The popularity of mechanical keyboards has sky rocketed in the past decade and with good reason, they last longer, the feel of a mech keyboard far surpasses their membrane counterparts and finally, the satisfaction of typing and hearing: clickity clackity clickity clackity clickity clackity clickity clackity is unbelievable.
A keyboard that gained somewhat of a reputation for being the gateway board into the world of MX switches and Tactile feedback was the TVS Gold, an indigenous product that carried the MX Blues and could be found pretty much at any government office you can think of. However, people who wanted silence but still wanted the mechanical experience had to look towards other switches available and thus rose the demand of MX Reds, Blacks and Browns.
Today I'll be taking a look at the Strix Tactic Pro, it carries the MX Reds switches and boasts an impressive feature list:
- Toggle-able NKRO
- 21 Macro keys
- 3 different lighting modes
- Onboard memory for storing macro profiles.
Meet the Plan
The Strix Tactic is huge, heavy and not everybody's cup of MX Red switches. The aesthetics of it all didn't go down well with some of my peers they found it garish. I, for one, am indifferent about the aesthetics and am more of a form over function kinda guy so if this was a regular feature on my desk I wouldn't exactly complain.
The Strix features a standard QWERTY layout along with a Media keys area and the aforementioned 10 Macro keys to the side. The media keys are perhaps the only keys on the keyboard that aren't MX Red. Unlike the Corsair K60 all the keys including the Macro ones are Cherry MX Red so no cost cutting here.
As for the media keys themselves they are located above the NumPad and the mute functionality does not work unless you are using the default sound driver. However the volume control scroller is gradated.
The Side Kicks
Accessories included with the Tactic Pro are:
- A USB extension cord
- Orange keycaps
- Key puller
Keys are Red Violets are Blue
The Cherry MX Red is a linear switch with no clicky noise or tactile feedback oft marketed as a gaming switch mostly because you don't need to bottom it out for the key to register thereby making it faster in terms of double tapping.
Using the included key puller we are rewarded with more Red than on Valentine's day.
The feel of the Reds coming from Blues myself is something else, the lack of noise is a bit jarring and I found myself bottoming the keyboard out for the first few days mostly because I was expecting a click. Soon enough you will, as I did, realize that just pressing the button lightly causes it to register. This however has a drawback if you have sausage fingers as I do wherein you might accidentally brush a key and that keystroke registers.
The toggle-able NKRO works as intended as shown above.
The Brains behind the Operation
The software included with the Strix Tactic Pro is called the Strix Software currently in iteration 1.5. It has support for macro recording and all the keys that have a prefix M can be assigned to do a list of things. A macro key can be mapped to: a single character or symbol, launch a program or more traditionally used for assigning macros.
The macro recorder feature included is one of the more well designed ones I've come across, it has an ability to change the amount of delay between key strokes, change the order of keystrokes entered and best of all is very intuitive to use.
After the macro has been recorded it can be assigned to any one of the 21 macro keys and then the repeat rate of the macro can also be specified.
Plans not so well laid
However not everything is rosy with the keyboard as there are a couple of drawbacks. The way the lighting is done on the keys is such that any keycaps that have more than 1 character or symbol on them have this weird dark area where only the top portion of the keycap is well lit. Something about pictures and a thousand words.
Another issue is the lack of lighting modes, granted once you're experienced enough with a keyboard you do not need to look down at the keyboard to type thereby rendering backlighting completely irrelevant, but still the available lighting profiles go something like: Always on, Pulsing (fast fade), Pulsing (slow fade). Considering the kind of lighting profiles available on keyboards like the Rapid-i, I'm sure a firmware can be released wherein only the WASD and other gaming essential keys light up.
Drawing to a close
The Asus Strix Tactic Pro is set to be priced around the Rs. 7,500 mark, meaning it'll be trading hits with the very popular Rapid-i, Quickfire Ultimate and Quickfire TK along with Razer's less impressive offerings.
Aesthetics aside, this keyboard is a very solid product. Well built, excellent software support and MX Reds. Incidentally at the time of writing this review the only MX Red keyboard readily available for purchase was a Tenkeyless version of the CM Quickfire series which is kind of a bummer considering how good the switch is.
Overall, want something that weighs a lot, lights up orange and mechanical? Look no further than the Asus Strix Tactic Pro.
Pros:
- Thumb Macro buttons, convenient location and brilliant functionality
- Macro record feature is a breeze to use
- So many macro keys, SO MANY!
- Flex test was passed with little to no give.
- Lighting profiles could be more
- The aesthetics of it all might not be everybody's cup of tea.
- No wrist rest