUGE plus in my book.

 

QUALITY
Given the price, I expected a premium product. And you know what I got? A premium product. The clack of the keys bottoming out doesn’t sound cheap, everything feels pretty solid (not K70 level since this is an entirely plastic construction, as I recall). The caps feel like they’ll last a good amount of time (by this point in my ownership of the Steelseries keyboard the spacebar was already getting a little shine, and even though I’ve typed a lot more on this keyboard, the shine level is a LOT lower (basically 0).

 

SOFTWARE
This is where things get a little tricky. The software itself is pretty good. It gives you options to do everything you want (including re-assigning literally every key on the keyboard and per key lighting). But unfortunately, the custom lighting side of things is a little stupid. I found it kinda… Hard… To do what I wanted. I couldn’t set per key backlighting. No matter what. Other than that, it’s pretty good. Updating my keyboard was painless, and updating the software was even easier somehow.

 

CONCLUSION
This is probably the best impulse buy I’ve ever done. Sure, my CX750M made my rig far quieter, puke out less heat, really cleaned up my cable mess, and all of that, but this… It does a lot more for me. It reduced the pain in my hands, it looks better, it actually matches my friggin mouse, and I really can’t complain about this impulse purchase. Other than the fact that if I didn’t do the last three impulse buys I could have a Xeon E3-1231 V3 to make my life a lot easier since there are some things that I have to do on a nearly daily basis that my Pentium does, but not without some sass.
 
IS IT WORTH IT?
I honestly think it depends on the price, both of it and the RGB model. When I wrote this review, the RGB model was $40 US more, which I honestly thing isn’t totally justifiable. If it were a $20 price difference, then I would save up more and get the RGB model just because there are so many freaking lighting modes, and they’re super easy to get. But, at this $100 price mark right now, I think it’s worth getting this if you don’t so much care about the RGB aspect and you just want a nice mechanical keyboard that doesn’t have a tramp stamp on it.

 

FULL ALBUM OF “UNBOXING” PICS: https://flic.kr/s/aHskqS5Mhw

[tbsgbhrdt]

Nice lil review Travis! The switch from Membrane to Mechanical is huge and I did it last year and i'm so happy with my MX-Blues. But everyone should find his personal switch preference!