HyperX Alloy FPS Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
The HyperX Alloy FPS Mechanical Gaming Keyboards are a series of mechanical keyboards from Kingston which are sold under their HyperX brand. They feature Cherry MX switches and are sold in variants with blue, brown and red switches.
Feels fine[edit]
The keyboard variant with cherry mx brown switches feel great. It is kind of loud. If you have no cute asian girlfriend then you'll be fine, if you do then you may want to consider either buying another keyboard or putting o-rings on it.
The variant with red switches has no tactile feedback. If you like red switches for some reason then you'll probably like it. If you don't know what red switches are then you should just avoid that variant.
The cherry mx blue one is way too loud and should be avoided unless you like that typewriter feel.
Red backlight[edit]
The keyboard comes with red backlight which can be turned on and off by pressing the FN key and the up/down arrows. You can also press the FN key and the left/right arrows to get some totally idiotic and useless lighting effects. All you need to know is that if you accidentally press FN and the right arrow then you'll need to press FN and the left arrow a few times until the keyboard returns to it's constant backlight mode. Every other lighting mode is annoying and only useful if you're 8 years old and want to impress some other 8 year old.
Keycaps[edit]
The keyboard comes with double shot keycaps. They be black with white on the inside. The font on the keycaps will therefore look white without the red backlight and red with it on.
Keyboard layout[edit]
The HyperX Alloy FPS follows the very standard keyboard layout you should expect. The bottom row is standard, the ctrl, wintendo and alt keys are the same size and to the left of the spacebar there's same-sized altgr, fn, menu and ctrl keys. It doesn't have those retarded small windows keys found on keyboards from Logitech and Corsair for some reason. It also has the actual context menu button on the right side of the bottom row. This very important button is replaced with FN and therefore missing on too many keyboards (Logitech again, CoolerMaster and others). The HyperX has the "FN" button where the useless right wintendo key is on other keyboards. This is a very nice detail.
The standard layout means that it's very easy to find keycap replacements if you want to replace a few of those black keys with a white font on them with gray or white or pink keycaps.
Verdict[edit]
This keyboard is a definitive buy. You should buy one now if you're using some kind of membrane keyboard. If you already have a mechanical keyboard or a buckling spring keyboard then it's probably not worth it since it doesn't have anything magic to it, it's just a good mechanical keyboard.
