Corsair STRAFE Mechanical Gaming Keyboard

Cons: 1. Flakey, slow Corsair software. 2. Only three manual brightness levels. They say 4, but one of those is off. 3. Space bar has wear through the black paint after a few months of use (see photo). The spacebar is the only key thats textured, oddly. 4. Plastic kb casing face comes close to the outer key boundary, so pulling the outer key caps is interfered with by the casing. 5. Caps Lock key is always lit, the on/off indicator is an LED bar on the upper right. There are three similar lit indicator bars (num-lock and scroll-lock) so there is no way to know which of the three are lit up. Pros: 1. Although plastic, the kb has a sturdy feel. I would guess there is a metal plate inside. The long keys--return, shift, etc.--have good feel and sound to them, other manufacturers use cheaper supplemental key guides, giving the long keys a cheap feel. The space bar does sound and feel cheap. 2. This paragraph applies to any Cherry MX kb. This kb has that silky smooth, very solid Cherry MX Red feel. I love linear Cherry MX Red keys, but some find them too soft at only 45g actuation. The disadvantage of the soft touch is a higher rate of typos. You'll get more accurate over time as a result. If you like a smooth, non-tactile feel (= no stroke bump/notch and no audible click at the beginning of each keystroke) Cherry MX Black keys are 60g non-tactile linear keys, and the just released "Nature White" keys have a 55g non-tactile stroke. To me, black is too heavy, so I live with a little higher typo rate. Nature White keys availability remains limited. Red keys are on the quiet side of the mechanical spectrum, because there is no notch and no audible click. The only sound comes from bouncing off the back-plate. All tactile key options are louder than Red, including Brown, which is a similarly soft 45g version of tactile key variants. To make choices even more complicated, rubber O ring kits only cost a few bucks and are easy to install for those who want to quiet the board a little, or to slightly reduce the length of the stoke. In either case, try Nature-White or Black before installing O rings to Red, since it make the keys even easier to press down to the bottom. 3. Has a USB port. The downside is it takes a second USB connection to use, so it is effectively useless. 4. Nice clear professional font is large and easy to read. Too many Cherry MX Red kbs are targeted at young gamers who like spaceaged fonts that suck for typing. 5. The non-shifted key options are also backlit, though less brightly. Because Cherry keys each have their own LED near the top of each key mechanism, the top half of each key is more brightly lit than the bottom half. Most keyboards take the cheap way out, and paint the shifted-key symbols on without light pass though - so you can't see the shift options at night. This kb lights the top half of every key directly, while the shifted characters are also transparent so they are lit indirectly. This is great at night. One downside of modern mechanical lighting is the LED is at the top of each key. This leads most manufacturers to invert the shift character position compared to "old fashioned" keyboards, so the shift function actually selects the bottom symbol on each key. At least Corsair is consistent, always shifting to select the bottom key symbol. Many manufacturers allow shift to choose the bottom of some keys while shift still chooses the tops of some lesser used keys, even within the same keyboard layout. Others choose to lay the shift options keys out on the left-right instead of top-bottom. I like this kb's layout the best. Overall - the board is priced well and the Cherry MX Red keys are great for non-tactile heavy duty gamers who need soft keys to survive intense sessions, and maybe even better for typists who prefer a silky smooth linear stroke where the only sound is a bounce off the back-plate.