Performance
For testing, I normally like to get a good two weeks with the keyboard as my main keyboard but with the Alloy Elite came in a little too late for that. It came in a week ago and I didn’t get the photos and everything done until mid week so we really only have 5-6 days of testing total. That said I do have a good feel for the board. Getting adjusted was almost instant. The fully standard layout helped with the transition so from there I just had to get used to the new media keys and the wrist rest. Before I get into that I should touch on the overall construction though. The steel backplate with a plastic base was a lot more solid than I expected. I’ve worked with the plastic base aluminum boards multiple times and those flex and don’t feel as solid but with steel, the Alloy Elite has the weight and construction to feel solid when typing and when moving it around. The only part that is lacking is the plastic wrist rest, I love the shape but it doesn’t really have the same solid feel as the rest of the board.
As for typing, I’ve been typing all of my coverage on the Alloy Elite throughout the testing. The red switches aren’t my preferred keyswitch but being genuine Cherry MX switches they have a solid feel that is helped even more by the steel backplate under the switches. The Cherry stabilizers were a concern from the beginning, even though I do prefer them, they do sometimes like to have a little rattle. Most were good but the backspace had a little rattle. I have some keyboard lubrication, a few drops should quiet it down.
As for the lighting, the big downside is that in 2017 the Alloy Elite doesn’t have RGB lighting. HyperX went with red backlighting and really this should go with a lot of PC builds with black and red being always popular with gaming brands. It also matches HyperX’s branding as well but I know for me I want to be able to pick what works with my exact setup. So being locked into any one color is a bummer. Beyond that, the back lighting was bright and is consistent across all of the keys including the wider keys. There are three brightness levels in addition to off and six lighting effect modes. One is a solid color, there is one that just lights up 1234 and WASD, a night rider effect, breathing, One that turns off the backlighting on the keys and lights the key up after you type, then the last is similar but does a pond ripple effect away from each key that you type on. I kept the solid lighting on for most of my testing, everything else to me gets distracting.
While I didn’t get too many chances to use them in my shorter testing, I was loving having the media controls back as dedicated buttons. Especially the volume control. It is always nice to be able to quickly get to those, especially if you watch a lot of movies and TV shows while working like I do. They aren’t mechanical switches though so keep that in mind. Everything on that top row with the volume control is membrane.
