Corsair Strafe RGB MX Silent Gaming Keyboard Review

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Corsair Strafe RGB MX Silent Gaming Keyboard Review
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By David Ramsey

Manufacturer: Corsair Components, Inc.
Product Name: Strafe RGB Mechanical Keyboard – Cherry MX Silent
Model: CH-9000121-NA
UPC: 843591068024
Price As Tested: $149.99 (Best Buy | Amazon)

Full Disclosure: Corsair Components, Inc. provided the product sample used in this article.

The glut of mechanical keyboards with per-key RGB lighting continues with the release of Corsair’s Strafe RGB Cherry MX Silent series. In addition to features such as extremely versatile programmable lighting, a pass-through USB port, optional textured key caps, and a detachable wrist rest, Corsair adds a unique to them (for now) “silent” version of the Cherry MX Red key switch, which Benchmark Reviews will check out.

Mechanical switches are beloved for their crisp feel and response, but are much noisier to type on than membrane or rubber dome keyboards. Even “non-clicky” switches like Cherry MX Reds or Blacks will make an audible “clack” sound when the stem of the key cap hits the switch body. Will these “MX Silent” switches fix that?

Features

• Cherry MX mechanical key switches, rated for 50 million keystrokes
• Programmable per-key full RGB backlighting
• Pass through USB 2.0 port
• Included extra textured and contoured FPS and MOBA key caps
• Easy access media keys (via Fn key)
• Detachable, soft-touch wrist rest
• 100% anti-ghosting with 104-key rollover over USB

Let’s take a look at this keyboard in the next section.

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Strafe RGB MX Silent Overview
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The Corsair Strafe RGB MX Silent keyboard looks like the other keyboards in Corsair’s Strafe series, with a plain black bezel and keys. LED indicators for lock keys are implemented are vertical strips at the upper right of the keyboard.

The back of the keyboard contains only the product label and fold-out feet. Probably due to the very thick USB cable, there are no cable channels.

The USB cable is permanently attached, and due to the pass-through feature, quite thick. Interestingly, the quick start guide notes that if you’re connecting to a USB 3 port, you should only plug in the keyboard cable and not the pass-through cable. When I followed these directions, the pass through port on the keyboard did not work. Even with both cables plugged into USB 3 ports, the pass through is still, disappointingly, USB 2.0.

At the upper right of the keyboard are two specialized keys: one to adjust the brightness of the key backlighting (there are four steps), and the other to disable the Windows key for gaming.

Media control is via the common mechanism of shifted function keys using an “Fn” key on the keyboard.

Accessories include the snap-on, rubberized wrist rest, some replacement key caps, and a couple of pamphlets. The wrist rest is a nice inclusion but I worry about the long-term durability of its snap-on connectors. No software or documentation is provided, but you can download a very complete manual and the Corsair Utility Software needed to fully utilize the keyboard from Corsair’s web site.

Let’s take a closer look at this keyboard in the next section.

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Mechanical Keyboard Closer Look
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The box for this keyboard touts its “Cherry MX Silent” switches. This is a new Cherry switch variant that seems to be exclusive to Corsair and is physically similar to Cherry’s MX Red switches: they’re linear (no click) and have the same 45g actuation pressure as MX Reds. While MX Red switches make no noise internally, keyboards using these switches will still make a noise when the bottom of the key cap’s stem contacts the body of the switch when it’s pressed. A common fix for this is to fit small O-rings around the stem of each key to provide a buffer between the key cap and the switch body.

MX Silent switches seem to work the same way, except that the buffer is internal to the switch. By reducing the amount of travel from 4mm to 3.7mm, the MX Silent switch prevents the bottom of the key cap stem from contacting the switch body– thus, no sound. Perhaps unsurprisingly the result feels almost exactly like normal MX Red switches used with the O-ring fix.

The Corsair Strafe RGB’s design uses a very low bezel, only a few millimeters taller than the metal key mounting plate.

Cherry’s new clear switch housing works with the internal LED to diffuse the light more evenly than the older top-mounted LED design.

