Gamers, who are serious about their stuff, would do anything to get the perfect shot. And hence arises the need for precise gaming peripherals — the most quintessential of those peripherals being keyboard and mouse.
And which better brand to talk about gaming stuff than Asus ! We thus had a chance to get hold of one of Asus’s recently launched Strix Gaming series — a power-packed system with mechanical keyboard, a laser mouse and a over-the-ears headphones.
Lets see whether this Strix Tactic Pro Gaming keyboard lived up to our expectations. And to tell you that, let’s straight away get you a review of the parameters we looked upon :
[wp-review]The combined system costs ₹7,290. Lets get on with our detailed analysis on whether the entire platform is worth paying that much for.
The Design — Thats A Roman Owl Folks!
Asus’s Strix gaming line-up, which was introduced last year, is modelled around mythological roman owl. The keyboard is also given a look resembling an owl with two ear-like structure on the top edges and a limp below the space bar. This is also pretty much taken from the Strix logo itself — which is again an owl eyed thing.
The Strix Tactic Pro is a familiar, full size keyboard. It is entirely black in color and comes with orange colored highlights. The keys are arranged in an ergonomic curve to avoid accidental hits on the keys — a standard pretty much adopted by most peripheral manufacturers these days.
On the design front, the Strix Tactic Pro scales up pretty much above all the rest — that roman owl thing is cool and gamers (the folks which this keyboard actually targets) would love to have such designs, giving them the environment and immersiveness of a gaming world — specially when you play some hardcore FPS ones.
Build Quality — Robust And Tons Of Keys To Play With
The build quality of the keyboard is amazing. It seems that the keyboard will withstand any type of abuse (gamers would relate most to the usage of this term here). Overall plastic quality is decent with a touch of premium finishing, making its smooth on finger tips and ergonomically brilliant. Your tips won’t get too tired of using it, and you’d continue to feel a soft texture finish beneath them even when you’ve played or used the keyboard for continuously wrong runs.
The keyboard has tons of keys. After from the keys that you normally see in regular keyboards, Asus has included 21 customizable macro keys. Lets get into details of that stuff.
There are 10 dedicated macro keys on the left side of the keyboard – M1 to M10, while M11, M12 and M13 keys are placed on the limp below the spacebar. Those three keys have different designs. M11 has flat design, M12 has a dot on it and M12 is bent at the center.
This difference in the design of the keys allows user to use any of the key without having to look at them and avoid pressing some other key instead. The M11 to M13 keys are very much useful while playing MMO games. Other macro keys, from M14 to M21 are on the function keys – from F1 to F8.
Interested more about gaming keyboards? Have look on Best Gaming Keyboards 2017, hope you will like it
You can define what the key does – from opening an installed software or game to opening a specific webpage. You can do anything with those keys.
This macro keys are very much useful while playing MMO games. The massively multiplayer online gaming utilizes wide number of keyboard shortcuts and commands. Using macro keys to define those commands, the game becomes much smoother.
Another interesting thing that Asus has included is the thumb scroll instead of volume + and volume – keys for volume control. This cannot be seen in many keyboards. Also, there are multimedia keys – Play/Pause, Mute, Previous and Next. The scroll and multimedia keys are placed above the numpad.
A striking aspect about the keys is the fact that they are concave in shape. So, whenever you press a key, you will always hit in the center. Asus has included NKRO feature for unlimited N-key rollover. You can also switch to 6KRO mode if you are not using it for gaming.
Not just for gaming. The keyboard is very much useful if you are also using some advanced software such as Photoshop or After Effects. You can customize macro keys to carry out shortcut functions that usually requires combination of more than three keys such as CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + {KEY}.
Performance
Coming to the performance, Strix Tactic Pro is excellent in this department. It is very responsive. While other competitive gaming keyboard manufactures like Razer uses their own switches, Asus decided to go with Cherry switches.
Asus has opted for the Cherry MX switches for this keyboard. You can choose from four different switch configuration – Black, Blue, Brown, and Red Cherry MX switches. The Cherry MX Blue and Brown switches provide the most tactile feel, while the Cherry MX Red and Black are linear and a bit quieter than Blue and Brown.
Our review unit had Red Cherry MX switch, which was introduced way back in 2008 and is designed especially for gaming purpose. This particular department could have been better.
The orange backlight has four different modes – breathing effect, where the light fades in and fades out every few seconds, while the other modes affects the light intensity.
You can change the backlight effect by pressing the function (FN) key and the number 8 key on the numpad or by pressing the function key and number 2 key on the numpad. At the top of the keyboard, there are indicator lights for different profiles, NKRO, num lock, caps lock, and scroll lock.
The Strix Tactic Pro keyboard also features on-the-fly macro recording, which enables you to program new macro commands during the gameplay. The cable that is connected to the keyboard is quite thick. Also, the USB connector is gold plated and the shape of the connector is also unique.
The keyboard comes with a Strix Software for configuring different aspects of the keyboard. It features two modes – Software and Hardware. The hardware mode stores the configuration using the internal flash memory while the software mode stores the configuration data on your computer.
The main screen features the keyboard and highlights the keys which can be configured. At the left side, there is a dedicated section for profiles. You can configure macro keys with various options such as keyboard functions, mouse functions, launch program or game, or disable it altogether.
There’s huge scope of improvement, particularly on the software front. The Strix software, even though is comprehensive, could offer even more customisation profiles for users.
While the Strix Tactic Pro gaming keyset is pretty great at stuff it offers, there are few things that needs to be pointed out. First of all, there is only one backlit color – Orange. You cannot change the LED color. Asus should have at least created other backlit-color variants of the keyboard.
Another thing that seems missing to me is the USB hub. Many keyboard offers a USB slot, even those which are priced much less than the Tactic Pro.
ProRev Review
ProRev ReviewWe would give the ASUS Strix Pro, an 8.3 out of 10 — yes, which translates to a near-perfect score and makes you re-assured that you’ve chosen just the right product.
[wp-review]Meanwhile, do you happen to own one of these beauties ? Great ! We would like to have your say in this review as well. We have incorporated a user reviewing feature in the review box above. Simply drop in the number of stars you wish to give to the Strix Tactic Pro keyboard. You can anyways drop in your comments below as well.
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Also, Stay tuned. The review of Asus Stirx Claw gaming mouse and gaming headphones is next.
