Like Corsair and a lot of other SSD and Memory brands, HyperX in the last few years especially have jumped in completely into the peripheral market. It makes sense, SSDs and Memory are commodities so the margins are small and they are able to expand their gaming brands to an area where people can get their eyes and hands directly on your products. HyperX with their Cloud headsets has really done well and recently they even got into the mechanical keyboard market. I hadn’t had the chance to check what they had going on out yet though so when I heard they were introducing a new keyboard I was all in. So today I’m going to check out the HyperX Alloy Elite, their top of the line mechanical keyboard, and see if HyperX is doing as well here as they have been with their headsets.

Product Name: HyperX Alloy Elite Mechanical Keyboard

Review Sample Provided by: HyperX

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

 

Specifications

Switch

CHERRY MX

Switch Types

CHERRY MX Blue: Clicky, 50cN

CHERRY MX Brown: Tactile, 45cN

CHERRY MX Red: Linear, 45cN

Backlight

Single color, Red

Light effects

6 LED modes and 4 brightness levels

Connection type

USB 2.0 (2 USB connectors)

USB 2.0 Pass-through

Yes

Polling rate

1000Hz

Anti-ghosting

100% anti-ghosting

Key Rollover

N-key mode

Media control

Yes

Game Mode

Yes

OS compatibility

Windows® 10, 8.1, 8, 7

Cable

Type: Attached, braided

Length: 1.8m

Dimensions

Width: 444.00mm

Depth: 226.80mm

Height: 36.30mm

Weight (Keyboard and cable)

1467g

 


Packaging

The box for the ALLOY Elite sticks with the dark look that HyperX has on their other products. If has a black background with what might be lava or smoke behind a large photo of the keyboard on the front. The model name is up in the top left corner with the HyperX branding down in the bottom right corner. There is a sticker letting us know that our sample has Red Cherry MX switches in the top right and in the bottom left they mention the lighting effects and they have the label showing that we have the US key layout. On the back of the box, they have four large pictures across the top with short descriptions of those four features in multiple languages all the way across the bottom half of the back.

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The main box slides out of the color cover and then inside of it you have the keyboard up top in a transparent bag. There is cardboard around the sides and with lips over the top for protection. Along the back, the cardboard covers up the cord and everything else. You get a quick start guide and a congratulations card for joining the HyperX family. Then they include a set of replacement keycaps. There are four with a diamond print texture to them and then four with a silver finish. They also come with a cheap plastic keycap puller.

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Photos and Features

HyperX stuck with the recent trend of doing a floating key design that was popularized by Corsair with their keyboards. The Alloy Elite has a traditional full layout getting you the number pad, full alpha and modifier keys, and the F row up top. Everything is blacked out with the exception of the HyperX logo above the number pad. The floating key design is popular partially just because of the look, but functionally it is also easier to keep your keyboard clean. Dust, dirt, and crumbs that land on your keyboard fall in between the keys and with a normal bezel around the keys you can't push them out. Turning them upside down doesn’t always work as well. This way you can just blow everything right out the side and wipe the edge down.

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For the legends, they went with a mostly normal font but the slightly larger size does make it look a little “gamey” if that makes sense. All of the modifiers have everything written out rather than icons and the space bar also has a small HyperX logo. I could go without that extra branding but the idea is to give the space bar something to light up as well, most just use a line. There aren’t any function layer things up in the F keys this time because of the built in controls so that is a plus as well.

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Above the number pad, next to the white HyperX logo are the three status LEDs. The legends for these are simple one icon in size and you can see caps lock, number lock, and a gaming icon for when you turn off the windows key.

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Up on the top edge, you can toy with the lighting with a brightness control and a mode switcher that turns on just specific areas of the keyboard or does a breathing effect. Then the gaming mode button that turns off the windows key.

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Over on the right side of the top edge, we have more buttons. These are all of the media keys so you get play/pause, forward, back, and mute for buttons. Then there is a volume knob on the far right as well.

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In addition to being a traditional full layout. HyperX went with a standard bottom row as well. This means 1.25u keys on both sides of the normal length space bar. A lot of the gaming keyboards like to do non-traditional bottom rows to make the windows key harder to press but it means you can’t replace the keycaps. This is great if you want to replace them with better caps or if later you need to replace some from wear.

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The USB cable is sleeved and thick coming out of the back of the Alloy Elite. I would personally prefer a removable cord as well. It splits into two cords about a foot away from the two USB connections. One is for the keyboard, the other is a passthrough for USB devices plugged into the keyboard.