The result is a more even lighting with softer “edges”. It’s still top-biased (only Logitech’s custom “Romer-G” switches provide center lighting), and the lower legends on keys won’t be as brightly lit as the upper keys (notice the dimmer shifted symbols on the number keys in the image below), Overall the lighting is noticeably dimmer than other keyboards using switches with top-mounted LEDs.

Corsair adds subtle white accent lighting along the edges of the keyboard. You can turn this side lighting on and off using the Corsair Utility Engine program, but you can’t change the color or brightness.

Corsair provides a plastic key cap puller and alternate key caps for WASD and QWERDF for FPS and MOBA gamers. The alternate caps have textured grey rubber faces and are contoured to keep your fingers in place during intense play.

The very thick USB cables can be a little crowded when plugged into adjacent USB ports.

In the next section I’ll cover the Corsair Utility Engine software you’ll need to fully utilize this keyboard.

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Corsair Utility Engine
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The manifold abilities of the Corsair Strafe RGB MX Silent keyboard are controlled through the Corsair Utility Engine (CUE) application, which is used with all Corsair gaming hardware, including mice and headsets. The price for all this capability is a certain level of complexity, and you’ll need to spend a lot of time with the 153-page manual to get the most out of this keyboard. In this section I’ll try to hit most of the high points…

CUE uses Profiles and Modes to control the keyboard. A Profile is a collection of one or more Modes, and each mode defines a set of lighting effects, actions (macros, text, timers, mouse movement, etc.) and settings (polling, on-screen display, macro recording features, etc.). Profiles can be selected within CUE or defined to load automatically with specified applications (although you can define keys to switch Profiles, Corsair recommends that you not do this), while modes within a profile can be selected from defined keys for that specific mode. Best of all, profiles and modes can be imported and exported, and shared with other Strafe users.

The CUE utility has four main sections, shown at the upper left of the screen: Profiles, Actions, Lighting, and Settings. The idea is that you create actions and lighting effects, which you then incorporate into modes inside profiles. Got it? In this screen shot we’re in the Fire profile, and its modes include Default, Flame On, Ring of Fire, Flamer, and Fire. Remember, each mode can have its own separate lighting effects and actions. Each profile will have a Default mode, which is the mode that’s active when the profile is loaded.

Actions can include Macros, which records all keyboard and mouse operations; Text, which is simply text typed on the keyboard, Keystroke, which records individual press-and-release actions with millisecond timing; Shortcut, a way to launch other programs, DPI, which can change the DPI setting of a Corsair mouse on the fly, Timers, Mouse (mouse button and scroll wheel actions), and Media Control. To create a new action, simply select the action on the left, then click the New link near the top of the screen. Once you’ve created an action, you can assign it to a key in the current mode and profile.

Individual actions, even those as simple as the text action above, offer very detailed settings: in this case I can specify that the text be either typed or pasted; be toggled on or off, or repeated as long as the assigned key is pressed; repeat a specified number of times with specified delays between repeats– well, you get the idea.

The standout feature of this keyboard is its incredible lighting effects. You can, as shown above, designate a color for any key, or assign lighting effects you create in the Lighting section to any key or group of keys. One minor issue: according to the documentation, there should be a “Groups” bar above the keyboard image in the screen shot above. This is how you designate groups of keys to apply lighting effects to. This group bar does not appear for me in CUE version 1.12.75, but I was able to create ad-hoc groups by holding down the Control key and selecting multiple keys by clicking on them.

Pre-defined light effects include the now-standard chromatic ripples, waves, and pulses, but the truly motivated can click the Advanced Settings button shown above, or select the Lighting tab in the main window, and define per-key effects with brightness, color, and duration at the millisecond level. As an example of what you can do with this, Corsair includes a “spiral rainbow” effect as standard. Corsair has an online library of user-contributed effects including crackling electric arcs and roaring flame effects that simply cannot be duplicated on other keyboards.

Profiles can be linked to specific games (or any other applications) so that they load automatically when the game is launched. CUE can identify most applications on your system, but apparently cannot “look inside” Steam or Origin folders for games there– you’ll have to dig down through the folders yourself.

In the Settings section, you can back up and restore your entire collection of profiles, as well as define how the program starts up. You can also check for updates to CUE and update the firmware in your keyboard.

I’ll present my final thoughts and conclusion about this keyboard in the next section.

