Gadgetory

hey Ron i'm steve from gamers nexus donna and today we are reviewing the corsair strafe mechanical keyboard this is the non RGB version of the strafe there's an RGB version coming out shortly in theory this month will see the release of that new keyboard and we don't have a yet but we will have it for review in very short order before moving on to the RGB strafe we're looking at the normal strafe which is backlit but not red green blue just read so you've got one color and that one color is adjustable in four different brightness levels including off so if you got three different levels of on and then off which is similar to the thermaltake or TT eSports Poseidon Z that we reviewed maybe around a year ago maybe a little bit less we like that keyboard well enough so now we're looking at this one which is a cherry MX keyboard and the strafe uses Cherry MX red or cherry MX brown switches so those are your two switch types for our review we had the red switches and the brown switches are found in the in the logitech g7 10-plus which we've previously looked at the g7 10 plus does something a little bit different they dampen the impact of the brown switch by adding a rubber o-ring on the underside of the key cap this is technically outside of the spec of cherries switch design but that's what Logitech decided to do and it makes the brown switch a little bit quieter in the corsair strafe it's just red and brown no damping going on in the background and then in terms of other core features there is a USB pass-through present so you've got two USB lines coming out of the keyboard one is for power and one is for data and those connect into the rear i/o of your system of course or wherever else you want to put them if you do not want the pass-through to be active you can just elect not to connect the data channel and that saves us one of your USB ports in the back of the case in the range of other specs the keyboard has 140 roll over it's got media keys that are usable only through the function plus f row keys so you push FN and an F key to use the play/pause and for back keys for your media control and then it's got a two year warranty included with the strafe keyboard Corsairs new strafe keyboard is priced at 110 dollars and that's what it's currently available for on amazon and other retailers so it's sort of a competitive price point with actually course there's own product the k70 vengeance line keyboard and then cougars products which are priced in the 100 dollar price range the stray falls in between those and the strife is marketed as a semi discreet but still kind of flashy keyboard so it's got that slight gamer aesthetic but it's not going overboard like we've seen with some of the other peripherals out there on the market not naming names on that but I'm sure you've all seen what I'm talking about the Corsair strafe uses a mix of metal and plastic for its build construction and the metal primarily comes in the form of the metal back plate which is somewhat brilliantly painted red and the reason this is important is because the back plate is somewhat exposed this is a coarser design that they do on the Vengeance line as well not a lot of other keyboard manufacturers do this most of them will hide most of the internals if not all of the internals with a plastic top coating but if you want that somewhat exposed or more raw look then the strafe follows on with other corsair products and semi exposes the metal back plate and the reason it's painted red is because the switch for cherries LEDs in this case just a normal Cherry MX red switch with an LED placed in it is not the new cherry MX RGB LED switch and that switch positions its LED differently from the normal MX red the way it's different is the MX red and MX brown as you'll find in the strafe keyboard that we're reviewing here they position the LED in the top and back of the switch so that means that because of the way the keys are oriented it's going to cast a shadow downward on the front of the key cap this shadow is mitigated by the use of a red painted back plate so that helps provide the appearance that there is a more full spread of the red LED across the surface of the key word and in terms of light spread we can also talk about the general illumination vibrance and the light bleed all three very important things in the case of keyboards the light bleed on the strafe is not that bad actually most of it is pretty tight to the key caps themselves and shines through the legend the legend on the key caps is as you would expect absent from paint so all the light shines through the legend the letter basically on the key cap and the key caps are made of ABS plastic from what we can tell anyway so they are plastic key caps but they do feel pretty good and that's something that Michael Kern's talks about more in the full review which you'll find links in the description below I mean attention briefly to something else there's something in keyboards mechanical keyboards primarily called key chattering and that's when the sprain in the switch in this case MX Reds or MX Browns produces a raining noise upon being pressed and that's either from bottoming out or just being pressed kind of hard or being used in succession rapidly with many other keys simultaneously in action Sookie chattering makes a ringing noise