Product test
The Keyboard 4 Ultimate - My loud dream
by Dominik Bärlocher
Corsair Strafe RGB Silent - Quiet. Mechanical. Bright.
10.1.2017
Translation: machine translated
The search for the perfect office keyboard for fans of mechanical keys has come to an end. For the time being. With the Corsair Strafe RGB Silent, I have found a keyboard that not only offers the authentic click-clack feeling, but also maintains a noise level that is suitable for the office.
We remember. I got myself a Das Keyboard for testing purposes and fell in love with it after my first attempts at typing on the black keyboard. There was just one problem: The keyboard is far too loud for the office. My colleagues Phil and Ramon were disturbed by my machine-gun-like typing. Therefore: Silence! The keyboard now lives at home with me. Everyone is happy. Except me, because when I have to go back to the Logitech K120, my heart bleeds a little.
I ask the experts, namely Yves Sahli, Product Manager Peripherals. He knows that the MX Cherry Brown switches in the Das Keyboard are loud, but also that the German manufacturer Cherry also produces silent switches. These are much quieter, which explains the name Silent. Coincidentally, the manufacturer Corsair brings a keyboard onto the market that has the same switches installed, namely the Corsair Strafe RGB Silent.
The keyboard is on my desk and I am writing this review on the keyboard.
Click Clack without Boom Boom
O-rings are considered by fans of mechanical keyboards to be the alpha and omega of soundproofing. It seems to work quite well, even though I haven't tried it yet. At least it seems to work so well that the development of O-rings has come to a standstill.
The stupid thing is that Corsair produces for gamers and gamers like their keyboards with lighting effects. Because, let's be honest, it looks cool. Somehow. Such a backlight works in such a way that an LED light is installed under each transparent switch. If I now put O-rings over the switch to dampen the sound, then the sound dampening covers the lighting. That's why Cherry and Corsair have joined forces and developed the MX Silent Switches. They are transparent and quiet.
So, I have now written almost an A4 page with the keyboard and compared to the Das Keyboard, the keys are slightly softer. The pressure point is easier to achieve than with MX Brown switches. It also happened to me at first that I left my finger hanging during a pause for thought and then wrote half a line "sssssss..." before I realised that my left ring finger still seems to be the weakest of my ten fingers. This brings me to my biggest and only criticism of the keys: the MX Silent Switches are softer than those on the Das Keyboard. And with that sentence, I've created the biggest grammatical nightmare of the year. Jeez...
Despite the suddenly appearing line "s", typing with the Corsair Strafe RGB Silent is a blast. The keys feel wonderfully mechanical, the pressure point is nice and low, which makes hard typists like me happy. Above all, the keyboard is quiet, because the silent switches deliver what they promise. This means that the Corsair/Cherry team has managed to retain the feel of the switches without the ruckus of the undamped switches.
One thing strikes me about the design: The keys can be removed extremely easily. It doesn't take a lot of force or a trick to hold the buttons in your hand and stare at the bare switch in no time at all. The buttons are just as easy to reassemble. It's not something I do every day, but it's still something I've noticed. If you're as lazy as I am when it comes to cleaning the keyboard and you rip all the keys off the keyboard every few months and then put them in the dishwasher, then this is quite a handy feature.
Furthermore, the keyboard has a feature that will be of particular use to gamers. The Windows key can be switched off. This is useful because the Windows key always moves the current window to the background across all applications and opens the Start menu in the foreground. If you're in the middle of a raid and make a typo, the window disappears and you have to click your way back into the game window quickly and painstakingly. That's where this function comes in handy.
Mini Farb and dini, that's two of a kind...
The Corsair Strafe RGB Silent not only makes a name for itself with its silence, but also with the freely configurable LEDs under the keys. Each key can be controlled individually, allowing you to create your own pattern on the keyboard. By default, the keys are highlighted in red, except for the WASD gamer keys. For all non-gamers: The keys are used in many games to control the movement of the game character. W is forwards, A left, S backwards, D right. The reason why the arrow keys are not used for games is that there are more keys next to WASD and therefore more keyboard shortcuts can be reached with one hand. In addition, the mouse is usually found in the gamer's right hand. If the left hand is now in the right third of the keyboard, a lot of usable space is lost.
About the WASD. Corsair supplies grey keycaps that you can use to replace the WASD keycaps. This makes the keys feel different and you can find the keys again without having to look away from the screen. Cool, isn't it?
My keyboard lights up blue because red was too warm for me. I prefer a cool blue colour. The setting is relatively easy to make if you take about half an hour and install the Corsair Utility Engine. Essentially, it works like this:
- Click on colour
- Click on button
- Save
- Done
You can also do this with multiple selection, but essentially this is how the tool works if you don't want to rely on one of the supplied layouts. Incidentally, the supplied layouts are provided with various effects. For example, you can make a wave-like light pulse flow across the keyboard after each keystroke or organise a crazy rainbow show that is in no way inferior to the Star Road level from Super Mario Kart.
Interesting note: The base colour of the keyboard lighting is apparently stored somewhere in the keyboard itself, but the effects are not. If you want the effects, then the Corsair Utility Engine must be running in the background. In other words: Blue illumination works. Red when I press the key does not.
The conclusion
So, enough typing, time for a conclusion. I like the Corsair Strafe RGB Silent. So do my colleagues. Not only does the keyboard impress with its well-silenced mechanical switches, but also with the solid workmanship of the case. Only the keys are - depending on your taste - perhaps a little too loosely attached, but this doesn't necessarily have to be a disadvantage, especially when cleaning the keyboard.
The lighting is nice and bright. For me, "less is more" when it comes to hardware, but I like the cool blue colour under my fingers. I don't need it, but I classify it as a solid "good to have", even if I don't use it myself.
One thing is missing for me personally. When using the Das Keyboard, I realised that I type x times faster when I don't have any keyboard labels, i.e. only black keys. Let's see if we can do something about that. It can't be that difficult.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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