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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.