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Gaming Keyboard Final Thoughts
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The Corsair Strafe RGB MX Silent keyboard is the most interesting keyboard I’ve reviewed lately, due to its unique (for now) key switches and almost absurdly elaborate Corsair Utility Engine software. Both the lighting effects and macro programmability offer features I have not seen in any other keyboard; however, this level of capability demands more from the user: to get the most from this keyboard, you’re going to have to spend some quality time reading the Corsair Utility Engine documentation and experimenting with all of the things you can do with this keyboard.

One thing to keep in mind is that virtually all of these settings are stored in the Utility Engine software, and sent to the keyboard on the fly as needed. While this allows for features like automatic mode selection when specific applications are launched, it means that you can’t store macros and lighting effects in the keyboard and move it to another computer, or even use with without CUE running.

CUE as an amazing utility, but I have a few niggles: the low-contrast light gray text on a black background can be hard to read (which is why in many of the screen shots I’ve enhanced the appearance of the text in my image editor). It seems to have a few bugs and missing features: the “key groups” bar is missing, and occasionally the program wouldn’t seem to send the appropriate commands to the keyboard while I was creating new actions and lighting effects. And, dang it, you still can’t assign actions to keys with modifiers: that it, you can assign an action to the F1 key, but not to shift-F1, alt-F1, or ctrl-F1. Overall, though, CUE works well enough, but again: expect to spend several days getting to know this utility well enough to make full use of it.

As far as typing feel goes, I’ve yet to really warm up to the Cherry MX Silent keys. I’ve never liked the damped feel and reduced travel affording by “O-ringing” standard Cherry keys, but this is of course a personal preference, and I imagine many enthusiasts will like it, along with the much quieter operation this design affords. For the rest of us, Corsair offers this keyboard with standard MX Red and MX Brown switches for $10 less.

Although you’ll have to look hard to find it, printing on the retail box notes that there’s a two-year warranty on this keyboard (the included warranty pamphlet merely notes that the retail warranty will vary with the device). That’s good, although not great, with several competitors offering longer warranties.

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Corsair Strafe RGB MX Silent Keyboard Conclusion
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There’s a lot of capability here, and you’ll page for it with an MSRP of $159.99– although the keyboard is available with standard Cherry MX Red or Brown switches for $149.99.

The RGB keyboard market is full of less expensive competition, mostly using Chinese clone switches from the likes of Kailh, Gateron, and others. While I have not noticed any operational differences when testing these other keyboards, of course they cannot have the decades-long track record for reliability that Cherry has, so many will consider paying more to get genuine Cherry switches to be worth it. On the other hand, Corsair only offers a two-year warranty with this keyboard, while some competitors whose keyboards use Chinese clone switches are offering 3- and 5-year warranties, so there’s that.

The operation of this keyboard is different from most others, since you must use the Corsair Utility Engine; without it, the keyboard defaults to red backlighting with white WASD and arrow keys, and of course you have no macros or any other features. You cannot store macros or lighting effects on the keyboard itself.

In terms of build quality, the keyboard meets the high standards I expect from Corsair: it feels solid and high quality, with the exception of the separate wrist rest. Operationally, CUE has a few niggles, and I really wish they’d add a little more contrast to the user interface. Aesthetically, the keyboard’s shallow bezel and visible clear switch bodies make it stand out at least a little, but it’s the lighting effects that make it special. It’s an expensive keyboard with a street price of $149.99 (Best Buy | Amazon), but dedicated gamers with the patience to learn how to fully exploit CUE will think it’s worth it.

Pros:

+ Unique Cherry MX Silent key switches
+ Massively capable CUE enables astonishing lighting effects and other actions, synchronized among all your Corsair peripherals
+ Included optional key caps for FPS and MOBA gamers
+ Snap-on wrist rest
+ USB pass-through port (although only USB 2.0)

Cons:

– Thick, unwieldy USB cablling
– Requires CUE to be installed and running. And CUE has a few problems.
– Cannot define macros using modifier keys
– 2-year warranty?

Ratings:

• Performance: 9.75
• Appearance: 8.25
• Construction: 9.25
• Functionality: 9.75
• Value: 8.75

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Final Score: 9.15 out of 10.
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Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.

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