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So the floating key design means from the side you can see the key switches. The keycap profile looks a little weird in this photo though. For some reason, a lot of the keycaps on the keyboard came needing to be pushed in a little, after using the board I had all of them back down to how they should sit. The keycaps were an OEM profile. More importantly, though the side profile of the keyboard itself was interesting and unlike the other floating keyboards. The top section with the media keys is basically its own section.

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The bottom is all together though. You get four-inch wide rubber grips in the corners and then two flip out feet with their own rubber grips on them. In the middle is a sticker with the required certifications along with the model and serial number information should the keyboard ever need to be RMA’ed.

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HyperX also included a detachable wrist rest for the Alloy Elite. On the left side it has a golf ball like texture and on the right it is smooth. It is all plastic though. It has two clips in the normal style that likes to break so be careful if you want to remove this often or really ever.

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Adding the wrist rest is easy as sliding it into the two mounting slots and waiting for the click. All together it looks much better with the wrist rest at the bottom. I was going to be happy to announce that this is the one part without HyperX branding on it but it does have the logo down in the bottom right corner.

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The Alloy Elite has red backlighting, not the standard RGB so for switches, they were able to go with the older black casing with LED sticking through Cherry MX switches. They have Alloy Elites with blue and brown switches as well as the red that came with our sample. This covers clicky, tactile, and linear options and they all three are close in spring pressure so if you like a heavier switch like a black or a green you don’t have an option, but most should be happy with one of the three options. For stabilizers on longer keycaps like the shift key, enter keys, and the space bar they use Cherry style as well. These run the stabilizer bar under the backplate and don’t have tabs that can fall off. This makes swapping out keycaps or removing keycaps for cleaning easier but sometimes Cherry stabilizers have a bit of a rattle to them. I will have to keep an eye out on that in testing.

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The keycaps on the Alloy Elite are the run of the mill backlit keycaps. They aren’t especially thick and they are an ABS based translucent white keycap with the top portion painted black. The legend is then etched into the top of the keycap. This style typically wears out very quickly because the contact surface is a paint (with a UV coating over it normally). Lucky for us the Alloy Elite does use a standard keycap set so later on a PBT doubleshot set for backlit keyboards would be a great upgrade to give a better feel and add a LOT of life to the keyboard.

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As for the red lighting, HyperX did a little more than light up the key legends. They put a strip in across the top and backlit the media keys as well. The strip across the top adds a little style but it does remind me a lot of the newer Corsair K95’s that have the same thing.

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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.

 


Overall and Final Verdict

Given how good the HyperX headsets have been I came into this one with high expectations so forgive me if I seem ultra critical but I feel like the Alloy Elite is exactly what everyone wanted a few years ago and is a little late to the party. They did a great job by going with genuine Cherry MX switches, there are a lot of companies going with knockoffs of their own design just to cut costs while justifying it with shorter actuation points. The dedicated media keys and the volume knob are also awesome to have. I was also happy with the solid construction other than the plastic wrist rest. Then, of course, you have a standard layout that leaves this keyboard begging for a nice set of PBT doubleshots to really expect the life.

It was the red backlighting that surprised me though. Don’t get me wrong, they implemented it well and it works great. It is just that just about everyone has their RGB options out. I would also dig a touch less on the HyperX branding, I know what keyboard I bought, I don’t need to be reminded every time I look down with three logos facing up at me. Now the rattling backspace on our board, it might not even be an issue on other keyboards. But the Cherry stabilizers as a whole cause this from time to time. I still prefer them for their ease of use when cleaning my keyboard but a little lube might be needed if you run into the rattle yourself.

So this leaves me at the price. The Alloy Elite is priced at $109.99 at launch putting it up at the high end for single color backlighting and right in the mix with the cheap to mid level RGB boards. Now you get Cherry switches and that does require a bit of a premium. The wrist rest adds to it as well, even though I think it could be improved. If you compare it to the Corsair K70 LUX that it shares a lot of features with or the MasterKeys Pro L with its white backlighting. The K70 LUX has a $119 MSRP and the MasterKeys Pro L has a $109 MSRP, but both are currently selling for just under $100. Sticking close to those two in pricing would be ideal as they are both leading the market in this class of keyboard. So overall for my first look at a HyperX keyboard I do think they have a few things to work on. It isn’t the home run right out of the hole like the Cloud headsets but they are on the right track, they just need to flush out a few things and make sure to stay competitive in pricing.

fv5recommended

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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