it's pretty faint but it is audible especially if you're a fast typer and depending on what type of switch you're using in the case of course there's a strafe keyboard we did not find any chattering present in the keys and that's a good thing that means that the design has accounted for this and eliminated it effectively at least to the point where we can't hear it during use the corsair strafe uses the MX switches across the entire keyboard and the exception of one instance where the top right buttons use rubber domes and those buttons are four basic controls so your windows lock and that means they're not going to be used frequently so we can kind of get away with not using the MX switches in that instance because as a user you're not really going to care but other keys include the stabilized keys so any large key like the spacebar were shift or enter those will generally be stabilized especially in a mechanical keyboard and that is done with a variety of means but the primary one is a metal bar that goes underneath the key cap and helps stabilize the input so that it's more uniformly dispersing your force when you press down on the key in the case of the strafe the spacebar and other stabilized key is still actuate linearly so they don't feel that different from pressing the regular MX red switch keys of normal size which is a good thing one thing we did want to complain about with the strafe was its bottom row of keys is a non standard size this means that if you're the type of person who likes to bling out your keyboard with a whole bunch of different keys or a key cap set like you can buy online different types of key caps for different games you're going to have issues with the bottom row where the size is non-standard so do keep that in mind pulling apart the strafe reveals that a panasonic 32 181 controller is used for the lighting which is the same controller as used in the RGB k-series corsair keyboards the strafe only uses one of these where the RGB boards use two so that's the one primary difference and then looking further we see an nxp 11u 37 m 501 processor is used as the primary input controller on the device internal build quality is definitely proven as high by way of clean soldering and Walmart construction and well laid out components and high quality components so this is something that we can stand behind as a high quality build and say firmly that courser has done well with we awarded the corsair strafe with our high build quality and editors choice awards for its high built quality and general usefulness in the world of mechanical keyboards which is sort of flooded right now with low quality components and with oddly priced components and with a huge move toward RGB and that's not the state coarser isn't moving toward RGB further because they're doing it with the strafe but they're still used for single color keyboards not everyone wants to spend 150 + 170 hundred eighty and so on on RGB keyboard so in that case the strafe is a welcomed addition to the world of mechanical keyboards and at its price 110 dollars it's really primarily competing with coursers Vengeance k70 at 120 dollars and the cougar 700 k at around a hundred dollars there are other keyboards in that range of course rose Wells got some of the for instance and thermal takes got there TT esports poseidon keyboards with the RGB one shipping very shortly and those are worth considering as well but the strafe really is in a class of its own in terms of build quality until you start looking at higher end stuff like in the 110 plus 120 130 range we think that the lighting for the strafe keyboard is vibrant it's uniformly dispersed and the red painted metal back plate is actually pretty brilliant so in all those instances definitely a big plus for coarser the cue software we had a few small bugs with but nothing major nothing that was inhibiting to use and could all be pretty much worked around or averted and in terms of the queue software is actual support its functionality the macro programming and the light programming and level monitoring and stuff like that it all works pretty well it's just some of the basic UI that we had bugs with on for example laptop screen but you're not going to be encountering that use case to regularly anyway overall the corsair strafe is something that we think is worth buying and if you want to read more about the actual science behind the mechanical keyboards and the mechanical keyboard market check the link in the description below to go to Michael Kern's article on gamers Nexus net and check out our specs dictionary which you can find on Gary's nexus donna as well in the main menu item and that will tell you all about hysteresis and key chatter and key caps and actuation pressure and all that stuff definitely cool learn if you like this kind of content hit the patreon link in the post roll video that will roll right after my face gets off the screen and see if you are maybe interested in supporting us we've had a few supporters pick up lately and we are hugely thankful to you and of course we'll continue to push good content so thanks again for all the support and for watching the video the strafe is worth looking at but there's plenty of other options that we're reviewing in short order as well so stick around for those and I will see you all next time