Published: July 24, 2017 | Source: Kingston | Author: Bryan Waters

HyperX Alloy Elite Gaming Keyboard

Conclusion

All of the things we had to say about the HyperX Alloy FPS sadly remain true for the Alloy Elite.

When you call your product Elite it automatically brings with it certain expectations. We don’t mean that it’s guaranteed to be great, but at the very least it will be making an effort to be as good as the best of the current models. After all, you can control the design process even if you can’t control how people will feel about it.

With the stripped back nature of the Alloy FPS you could make an argument that it was designed to be simple and pure, to give you the edge in your gaming with all the excess trimmed away. Nothing between you and your kill streak. With the HyperX Elite though, that idea – even if it wasn’t necessarily true of the design ethos of the FPS – doesn’t work. It’s Elite. So automatically we’re expecting RGB lighting, dedicated media keys, maybe some macro keys, perhaps audio ports for our headset. What we have is the same as the Alloy FPS with the media keys and lighting control keys moved off their placings as a FN+key press and to their own keys.

The inclusion of a light bar is a nice touch as anyone who has experienced keyboards with their inclusion will attest. It’s a lot less useful because it just does red, but you can have it sweeping back and forth and feel like a Cylon or KITT. We know there are people out there nodding in delight at the idea of that. The lighting is, as you would expect from Cherry MX switches, uniform across the keyboard. The great benefit of having 90% of your product being off-the-shelf parts (like Omron switches on mice for example) is that you know that you’re guaranteed a quality product. It removes a lot of the guesswork from buying a product from a manufacturer new to this particular segment of the market. We know that Kingston and their HyperX arm produce the goods, but for more casual consumers the Cherry MX words instil a lot of confidence.

It’s great that Kingston have included a wrist rest with the Alloy Elite. We really cannot emphasise enough the importance of keeping your wrists as level as possible when typing and gaming. It might not mean much now but in five or ten years time you’ll be delighted that you had a wrist rest when you’re not stricken with RSI. How much you wish to take advantage of the included alternate keycaps is very much a matter of personal taste. We’ve spent twenty years using WASD without ever feeling our gaming experience would be improved by textured and sculpted keys, but equally we know that for many people such things could be the difference between victory and respawning, so it’s nice to have the option there at least. Lastly the Alloy Elite is very well built. The alloy body with a steel spine mean it’s very robust, and we know that Cherry MX keys last a lifetime. The cable is extremely thickly braided so there wont be any problems with years of toil against the edge of your desk.

It’s difficult to get away from the high pricing and the fierce competition in the keyboard market though. It’s not as if all black, one colour lighting Cherry MX keyboards are thin on the ground. The light bar is a great idea, but when it can only do a single colour it’s more for show than go. This is very much a keyboard for those of you who either must own nothing but HyperX branded products or really don’t care about lighting as you’ll turn it off anyway. For everyone else there are dozens of alternatives at, or below, the expected street price of £110. We can’t help feeling that this is a little bit uninspired by Kingston HyperX division. All their other products have a flair and willingness to push the boundaries that this lacks. It’s just a bit safe. We can’t wait for the RGB version to finally unleash the potential that the Alloy Elite so obviously shows in its build quality and feature placement.